Sporting heroes

31 Oct 2016

There’s plenty of sporting goodness in the Probus South Pacific membership base, from Olympic stars to administrators and even a Wallaby.

Hiking the great trails

For Fay Francis, sport has been a way of life right from her school days, playing vigoro, basketball and tennis. Following school, Fay also enjoyed tennis, squash, golf and bush walking, both socially and competitively. Today, in retirement at 74, hiking is her chosen sport.

Fay has not only hiked 84 per cent of the 1000km Bibbulmun Track that stretches from Kalamunda in Perth WA to Albany on the South Coast of WA, but has also travelled to Alice Springs for a guided hike on the Larapinta Trail.

Fay is also part of a team of volunteers who keep an eight-kilometre section of the Bibbulmun Track clear of overgrowth. As an added challenge, volunteers must cross an inlet by canoe and it’s very difficult for hikers carrying a full backpack.

During her hike on the Larapinta Trail, Fay was one of 15 like-minded souls who spent six days hiking in the West MacDonnell Ranges and gained some perspective of flood plains and rocky outcrops in an ancient land. The group even left camp one morning at 2am in order to see the sun rise from Mount Sonder, climbing in the dark!

For the Mount Barker Platagenet Probus Club, Fay started a walking group that regularly sees 15-18 members walk once per month for about two hours.

Expert in all things cycling

John Scott, from the Probus Club of Darwin, has been actively involved in all official aspects of cycling in Australia for many years, following a move to Darwin in 1972, where he became energetically involved in cycling. In fact, he was President of the Darwin Cycling Club for many years and the NT Cycling Association for 16 years.

In 1989, John rode from Katherine to Darwin non-stop to highlight the dangers of heart disease. He had set himself a time of 13 hours, but made it in 10 hours 54 minutes!

John obtained his State, National and International Commissaries’ accreditation and officiated at Oceania, World, Elite, Junior and Masters Championships. He was appointed Manager of the Australian Road Team to contest the Japanese 57th R&T Championships. John and his wife June attended Commonwealth Games in Brisbane, Christchurch and Edinburgh, as well as World Championships in Perth, Manchester and Colorado Springs.

John’s appointment to officiate at the 2000 Sydney Olympic and Paralympic Games as a timekeeper was a well-earned recognition of his involvement in cycling and the highlight of his career. He counts himself very fortunate to have seen riders such as Anna Mears and Cadell Evans develop through from juniors to become Australian Champions.

John was awarded the Australian Sports Medal in 2000 in recognition of his service to sports at an international level.

On his retirement from cycling, John was awarded a Meritorious Medal by the Australian Cycling Association for Service to Cycling. The Australian College of Commissaries congratulated him for his dedication and diligence in the official field of cycling and noted his decisions led to advanced changes in the Australian Cycling Federation and UCI World regulations in the field of scratch racing.

Even though officially retired from officiating in cycling, John rides at least 15km four times a week to keep himself fit.

The boxing legend

Bill Ivory from the Eaton Probus Club in Western Australia, started boxing at age 16. Despite being petrified, he won his first ever fight and went on to compete in 55 professional bouts, with only five losses. Seventy-eight years later, he is still a name in WA boxing.

In 1941, he was drafted into the Army as a physical training instructor due to his skill as a boxer and in 1942 the army sent him to WA, where he met his wife Irene. In the army he was sent to Harvey, where he trained recruits in not only physical fitness, but guerrilla warfare.

After the war, Bill and his wife settled in Bunbury where he immediately became involved in the Police Boys Clubs teaching boxing. Also in 1965, he was elected State Coach of the WA Amateur Boxing Group and took the boys to several overseas contests. One of the boys he coached, Doug Wilson, went on to be a professional boxer. Bill hung up his coaching gloves in 1978.

By this time, he no longer was boxing in the ring, but became a referee for Professional Boxing in Perth and in 1989 was appointed a senior official. During this time he became acquainted with some of the big names in boxing and for his latest birthday he had a surprise meeting with Danny Green, who called Bill a living legend.

Bill has devoted his life to the sport of boxing and through his association with PCYC (Police and Citizens Youth Clubs) probably saved a few lives with his efforts in giving hope and direction through the sport and through his care and support, while teaching these young men respect and decency towards others and themselves.

The oldest Wallaby

Foundation member and past president of the Probus Club of Holroyd and current member of the Probus Club of Ettalong, Eric Tweedale is Australia’s oldest surviving Wallaby.

