History of Jeparit Rowing Club

Jeparit Rowing Club was formed in 1909 on the Wimmera River. The town is situated near Lake Hindmarsh which is beautiful when it has water.

The club raced under the black and white colours.

The Wimmera Rowing Association serviced the three rowing clubs of the district, Antwerp, Dimboola and Jeparit.

The claim to fame of this town is that Australia's longest serving Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, was born here. His father was a local shopkeeper. Menzies was educated at the local school and became a scholarship winner. Otherwise it is a small country town servicing the wheat belt that surrounds it.

What continues to astound all who review the towns history, is the extraordinary number of soldiers it offered to the war effort in WWI. The following are those who enlisted from the Jeparit Rowing Club alone.

John Allen	William H Gunn	Herbert S Madden MM
James M Almond	Clarence E. Hamdorf	Clarence Mann
F. Barry	Norman T Hiscock	David H Osmond
Thomas Bell	V. Hutchinson	Herman Schulze
G J Brown	G T Knight	C C Shiell
K. Burn	W. Lamont	Frederick C Stride
A. Caldwell	William G Lane	F. Tricks
S. Coates	Albert E Lester	J R B Wall
Robert J Currie	Edward R Lester	R. Wells
R. Dixon	Douglas Livingston	W. West
Berthold Fritsch	George Livingston	Reuben F W Womersley
F. Girdlor	Clifton B Logan
Ira W Gunn	Percival Loxton

One side of the War Memorial in Jeparit

The club did not survive post WWI well and it, along with the Wimmera Rowing Association eventually failed. There are no visible signs of the rowing club remaining.

Sources:

Visit by Graham Drage in September 2021
The Victorian Oarsman by John Lang, published by Massina & Coy, 1919.

Whilst every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information provided, errors may exist. Please send advice of any errors or inaccuracies by email to:

Also your comments, suggestions and photos are sought to enhance this site.

The idea for this history originated from the Olympic Rowing and World Senior Rowing Championship histories written by Andrew Guerin and Margot Foster in 1991, 1992 & 1993 for the Australian team handbooks. Andrew Guerin developed and extended these histories to the current format in 2004 for publication in 2004 and then expanded the site.

Steve Roll has been an invaluable contributor to the website in locating errors and finding Christian names of rowers. His superb work is acknowledged.

© Andrew Guerin – 2004
These contents of this history are copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted by the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. However given that the purpose of the history is to assist rowers and rowing clubs, written permission is not required for non-commercial usage by rowers and rowing clubs provided acknowledgement is made.

Disclaimer: Whilst extensive efforts have been made to ensure the accuracy of the information supplied, the editors take no responsibility for any loss or damage whatsoever arising from inaccuracies contained in this work.