Sydney Rows

Appendix 2. Source Material

(a) Minutes

The minutes of SRC which were traced covered the periods July, 1893 to July, 1899; December, 1903 to January, 1910; and May, 1935 to the present time. NSW Rowing Association minutes were examined for the following periods: November, 1884 to August, 1895; July, 1897 to September, 1902; May, 1912 to June, 1950; September, 1959 to August, 1963.

(b) Reports

The earliest SRC annual reports were normally reported in full in the press of the day. The first actual report discovered was for 1892/93 and those from then to the present were located with the exception of the following years: 1900/01; 1901/02; 1913/14 to 1915/16; 1917/18; 1918/19; 1920/21 to 1924/25; 1926/27; 1935/36; 1939/40; and 1940/41. The collection of club material of the late Charlie Moesch was especially valuable in this regard. The NSW Rowing Association reports uncovered commenced in 1891 (being among a collection held by Kevyn Webb). The gaps from this time to the present were as follows: 1894; 1895; 1898; 1900; 1906/07; and 1941/42 to 1944/45. (It may be noted here that, especially in the fairly recent past, the NSWRA report has often provided only a poor record of the events of the season to which it refers.)

(c) Newspapers

Rowing gained a very comprehensive coverage in newspapers until virtually the outbreak of World War II. "Trident" in the Sydney Mail was an excellent source until the newspaper adopted a new format in 1912. Thereafter, the sporting paper the Referee, and its various rowing writers, "Stroke-Sider", "Argus" and "Henley", was relied on until it ceased publication in 1939. The coverage since the War has been far less full, with Lance Robinson in the Daily Telegraph providing the most compre­hensive coverage. For a time in the 1920's, good accounts were given in The Australian Oarsman, while the Power Boat Magazine and the Australian Aquatic Monthly both reported rowing news in the late 1940's. The English magazine, Rowing, has contained must useful information, principally on the international rowing scene, since it commenced in 1949.

(d) Books

Secondary material on Australian rowing is almost non-existent. A chapter on Australian rowing written by E. G. Blackmore appeared in "The Complete Oarsman" (ed. by R. C. Lehmann) which was published in 1908, while a much more helpful source was "The Victorian Oarsman with a Rowing Register" by John Lang, published in Melbourne in 1919. Some interesting material also appears in "A History of Rowing" by Hylton Cleaver, published in London in 1957.

The winning of the King's Cup is well chronicled in "Soldiers and Sportsmen: An Account of the Sporting Activities of the Australian Imperial Force During the Period between November, 1918 and September, 1919", by Lt. G. H. Goddard. An interesting short article on Australian rowing by L. C. Robson was published in "The Etruscan", the staff magazine of the Bank of New South Wales, in June, 1958.

Histories of Australian rowing clubs have been very few. Two of merit are "A Short Historical Sketch of the Commercial Rowing Club" (Brisbane), by H. Wetherell (1945), and "St. Ignatius' College Rowing Club: Notes on the First Thirty Years 1883-1913", by B. A. McBride (1953). Interesting short summaries of past races have appeared in King's Cup and international tour regatta programmes. Lists of past results, office-bearers, etc., appear in various Association reports and King's Cup programmes but the passage of time has allowed errors to creep into the compilations.