Woomera - Reminiscing (Part 1)
The Woomera 50th Anniversary (April 1997) is now all over. You sit at home reminiscing about all the old friends you met after all these years and suddenly it hits you. You were wrong.
It wasn't only about people after all, but a combination of ex-Woomera-ites and Woomera itself that brought back those (in my case) 45 year old memories and made that four-day weekend so memorable. Woomera sited in hundreds of square kilometres of treeless plains-donga, five hundred kilometres north of the not so bright lights of the City of Churches ( and 99 pubs at that time); 170 kilometres north of the not so bustling metropolis of Port Augusta.
Woomera, populated mostly by sophisticated (and some not so sophisticated) city people who were used to the facilities available in a metropolitan environment. They, therefore, demanded and expected the equivalent or better in this country town way out in the never never. AND GOT THEM.
Remember the scene? You arrive by Bristol Freighter at the Woomera Airport. If you were a Department of Works day labourer you arrived at Woomera West Railway Station via Pimba by Budd Car. At the Airport you went through some preliminary Security procedures (perhaps by the late Eddie Hatt) and were directed to your bus by the OIC ATO Army Captain Dick Carter after listening to a joke or two.
You arrive in the Village and are directed to the Barracks Store where you are issued with essentials: linen, blankets, cutlery, etc, and then pointed in the direction of your donga {single quarters room(?) usually shared by one other.} The huts are built of corrugated iron, unlined and devoid of any cooling devices. (Wouldn't the illegals have something to complain about.)
You find the Jazza where you can get the odd beer, buy your cigarettes on a ration card and start making new friends but, of course, not before 1700 hours. The rest of your life (well mine anyway) has started Woomera fashion on Friday December 13, 1952. Is Black Friday going to be an omen? Well, perhaps, but certainly not all bad.
Remember the ovals. Woomera West home of the Tigers. Players, officials and supporters doing Emu Parades collecting gibbers off the oval on training nights during the week and then again just before the match on Sunday. The gibbers just seemed to keep growing out of the ground and were just as numerous the following week. This did not dampen the enthusiasm of the players who played as if the surface was manicured grass like the cissies played on in most other places. The trainers, did however, become expert in treating abrasions.
It was a huge culture shock to the players when they first saw the surface they were expected to play on. The McCallum Oval on the south east corner of the Village was even worse. The best was the Pimple Oval, so named after the pimple-shaped hill on the right side of the entrance to the oval. This was later to become the Newman Oval named after Captain Jack Newman an early Woomera Superintendent. For the first 20 years or so this position (Superintendent) was filled by senior service officers with each of the three services taking it in turns until it became a civilian posting in the 60's and was renamed Area Administrator Woomera as it is now.
I digress, so back to the ovals. Some years later, it was decided to establish the Arboretum Oval on the north side of the Village. The Curator of the Ovals and the person in charge of the Arboretum, parks, gardens, nursery, trees, etc, was the late Tony O'Donoghue. Tony put many hundreds of hours (as did his superior Aub Reilly) of unpaid overtime into especially the ovals and turf wickets. As a token of the town's appreciation it was recommended to the department that the Arboretum Oval be renamed the Tony O'Donoghue Oval - an honour well deserved.
When the school oval was established this little "country town" with
a population of around 6,000 (for a short time) men, women and children
had three grassed ovals complete with excellent turf wickets. The turf
for the wickets was brought from Mambray Creek south of Port Augusta. Much
of the credit for the excellent ovals and many other environmental community
projects must go to the late Aub Reilly, an ex Army Warrant Officer who
came to Woomera in 1947 and eventually took his discharge there. He was,
of course ably assisted by Tony O'Donoghue. Neither Woomera West nor the
McCallum Ovals ever did get turfed.
Dick Zehender (The Big Zed)
ex 29 Carinya St
ex 1 Boorong St
Woomera SA
The Centre of the Universe
E-mail: zehender@ozconnect.net
(21 Jan 2001)
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Memories of Woomera |
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