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1850 The Gymnastic Games |
By 1850, Melbourne was desperately seeking independence from the governance of New South Wales, and a major exercise in seeking self-determination was to be an annual meeting "for the means of fostering a taste for the useful and salubrious exercise of the gymnasium", ultimately known as the Melbourne Gymnastic Games.
Under the patronage of no less than His Honour the Superintendent of Melbourne; His Honour the Resident Judge; and His Worship, the Mayor, the first games took place over three days in August on Batman's Hill. Batman's Hill was the area now levelled and mostly occupied by Spencer Street Station. The surrounds were Melbourne's playground of the time, given that many of the lower lying areas around Swanston and Elizabeth Streets were prone to flooding from the Yarra in winter months.
Batman's Hill hosted Melbourne's first race meeting and cricket matches in 1838, and also was the site for the first recorded football match in Melbourne and the earliest Melbourne Cricket Ground.
The Games included many events we associate now with athletics (rather than the gymnasium) - running, long and high jumps, a shot put (light, 14 lbs, or heavy, 22 lbs), hurdling and a hammer throw, "and the all to be concluded with a match of football, 11 a side."
Also included in the first games was an event known as the "hitch and kick." The rules of this fascinating event are not known today. Nor apparently were they at the time - not a single entry being received despite a prize of £5 on offer!
The Games aroused enormous interest in a colony desperate for independence from New South Wales and looking for a local identity. The Argus, which normally at best carried a few lines on sporting activities (other than racing) in its general news, devoted one and a half columns to the first day of the Games.
For reasons unknown the grand football match did not take place, a "kick over", a form of kicking competition taking its place.
Undeterred, two of the organisers of the games Dalmahoy "Dal." Campbell and Frank Stephen decided that the football would go ahead two weeks later.
The match finally took place on the Melbourne Cricket Ground, then on the south bank of the Yarra, the Crown Casino complex now covering the historic site.
Some 200 prospective players turned up, and Campbell and Stephen as captains tossed for the first choice of players from the assembled throng. Both the Chronicle and the Melbourne Herald recorded the two teams for posterity purposes, the players apparently consisting of a mixture of "professional gentlemen, publicans and their sons, self-employed tradesmen and some others, probably farmers."
Each player paid 10/- to enter, with the resultant £11 purse going to the winning team
Any rules established for the Gymnastic Games have been lost or, more probably, never established in writing at the time.
Both Campbell and Stephen spent their early educational years overseas, but their secondary schooling was in Australia, therefore they would have had little exposure to the various rules used in the English Public School system. Another match on Batman's Hill was played in 1850, when a "grand football match, twelve a side" was advertised, the prize being a silver watch (although history does not record how the winning side divided the spoils).
Victoria is free! The Melbourne Morning Herald proudly broke the news on November 12 that Victoria had been declared an independent colony, free at last from the shackles of government from New South Wales.
In our modern age of internet, e-mail and high-speed communications, we should perhaps reflect for a moment that the declaration of separation was actually passed by the House of Commons in London on August 1.
On November 11, the 476 ton brig " Lysander " reached Melbourne, carrying as well as a load of iron piping, the newspapers from the home country up to August 4. The Lysander under the command of Captain C. Lulham, had picked up the newspapers from the English ship Delta in Adelaide a week before. Many captains of sailing ships at the time were on retainer and launched longboats at Queenscliff for local couriers to rush the newspapers to Geelong where critical news could be telegraphed to Melbourne.
In the small hours of November 12, an astute sub-editor at the Morning Herald, Edmund Finn, reviewed the newly arrived newspapers and noticed a paragraph on page five of The Times recording the English parliament's approval for the new colony.
Finn took it upon himself to order publication of a special edition of the paper with a huge headline "Victoria is Free" and in so doing pulled off one of the greatest scoops in Australian journalistic history. He later recorded his memories of the first six decades of Melbourne's life in a huge publication, "The Chronicles of Early Melbourne" under the non-de-plume, "Garryowen" the publication today being much quoted by historians and researchers.
If the news was slow in coming, the celebrations certainly weren't. Two days later The Herald printed a full page of advertisements for Separation celebrations - fireworks, balls, fetes, dinners, and, of course, a couple of games of football. A three day holiday was declared; the Friday and Saturday for celebrating, and the Monday for religious thanksgiving.
Campbell and Stephen were amongst a group of gentlemen that rapidly organised the Separation Sports and Games Carnival, borrowing the Melbourne Cricket Ground on the south bank of the Yarra for the day. The General Rejoicing Fund had been established for a couple of years to provide money for special occasions, but such was the rush of applications for Separation celebrations, the Fund could not approve £100 to fund the sports games described as 'only being of interest to the lower classes'. Undeterred, the organisers provided all the prize money for the carnival out of their own pockets, trusting in the support of the public to defray their expenses. The major prize of £15 was for the 12 aside football match:
The publicans were in on the act as well, Henry Lineham at the Old White Hart Inn again advertising a series of matches to be played on Eastern Hill.
Many of the 'sports carnivals' organised by enterprising publicans were little more than a "come-on" to attract patrons. For the same holiday, Henry Conway's Traveller's Rest in Fitzroy advertised an all-round day's good fun with
The second Melbourne Gymnastic Games were held the following year at St. Kilda, then a seaside holiday resort, at a site described as
The Gymnastic Games did not continue past the second year, one common problem being the lack of a grandstand or embankments, without which spectators found it impossible to see. Over the next decade, hotels continued to promote picnics and sporting carnivals, some of which included games of football of some type or another. While the games appear to have been little more than some rough-house fun, perhaps the more genteel citizenry of the time, more interested in the pleasures of the new racetrack at Flemington or in the relaxing sound of willow upon leather, resented the game of the common people as it was to be many years before football was considered entirely respectable.
What is surprising is that there was little attempt to introduce the emerging Rugby code from the Old Country. After the little rush of games in 1850 and 1851, Victoria was in the grip of the gold rush and there is little reference to football.
1856 saw stonemasons win the first eight hour working day and, Melbourne was ripe for the introduction of new entertainments for the increased leisure time available. and one wonders what would have happened had someone had taken up the Rugby banner with enthusiasm. What is mystifying in the history of football is that after some eight years were nothing appears to have happened, there was such a burst of activity in 1858, even prior to Tom Wills much-quoted letter to Bell's Life urging the formation of a football club.