Extract from 'Sanctuary In The Hills': Chapter 11
The Community
The earliest settlers found the need, in some circumstances, to band together for their mutual benefit. For example, before 1850, they were making their combined approaches to the Government, about the provision and siting of roads. Coalitions like this were short-lived, and disappeared once their single purpose had been achieved. Apart from church groups, no permanent organisations were formed until after 1860.
Then in 1862, the cricketers set up what they called, simply, the Coromandel Cricket Club. It became a permanent feature of the local scene, and still, today, functions in a very healthy way, although not on quite the same basis as it did in the nineteenth century.
Until 1892, the club used Chambers Flat for its matches, which were organised as individual affairs, not as part of a regular, formalised competition. That is not to say that the game wasn’t treated seriously; evidence is that the Valley team was very proud of its record. Then in 1892, the club bought land on Coromandel Parade, which is really closer to Blackwood than the Valley, and established a playing field there. In the long run, that move has meant that the Coromandel Cricket Club has become increasingly oriented towards Blackwood.
The cricket club has played a much greater role in Coromandel Valley’s community life than simply to provide some men with opportunity for sport. Particularly during last century, and on into the early years of the current one [Ed: the 20th Century], the Saturday matches were significant social occasions. Male and female citizens alike would turn out to urge their local team, dress in their best clothes, and generally make the most of the chance to enjoy the company of their fellows.
Club members made their resources, often in the form of their own persons, available for cricketing occasions other than the weekly games. Murray’s factory would sometimes arrange a picnic on a weekday for employees, and then a cricket match would constitute a large part of the programme. These games would sometimes be played against teams from Adelaide factories, such as D. & J. Fowler, or at other times between two local teams.
It was not unusual for such matches to be followed by some evening entertainment, which might include the presentation of prizes relevant to the day’s proceedings. The cricket club itself took the initiative at times to arrange such evening diversions themselves, regardless of whether there was a picnic during the day. Any excuse was sought for these evenings, but a regular one was the end-of-season break-up. Then, the audience would be fed a smorgasbord of speeches, trophy presentations, songs, plays, recitations and instrumental musical items. Concert parties might be imported from as far away as Goodwood, really quite a distance by horse-drawn vehicles. Often, the venue would be the Institute hall.
The social life based on cricket extended even further, because the one-day matches which were arranged might be in places as far away as Goolwa. To travel that distance and back again, the team would take several days, and so a real holiday would be made of the event. This custom continued until the early 1930s, by which time quite large parties would travel as far away as Yorke Peninsula, some men even taking their wives and families with them. Mrs McTaggart would often go, and take a leading role in the musical part of the evening’s entertainment, once the cricket was finished.
Clearly, the cricket club was a significant focal point for the communal life of the Valley’s citizens, certainly for the nineteenth century, and extending into the early decades of the twentieth.
Its contribution went even further, though; it was out of its activities that the Institute came into being. The cricketers wanted to hold a soiree during 1873. When they realised that they could not work out how to do it properly, they formed a ‘Mutual Improvement Society’, which officially came into being in 1875. By 1880, the group had resolved to build the Institute, and through the support of people like Alexander Murray and his sister, Elizabeth (Samuel Gill’s second wife), the resolve became a reality in 1881. With the building came the Institute library, and an organisation which has provided facilities for the Valley’s benefit from then until the present day.
The provision of the Institute allowed for greater ease in the functioning of some groups already organised within the Valley. The Baptist Church has already been mentioned as one of these. Another was the local branch of the Rechabite Lodge, which had formed in 1867, but which had been forced to use homes or parts of the biscuit factory for its functions. In addition, there was now room for expansion in community activity. New groups were formed, like the Literary Society in 1891, and by the early 1900s, indoor games, like quoits contests, were frequently held there. There was, in fact, a club for this game, and its members used to accept challenges from whoever offered them. It must have been embarrassing on the occasion when the regular club team was beaten by the Jones brothers, in 1914.
Besides having its regular users, the Institute hall was the venue for all kinds of special events. It became possible for the Valley to have more evening entertainments, whether they consisted of concerts, speeches, banquets or dances. There can be no doubt that the Institute was a very busy centre from 1881, and well on into the 1900s.
