How it was in the beginning
Jimmy Rigby, Gertrude Cloherty and George Bowler won the third team's title conducted at the Wynnum West Church Hall
Post-war Wynnum Manly. There's football being played on a field opposite Manly Hotel, where the Manly Mall stands today. Rugby league battles between the Waterloo Bay Hotel's Diamonds and Fisher's Hotel's fishermen are fiercely fought contests, bloodbaths, in fact.
There are no outboard motor boats, no harbours, no development. And not a lot to do for entertainment. For some, however, the hours are whiled away playing ping pong, a relatively undemanding sport which involves tapping a ball back and forth over a net set up on kitchen tables. Bats are sandpapered, and almost every player uses pen grip. There's no organised fixtures; the activity is sedate and purely social, in house, so to speak. But change is in the wind. Somewhere in the Bayside, Tom Dutton gets the urge to see ping pong progress from a table top activity.
He places an advertisement in the Waterloo Bay Leader, a local newspaper then housed in the back section of the Star picture theatre, opposite the Bon Ton, an infamous late-night hamburger joint in the Tingal Road end of Edith Street. Today it's unclear whether he placed the advertisement with assistance from Frank Semple, but those who were around at the time now give credit to Semple and Dutton for the reformation of ping pong in the Wynnum Manly district. In any event, the advertisement was duly published sometime in 1951, and it drew a strong response to a meeting held in Dutton's Clara Street home.
One of those who liked the idea of a more formalised approach to the sport was Bill Castner, and he was among those who turned up at that inaugural to see what was planned. History shows that meeting proved fateful for Bill, for it lead to him setting up a "table tennis centre" under his Thomas Street home, where he still lives today.
Now, about 52 years or more on, Bill recalls those early days: "I wanted to get teams together and set up under my house as a table tennis centre."In fact 1 was the first person to put fluorescent lights under a house for table tennis." Prior to that "development", Bill said, play took place in a variety of conditions, not the worst being under a single overhead light bulb. "That meant we had to go looking for the ball if it was hit outside. In one of the places we had to go looking for the ball in a wood heap, and at another we were only about 6 inches away from a bank of louvers."
But where were those early days of table tennis played, as it grew from strength to strength as an under-the-house sport? To the best of Bill's recollection (he's now a youthful 80-years-of-age) the early battles took place at Mrs Banks's house /on the corner of Gordon Parade and Carlton Terrace; Tom Dutton's place halfway down Gordon Parade at the corner of Melville Terrace; Caruthers' house in Clara Street (the on with limited clearance from the louvers), Laurie Chapman's, way up at Wynnum North; .Rexie Haslett's in Wynnum Central, where they drove the car out and it was not a bad set up; the Crammond's at Wynnum Central and Firpo Neuman's in Besham Parade. However, as some time went by Bill recalls there was a fallout. The details are not clear now, and perhaps are best left forgotten after all these years.
But it transpired that there was a failed attempt to take possession of the books and constitution of the Wynnum Manly Table Tennis Association -the body born of that initial public meeting held in 1951. This period of crisis, Bill recalls, led to the calling of another public meeting, and the eventual formation in 1952 of the Wynnum District Table Tennis Association.
Going back in time and recalling details of the split, Bill put it this way: "We had the blue and got out of it." That transition led to fixtures being played at St John's church hall at Wynnum West, and according to Bill "that's where it all started". As Bill recalls it, the first committee of the Wynnum District Table Tennis Association was Dennis Davies, president; Les McDonald, secretary; Ellen Crammond, treasurer; and committee members Bill Castner, Gertrude Castner, Eddie Swain and Elaine Gilmour. That, he says, was the real start of table tennis in the Wynnum Manly district. And what really put table tennis in the Bayside on the may in a big was an event held on July 16, 1952 in the Municipal "Hall, Bay Terrace, Wynnum.
All these years later, Bill still has a yellowed clipping from the Waterloo Bay Leader newspaper. In its day it advised readers of an appearance of the Queensland representative team selected to do battle in up-coming national titles in Hobart.
Its now legendary members were then Australian champion Phil Anderson, then Queensland champion Henry Porter, ex-Queensland champion Chic Shaw (who used the event as his final appearance before retirement), 1950 Queensland champion Ren Picking, Miss S Irwin and Miss L Pearce.
Admission to that event was 2/6, which included 5d tax, and half the proceeds went to the Wynnum Ambulance (at which building some of the early Wynnum Manly table tennis was also played).
For the record, tickets to the big event were sold by Cunningham's Sport Store, Shenton's Manly Pharmacy and Wynnum Ambulance. And a big event it was, with the capacity crowd being treated to "real" table tennis, a far cry from the ping pong of kitchen table era.
Having set the roots of table tennis in the district, Bill recounted other milestones in the sport's emergence. He made special mention of an advertisement which called for handicap players, to which at least 100 responded. He told of 1000 posters being placed on light poles to attract players. That handicap tournament, for which players put 6d in the till, he recalled, was won by an Englishman named Christensen from Hemmant, who overcame a -58 handicap to claim victory. "He was a bit better than I thought he was," Bill said. And he recollected helping the sport's transformation by "buying a book on it" which told of new ideas like cut and spin and serve. (Bill recently presented that Know the Game book to the WTTA for inclusion in its records.) Trying to recount successful local players, Bill said a seaman called Eric Brown was champion for years, and he employed the use of chop and spin and other little tricks. And his own wife Gertrude was no slouch, winning the ladies singles and pairs with 3-0 victories in 1953, the latter with Miss C Cloherty. Other features of those early years included Bill's own team -Te-Whare -which roughly translated meant "our home". He said winning teams received a little spoon, and: "They had metal badges which I got from Wallace Bishop's for their lapels."
But about four years into his and his wife's association with table tennis in the Wynnum Manly district, there came another crisis, one which led to Mrs Castner resigning as the president, and Bill as a committee member. But by then the foundations had been laid for a structured competition, with a strong following. One of those then involved was the now late Frank Neville, who Bill recalled became secretary when Les McDonald became president in about mid-1954, at the time Bill and Gertrude resigned. (Frank Neville went on to become President of the present WTTA, and is credited with sparking the quest for the Association to build its own stadium.) Still looking back on those early years, Bill said many well known people had contact with the sport. He named Don Ferguson, Jack Ahern and Bill Hess as three which immediately came to mind. He clearly recalled current player Barry Driver from the early era, and remembered watching Jackie Miles and other greats produced in the district.
And despite severing his connection locally with the sport way back in 1954, he said he always followed the reports in the Waterloo Bay Leader and later the Wynnum Herald.Visiting the Curtis Street Stadium for the first time in February 1993, Bill said it amazed him when compared with the playing condition of old. He was also surprised at the age of the players (he visited on Veteran's night), and the good sportsmanship dis- played (a feature he said could have been better in the early days).
Joining Bill on his visit to the Stadium was Wynnum identity Les Steinback, 60, a table tennis player from the early era. Les, perhaps also known as a doubles seller for Wynnum Manly Rugby League, was a member of early representative teams from Wynnum. One he recalled and had a photo he took as a memento was Wynnum's first rep team to play Gympie. It comprised Les, Grant O'Neill, Don Walker, Les McDonald, George Bowler and Eddie Swain (the first WTTQA life member).
While he took the photo and therefore was not in it, Les had the satisfaction of being undefeated at Gympie. But he thought Gympie might have won the encounter.
But whatever the result that night, Wynnum and table tennis was a winner all the way, thanks to the efforts of Bill and many other unsung heroes of past years. |
