CENTENARY SERIES 3 & 4

THE POST-WAR RECOVERY at Maroochydore Lifesaving and Swimming Club started as a trickle and ended as a flood. As 1919 drew wearily to a close, Australia was counting the cost of its 5-year involvement in the Great War of 1914-18; our galant Diggers were still returning to their Homeland in the southern winter of 1919.

Those returning Diggers included 11 Maroochydore men from the Club’s 1916 Foundation. Is it any wonder that their Surf Club struggled to meet its patrolling obligations in the Christmas and Easter holidays of 1918 and 1919. Yet while Royal ‘Head Centre’ in Brisbane helped the Club with Patrols at Easter and Christmas 1918, by Easter 1919 local members Bob and Oscar Anderson were on hand to take care of those beach duties. As our Diggers were demobilised through 1919, Maroochydore received a trickle of them back into active Lifesaving service.

By far the most significant member to change his dungarees for a bathing suit was Tom Prentis. His recruitment efforts in the early 1920’s laid the basis for a champion club. Tom fought in France with the 9th Infantry Battalion during 1918. Like so many others, Tom arrived home over 11 months after the Armistice. It didn’t take long for him to realise that his old Club needed a helping hand: in the summer of 1920-21, in a gesture reminiscent of the Great War Recruitment Marches which took place throughout Rural Australia, Tom walked the Bli Bli, Maroochy River and Rosemount farming districts looking for members to revive the fortunes of his beloved Surf Club.

Tom’s 1920-21 recruitment drive is arguably the most important event to found the illustrious history of the famous ‘Black Swan’. The young men who unselfishly stepped forward for patrol duties included the great family names of the next three decades – Suosaari, Petersen, French, Prentis, Ambrose, Carter and many more. In 1928-30, these men guided Maroochydore Life Saving Club from the ‘Royal’ stable to the ‘Surf’ stable. The Royal Clubs located north of the Brisbane River joined their South Coast (Gold Coast) cousins to form Surf Life Saving Queensland in late January 1931.

The newly-branded ‘Maroochydore SLSC’ became the first Champion Club of Queensland, at the first State Championships held at Coolangatta Beach, in January 1932.

The leadership and commitment was offered by Tom Prentis, Club Captain and Chief Instructor, until he married in 1928. The reason for this altruism is easy to understand. In 1908 Tom’s uncle Claude and two of his young cousins died when the vessel ‘BP’ capsized on the Maroochy River Bar. Could that triple tragedy have been prevented by a Lifesaving service at ‘The Heads’? Tom put his sad thoughts into decisive action. He was elected to Life Membership of Maroochydore SLSC in 1965, on the 50th Anniversary of his beloved ‘Black Swan’.

How were such dizzy heights scaled by a Surf Club which during the 1920’s was still being accessed by motor-vessel or occasionally by ‘charabang’ (open bus) or by open car travelling on boggy, sandy roads over Buderim or through Kunda Park? A Surf Club whose patrolling members were mostly drawn from the hard-working farming families of Bli Bli, Rosemount and Maroochy River Districts? The answer lies in the extraordinary events of the “Roaring Twenties”. A decade which saw the rise and rise of a successful ‘Royal’ Club and an even more successful Swimming Club, renowned throughout the swimming fraternity of Australia for its impressive stable of Champions.

PHOTO OF SQUAD – VOL 1 page 90

On New Years Day 1921 the 100 yards Freestyle Championship of Queensland was held in the Maroochy River at Cotton Tree under the auspices of the Queensland Amateur Swimming Association (QASA). Maroochydore was also a swimming club affiliated with the Queensland Amateur Swimming Association (‘QASA’) and so could host a State Championship if selected to run it.

A very young Joe Suosaari of Maroochydore Club secured a very creditable fourth placing at that Championship. Early in the summer of 1921-22 Joe set an Australian Record in Breastsstroke. Joe became a multiple Australian Swimming Champion in that stroke. In other events for younger swimmers held on that New Years Day in 1921, Alan Petersen, a future Surf Race Champion of Queensland, and Jack Suosaari, another Queensland Surf Champion in the making, were recorded as performing well.

Arguably the greatest-ever Surf and Pool swimmer of this era was Axel Suosaari, younger brother of Joe and Jack in this amazing family of Finnish émigrés. Axel first appeared in the Club colours in the summer of 1922-23, when two Surf and Lifesaving events were being contested – the Whalley and O’Connor Cups. By then, Mooloolaba Lifesaving Club had formed (November 1922) and local Interclub surf competition began. Alexandra Headland Life Saving Club was founded in late 1924, and willing three-way local competitions became the feature of each summer season until 1930.

The overall ‘Royal’ surf competition became the Cameron Shield (1926) and the stillwater competition was the prestigious Duncalfe Shield (1924). These competitions were open to all of the ‘Royal’ clubs of Queensland. Maroochydore won most of these contests until switching to Surf Life Saving in 1931. Mooloolaba and ‘Alex’ clubs always provided stiff competition and each had a win or two during the decade.

The star of the show, though, was the great Axel Suosaari. Axel was the 100 yards Freestyle Champion of Australia in 1930 and 1931. He was Champion Beltman of Queensland, in ‘Royal’ surf competition, for three straight years – 1928, 1929 and 1930. Sadly, Axel contracted Tuberculosis in 1932 and never competed in Surf Life Saving. He died in 1934, a great Champion lost.