The cricket club, to whose initiative Coromandel Valley owed its Institute, continued to function strongly and enthusiastically. The standard was high, and names like James, Cullen and Hall crop up frequently among the players to distinguish themselves. But there must have been some local dissatisfaction with it during the early 1900s. In 1906, a separate club formed, called Riverside. It did not last long, because lack of numbers caused it to disband in 1914 when World War I began, and it did not re-form after that war. It is likely that the shift of the club’s headquarters to Blackwood had something to do with the formation of this short-lived club, because from the early 1900s onwards, the Coromandel Cricket Club increasingly drew on the Blackwood area for its players.
After the war, although the Riverside Club did not re-form, another one called Coromandel Ramblers Cricket Club came into existence, probably for the same kinds of reasons as the Riverside one. The Ramblers made their headquarters the Hawthorndene Oval, where they have continued ever since; they have also maintained a high percentage of Coromandel Valley people in the team.
The circumstances are worth relating, because they expose another facet of the changing relationship between Coromandel Valley and Blackwood after the early 1900s.
One sport which never really became established in the Valley was football. Local people have traditionally played in Blackwood teams, since organised competitions began. The main reason has probably been that football was not much played until the twentieth century. There were a few matches earlier, although the word ‘ football’, used in some last century reports, seems to apply to soccer rather than the Australian rules game. The first organised game of this sport was played on Chambers Flat in 1882. It was between a Valley team and a team of navvies who were working on the railway line. As they did for cricket, the whole community turned out, men, women and children. Descriptions of play suggest that the railway workers were rough, even going so far as to deliberately trip the much more honourable local team. Despite the foul tactics used against them, the locals won. During the years following, a Coromandel Valley team would sometimes journey to Crafers to play, apparently rarely winning. The Crafers playing field had a well in the centre. No-one ever fell in, because it was fenced with barbed wire. However, no other teams except Crafers themselves managed to devise systems of effectively playing around the hazard. Perhaps it was this kind of discouragement which prevented Coromandel Valley from ever forming permanent football teams.
Like football, rifle shooting was popular for a time. There were two rifle ranges at about the turn of the century, one in Lane’s Gully and the other on Chambers Run. Neither is in use now.
Tennis had a relatively late start, but has thrived locally. Courts at the southern end of the Valley were completed through the efforts of tennis enthusiasts in 1909. Almost immediately, teams began competing against other districts. Since that time, the club has continued to grow in strength, and attracts players from outside the immediate district, from places such as Hawthorndene and Blackwood.
The tennis courts are part of the Valley’s recreation area, and since 1909 there has been a committee to administer all the facilities. A croquet green has been added, plus seats, shelters and toilets. Currently, the committee is working and planning to develop as a playing field, the few acres next to the tennis courts. This land was bought from Jack (John, the fourth) Weymouth, by the State Government, only four years ago, and then handed to the Meadows Council, who will be happy to see it become a useful part of the recreation area.
The name of the group taking responsibility in this development has undergone several changes, and is currently the ‘Coromandel Valley Recreation Ground Association Incorporated ‘. Implicit in its activities seems to be the aim of restoring something like a village atmosphere to the Valley. If it is successful, then it will have reversed a trend which began nearly seventy years ago, when community affairs, like so many other aspects of Coromandel Valley’s life, began to merge with the wider Blackwood district.
Once Blackwood began to grow, the Valley’s community groups were affected, because the main clubs and societies formed from that time catered for the larger area. Notable among them was the Blackwood, Coromandel and Belair Boys’ Club. It was formed in 1903, and became known as ‘the B.C. and B. Club’ or just ‘The Club’. This last appellation may have caused some confusion, because the Valley people were in the habit of calling their own Mutual Improvement Society ‘The Club’, as well. The B.C. and B. Club had premises in Blackwood, which were built at Mr. A.G. Downer’s expense, and made available by him, free of rent. The district was very appreciative of his gesture. The hall and rooms were busy almost every night of the week, and despite the name, offered to both boys and girls a wide range of activities, which included a literary society, gymnastics, a library, a brass band and billiards. It is clear from reports of the day that the B.C. and B. Club was a very active concern, and that adults as well as boys and girls took advantage of what it had to offer. It is also clear that many Coromandel Valley people were members of the various groups that functioned under The Club’s auspices.
In some cases, these groups were in direct competition with organisations in Coromandel Valley. Between 1910 and 1920, both the Valley and The Club had literary societies. These exchanged visits from time to time.