At age 15, despite never having seen or heard of rugby, Eric was enticed to the game by rugby legend himself, Bill Cerutti, who told him he was big and ugly enough to play the sport. Two years later, Eric was playing first-grade with Parramatta.

Following a break to serve with the RAN as a signalman in World War II, Eric continued his rugby career, no longer the new kid on the block. He was selected for the NSW side to play Queensland and later that year, was chosen to tour New Zealand to play the All Blacks. “It was a learning experience. We lost both tests, but we came back to Australia with high hopes for the future,” Eric said.

The following year, he was selected in the Australian team to tour the UK, France, Canada and the USA – the jewel of the crown of all sporting tours.

“It was a tour money could not buy. We played 30 games throughout the UK, including four tests against England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales; five matches in France and on the return trip home, played six matches against teams in Canada and the USA.”

Eric was even fortunate enough to meet the Royal Family and enjoyed a morning tea with the Prime Minister during the tour.

Before retiring from the international scene, Eric played a further three tests in 1949 against the All Blacks. Despite the big money to be made in professional rugby now, Eric says he wouldn’t change his experiences during the amateur days for all the money they make.

The sailor and the skier

Skiing regularly at Mt Buller and sailing a Paper Tiger catamaran competitively and winning club trophies sound like pursuits for a young man. Meet 82-year-old Steph Schwarz, skier and sailor who does both at full speed as well as finding time to be with his wife, the membership secretary for Somers Combined Probus Club.

Steph recalls that he first went skiing in the Vienna Woods with his father as the family lived in Vienna. His first Australian skiing experience was at Mt Buller in 1955 when he was 21.

He says his most memorable ski experience was leading his three sons down Bull Run, the steepest slope at Mt Buller, when they were 10, eight and six, with their mother in the rear picking up the pieces.

Another of Steph’s memorable skiing moments was the Niseko powder snow in Japan which he described as “spectacular”. That said, he says that Buller is now his most favourite place to ski.

Steph took to sailing a bit later than skiing, waiting until he was 18 before metaphorically dipping his toe in the water. The place was Elwood in Seahorses, an 18ft sailing canoe with four crew to manage the huge sail area. They had no flotation tank, so if you turned the boat over you had to swim the half sunken boat to shore.

When he was 40 his family decided to go sailing and bought a 125 two-man yacht with trapeze and spinnaker, which he sailed with his eldest son as skipper while he went out on the wire (trapeze). He then moved to a Solo which was too slow, so advanced to a 20ft Tornado Catamaran at age 62, which he sailed with a various succession of crews. When this became a little too much to haul up the beach, he downsized to a 14ft Paper Tiger, which is his current baby.

He has won a number of minor trophies over the years, but his greatest moment was winning the Somers Yacht Club Championship after 40 years sailing when he was 76 years old.

Ice hockey in Australia?

Born in Melbourne in 1927, David Cunningam from the Tomaree Probus Club in Nelson Bay was always interested in physical activity. In fact, he tried most sports that his school had to offer.

In his mid teens, David was persuaded by his elder brother Lawrence to join the Sunday afternoon ice hockey practice sessions at the Melbourne Glaciarium. With the war on, there was a shortage of suitably qualified players.

David never looked back – he had found his sport.

The practice sessions were intense, weaving, turning, and twisting on crowded rinks, and hours of skating backwards. This was the grounding of young David Cunningham that gave him the automatic reflexes, which make the difference between a player and a champion.

In 1946, he was picked to play interstate ice hockey for Victoria and in 1947 became a founding member of the Blackhawks, a team that was to hold the Victorian Ice Hockey Association premiership for many years. To quote from The Ice Hockey Guide of June 1956, “David Cunningham, a tough aggressive competitor and a heart-warming team man has earned the title of ‘the best Australian born player’ we have had”.

In those days, there was no Australian Ice Hockey association, but an Australian team was invited to compete at the 1960 Winter Olympics which were held in Squaw Valley, California, USA. David was part of that team.

The team arrived with just a couple of days before competition, with no time to acclimatise to the Valley which was 1500m above sea level. The rarefied air, fast ice and the fact that all players were amateurs in the true sense of the word meant that they had a difficult tournament ahead. They placed ninth.

The 1960 team was the only Australian Ice Hockey team that has competed in an Olympics.

After ice hockey, David used the courage and determination he had learned in that sport to face other battles. He retired to Port Stephens where he now lives quietly in Corlette, where he enjoys each new day and the memory of his time as an Australian Olympian.