Background to site development
Some years ago now, I listened as Bard Claffey tried to explain to a CWA group, the story of the beginning of his beloved surf club. It took twenty minutes for his early history lesson to get to the coming of the railway (1891), and with his talk time running out, he’d not even got into the Twentieth Century...such was his passion for the tale and its historical importance; a tale he’d tried to fully understand and concisely explain for over 50 years...since he first began his quest in 1954.
I came away that day, with the realisation that the context of the tale of the beginning of life saving on the Sunshine Coast lay somewhere in understanding what local history needed to be understood first, and in that understanding, then the development and setting for the times was very important, if one were to grasp the local history significance of the Maroochydore SLSC’s birth.
Subsequently, when approaching USC’s local history professor Chris Mc Conville, with his being also an urban planning lecturer, Chris alerted me then to the realisation that this story was also an important urban planning one too. Chris left the Sunshine Coast 2 weeks after our first meeting unfortunately.
Professor Joanne Scott both attended at a surf club gathering to explain what we needed to do to prepare for our Centenary edition (Ralph Devlin's work) and celebrations, and encouraged me as a student at USC, to go forward and do the production writing ourselves, rather than rely on professional or academic personnel to complete the task.
The Historical Tours held over 3 consecutive seasons, were my attempt to share the ongoing learning I was gaining about this wonderful local history of the Sunshine Coast, initially encouraged in me by author and local historian extraordinaire Dr Berenis Alcorn as my mentor.
Completing this website then in 2015, will be the completion of a decade long journey into Scholarship...a kind of post-Scholarship, under-graduate degree of my own design.
.....................................
In 1908 the first land sales of any residential kind in Maroochydore were held, as Tommy O’Connor carved out of his holdings (which stretched from the Mooloolah River to Eudlo Ck and the foothills of Buderim...land previously purchased from the bankers of the bankrupted William Pettigrew and the Sawmiller company Campbell).
Those allotments in the ‘private’ town were on the river reach northwest of Cornmeal Creek.
The beach and Cotton Tree area awaited their development some years later when the surf club as a local lifesaving service was established on 1.1.1916.
Obviously, a book writer such as the club has in its historian Ralph Devlin SC, will select what value he places on this site’s content, as his task is not to compile necessarily a local history tale but to publish a club’s 100 Years' story.
I respect that, but I also know from my efforts at research to understand fully the early years, that a full and comprehensive record would guide Ralph and future local historians too...
...and as that record was not available to me totally from the sources through whom I sought to understand (library and USC), I elected to create this research/resource site and engage with others (particularly members in the Bli Bli on Maroochy Historical Society Inc.) to compile it to cover the years 1916 to the 1931 beginning of SLSQ (State Centre).
Since the year 2000, Centenary books on Queensland Swimming and the Royal Life Saving Society have greatly assisted with modern understanding, as have other Surf Life Saving Clubs' histories writing too.
Of the greatest assistance to the
earliest club on the Sunshine Coast’s tale however, has been the
digitalisation of the Nambour Chronicle, and it is from that source in
particular that the finer detail has been gleaned...and in later times from the National Library's Trove resource. That resource (files found) can be accessed now by anyone enquiring of me for access.
Where possible, reference is made to the source of all knowledge contained on this ‘site’, however special mention needs to be made to the previous efforts in particular of Stan Wilcox; Bard Claffey and Ralph Devlin SC in their preparation of the 1991 publication The Home of the Black Swan.
The photo below, a late find in the decade of research, was sourced from the personal collection of JJ Betts' grandson David...and his allowing it (as a fitting final tribute to a pedant's persistence), into our archives and onto the Picture Sunshine Coast/Heritage Library resource is greatly appreciated.
Peter Rigby.
