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Australia's Trove of sports history

No one has come close to Sir Don Bradman, and no one ever will. (AP Photo, File).
Roar Rookie
14th April, 2016
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Amateur and professional sport historians have a tool that is revolutionising our understanding of how sport developed in Australia.

That tool is Trove. Developed by the National Library of Australia, Trove is an Australian government online service that brings together all the contents and holdings of catalogues, databases, collections and repositories across Australia.

This information was previously often hidden away in stacks and shelves in multiple physical locations, but is now available to any user at the one location.

One of its most important features is the collection of digitised historic newspapers. Previously these newspapers were mostly inaccessible as they were either in remote paper storage or were viewable only by microfiche – and if anyone has ever sought to search in microfiche they would know how tiresome a process that was.

Now Australia’s newspapers are online and searchable and this functionality is allowing researchers unprecedented access to our past.

The history and development and prominence of the different football codes in Australia, has long been a contentious issue. Different writers have long argued about how and when these codes were first played or developed.

Access to early newspapers is now revealing the origins of these sports. Already use by researchers such as Ian Syson have managed to put back the estimated date of the people playing football (soccer) games to the 1870s and probably earlier.

Other research is finding some possible roots of Australian rules from antecedent games originating in English private schools.

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Whatever your sport you can now find the first reference to it, trace its growing popularity or decline, follow its clubs and associations from its creation through to its possible renaming, relocation, closure or growing success.

The stories than can be found sometimes rewrite history or just pose more questions. For example, it was considered that Australia’s first swimming race was held in March 1845. Indeed an article in the Sydney Morning Herald states “The first swimming matches ever got up in Australia, came off on Saturday morning at the swimming baths”.

While this may have been the first organised swim meet, a Trove search also finds evidence from 1839 of swimming matches as an already known of and prize earning activity.

Running as a sport has always been popular in Australia. Races were typically held at horse racing meets and were run generally at the distances of 100 yards or one mile for the purposes of gambling – though there were also a range of other race types including against horses, carriages or with people on their backs.

In general sprint or mile races, the runners were often professionals and like the still going Stawell Gift (see reports of its first run in 1878), the contestants competed for prize money. An example of a race from 1810 shows that the winner received 20 Guineas for his efforts – which in today’s money is comparable to what current Stawell Gift winners get.

Trove also lets us know of other frequent ‘foot races’ or ‘pedestrianism’ as they were then called – though it should be noted that pedestrianism later came to be better known as a term for walking races instead.

One such foot race held in Sandy bay, Hobart in 1827 was run by “a broom-maker to the Barracks, of singularly simple and dull appearance named Peter Kirkham”. It was said that he could run a mile in 4.5 minutes. Taking into account the first race times when more official timing started in the 1850s, his time could easily then have been a record.

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Another fast time is recorded in Parramatta of men running 100 yards in 12 seconds for a prize of £50 and comes from The Australian newspaper of October 1828.

The first recorded Australian women’s race comes from an article telling of public holiday amusements in The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser for June 12, 1808. “Among the little eccentricities that were introduced to variegate the scene, were several races; one of which was run by seven girls for a chemise full trimmed with British blue and scarlet”.

Having access to historical sources can put modern sport into context. While it is great to see women’s AFL is now getting a national competition, women playing Australian Rules is far from a new thing. Just a quick look in Trove will find women were playing in 1931 and 1953.

But while you may find much evidence of women playing sport quite early in our history, you will also find the sexism of the age. For example, an article from the Geelong Advertiser from 1890 discusses the impending first women’s international cricket match between Australia and England in 1891. It hopes that the tour does not go ahead and refers to the players as “these foolish; and indelicate women who will play for gate money” and who will be “making exhibitions of themselves”.

But, whichever sport you are researching, you are bound to find something new or interesting – or even alarming. And, when you have found that primary information from a newspaper you can then search the many manuscripts, diaries, pictures, journals, maps, music and books also available to develop a wider and deeper understanding.

Trove also lets people correct, tag, list, comment on or export the content, so that information is made more available and useful to all users.

In multiple ways Trove is allowing us to view our sporting past like no other resource before. The goal is to get ever more content onto Trove, and hopefully that will include more records that are held by sporting organisations and individuals – for there is a lot of our sporting heritage which is still inaccessible.

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Though Trove is free to use, it costs money to run. The National Library of Australia created and manages Trove through its normal budget. But, as its budgets decrease the Library is faced with economic pressure to reduce what it does. A campaign to retain funding for Trove has been started and the sporting heritage community can assist in various ways and by following and using the tag #fundTrove.

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