It is extraordinary that in 1931, five Maroochydore Surf Lifesaving Club members formed almost half of the 11-person Queensland Amateur Swimming (QASA) Team to contest the Australian Swimming Championships, held that year in Brisbane. Maroochydore boasted two reigning Australian Champions at that meet, Axel and Joe Suosaari. Maroochydore also won the Blue Riband event at the 1931 Queensland Swimming Championships – the five-man ‘Flying Squad Relay’.

For a few years during the 1920s, under the ‘Royal’ banner, women played an active role in the club swimming activities. Sadly, upon the switch to Surf Lifesaving in 1931-32, the club became a men- only bastion until 1982.

Little wonder that Maroochydore became the first State Champion Surf Club in 1932, winning the Belt Race, Surf Race and main rescue event, the six-man Rescue and Resuscitation (R&R) Championship. The Roaring Twenties set the Club on a successful course, right up to the outbreak of the Second World War.

1930s LIFE ON THE NORTH COAST was idyllic for the young men who loved the sea. Maroochydore Surf Life Saving Club’s first decade under the banner of Surf Lifesaving, rather than under the banner of ‘Royal’ Life Saving, had been a reasonably happy hunting ground.

In 1934 Maroochydore had even purchased its first surf boat from their sister club on the South Coast, Tweed Heads and Coolangatta Club, called ‘Greenmount’ for short. Maroochydore was keen to take on the dominant Mooloolaba Club, who rowed their boat, ‘The Spray’ to success in many competitions. Maroochydore’s first boat, formerly named ‘Greenmount’, was christened ‘Swan’ on 2 December 1934. It was named by a young State Parliamentarian, Frank Nicklin, later Queensland Premier and a prominent leader of Lifesaving on the North Coast for over 30 years.

This was one of the great rewards for the switch to ‘Surf’ from ‘Royal’ a few short years earlier – surf boat competition as a sport. State Surf Life Saving Championships were held each year and this often meant hosting them (1933 and 1938) or having a great trip away by railway, to such places as Bundaberg (1935). The mood among the Surf Clubs was always competitive but always friendly. The athletes from the different Clubs tended to travel as a group to these venues. Life was simple and good.

Such was the reputation of Maroochydore SLSC with its champion swimmers, in 1934 Olympic Champion Andrew ‘Boy’ Charlton visited the Surf Club from far-away Sydney. Charlton told the Nambour Chronicle reporter that he knew the Suosaari brothers and the Petersen brothers as outstanding Champions in his sports of swimming and surf life saving competition. Andrew told the reporter that he decided to visit this faraway place called Maroochydore because those Champions lived there.

During the 1930’s there were some great ‘characters’ serving on the beach and enjoying the surfing, boating and fishing delights that the Maroochy Heads offered. One of the most colourful of all joined in 1932 and remained at Maroochydore until he joined the RAAF in 1940: Jack Evans. A raw-boned, barrel-chested extrovert, Jack won the respect of all for his barnstorming wading and superb body surfing skills in surf racing. Jack was in the four-man Surf Teams which won the 1940 Queensland Championship event.

That same day, another character and outstanding athlete, Norm Weir, became the Queensland Junior Surf Race Champion. In those days all winners were in the ‘Queensland Team’ to contest their events at the Australian Surf Life Saving Championships, always held in Sydney.

Jack and Norm attended the 1940 Aussie Championships for Maroochydore in the Queensland contingent. Their outstanding surfing skills won the admiration of the Sydney press corps. Both Queenslanders were tipped to be among the medals. They both threatened to cause upsets, but it was not to be on that occasion. But without doubt the North Coast of Queensland was on the surf life saving map.

Jack in particular made many friends among the Sydney lifesavers. North Bondi SLSC, in particular, took the Maroochydore boys under their wing. A group of North Bondi boys came to Central Railway Station to see them off after the conclusion of the Championships? Jack had proved himself an avid ‘foodie’, so a parcel of ‘fish and chips’ was generously handed to Jack for the long trip home. As the Interstate train pulled away from the platform, Jack hungrily opened the package to find – a dead creature…very funny.

Another strong contingent in Maroochydore SLSC during the latter half of the 1930’s was the boxing contingent – Bill Potter and Archie Warbrick were the leaders of this group. Archie, from Nambour, was an Australian Amateur Boxing Champion. Such was the prominence of Maroochydore SLSC in those days that there were press reports that Tommy Burns, the well-known Australian Lightweight Boxing Champion, would join Potter and Warbrick at Maroochydore Surf Club. Though this doesn’t appear to have eventuated, the two Maroochydore boxers trained at Nambour under the guidance of Surf Club Secretary and Coach, Jack Tyrrell, so the Surf Club links with the boxing fraternity remained strong during the 1930’s.

On 1 September 1939 Hitler’s forces invaded Poland. The Second World War had begun. Australia, as part of the British Empire, was at war with Germany. In the first two years of the War Australian Diggers served mainly in the Middle East. They were very, very good fighting men.

By the close of the 1939-40 summer surf season, 48 young men of Maroochydore SLSC had enlisted in the Australian Forces. By the winter of 1940, two of them had already paid the supreme sacrifice in battle. The young boxers, Potter (Navy) and Warbrick (AIF) were in uniform; the young swimmers, Evans and Weir, joined the RAAF. In all, five of the 48 were lost. Lest We Forget.

Barbed wire appeared on Maroochydore Beach, a futile measure to repel the Japanese. The Club President Gordon Petersen was returned, in his absence, at successive wartime Annual Meetings until he returned from active service in Papua New Guinea. The Second World War decimated the Surf Club membership. Only an end to hostilities brought new hope and optimism for the future.

Lives interrupted.