Besides The Club, there were other community enterprises undertaken to cater for the whole district.
Perhaps the best example was The Blackwood Magazine, a journal begun in 1914, and in its own words, ‘devoted to the interests of Blackwood, Coromandel Valley, Belair and Eden Hills’. During its fairly brief life, it gave a very fair and even kind of coverage to all the areas named.
During the years when Coromandel Valley was merging its community life with Blackwood and the wider district, rivalries were often strongly felt. There was some confusion in the matter, though, because it was difficult, at times, for an individual to determine where his loyalties ought to lie. Old patterns often had to change to meet the altered circumstances.
Such was the case with the Coromandel Cricket Club just before World War I. Despite its name, its headquarters was at Blackwood, as were the homes of many of its members. Some players became disgruntled; they were those who were skilled enough to play sometimes in the first eleven, but could not earn permanent positions in that team. Their complaint was that when the firsts played away from their home ground, they were chosen in that team, but when the firsts played at home, they were chosen in the seconds. The result was that they never seemed to be able to play on their home ground. That was a considerable disadvantage, because the only way they had to travel was by walking, and some grounds where they played were more than five miles away.
Their protest was firmly made but not kindly heard; so they found themselves having to leave their club. They formed a new one, which they named Blackwood, naturally with a substantial membership from Coromandel Valley. The confusion over loyalties was only lessened, for both teams, in that they were certain that they were one another’s bitterest rivals.
The heat gradually went out of the feud, although the secretary of the Coromandel Club would never answer the letters which the Blackwoods wrote to challenge them to a match. Eventually, the Blackwood team sent a stamped, addressed envelope with their challenge. Still the secretary would not reply; he only boasted loudly of how he had scored a twopenny stamp from the rival team. By way of revenge, Blackwood sent another letter, which contained only an insulting rhyme, but they deliberately left the stamp off the envelope. In order to collect it, not knowing who it was from, or how important it was, the Coromandel secretary had to pay ‘excess postage’, which amounted to something like fourpence. Some members of the Blackwood team, who had unobtrusively entered the Post Office while he was collecting the mail, felt that their revenge was made complete, by the look on his face when he opened the letter.
Coping with the new directions which community life was finding, caused some confusions in cases like the cricket club. The same problems did not really arise for organisations which only came into being after Murrays had closed down. The Agricultural Bureau was one such, inaugurated in about 1910 and unreservedly catering for the whole district of Coromandel Valley, Blackwood, Belair, Eden Hills and Hawthorndene. It continued to serve its purposes so long as there was a large agricultural population in the area and held its last meetings in the early 1970s.
The winding down of the affairs of the Bureau corresponded roughly with the growing movement towards subdivision of agricultural land. The same period saw an increasing interest in preserving in the Valley, reminders of its history. Prime movers in formalising this interest were Mrs Rosemary Magarey and Mrs Lilian Archibald. Out of a meeting which they convened in 1969, appropriately in the Institute, was born the Historical Society, which became a branch of the National Trust in the following year. The group was fortunate to have as members Mr Murt Conlon (who died in 1974) and his wife Mavis, who made available as a museum, the old Winn bakehouse. This building has been restored to something like proper working condition and developed to house many relics of the past. It serves admirably as a focus for local historical interest.
There is no doubt that this, one of the most recently formed of the community’s organisations, has successfully promoted a sense of the importance of preserving as much as possible of the Valley’s rich and varied heritage. It serves as an indicator, that in a large sector of its population, the Coromandel community spirit is still strong.
There are at least two other tangible monuments to this spirit. One is an obelisk which stands near the tennis courts at the southern end of the Valley. It is a memorial to the thirty-two soldiers who fought in World War I, and particularly to the nine who died. So strong was the communal sense of loss, grief and pride at that time, that the fifty households of the Valley contributed £268, an average of £5 each – more than the average wage for two weeks – in order to build it.
In a slightly different way, the Institute constitutes a similar reminder. The building itself is used regularly for indoor bowls, gymnasium and table-tennis, as well as for occasional functions. What is more significant is that the Institute Committee itself is still functioning, organising not only the table-tennis played there, but also the library. It gives a feeling of stability to know that it has been operating constantly since 1881.
By Max Winter, 1975
Published with the author's permission
© 1975, 1987 M Winter & 2022 Coromandel Valley and Districts Branch, National Trust of South Australia
