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With striking modernist illustrations and a palette of bright colours, the new Australian National Travel Association alerted the world in the 1930s to Australia’s wide open landscapes, sun-drenched beaches and outdoor lifestyle.

The agency’s aim was to capture attention in Europe and elsewhere and tell people in those often depressed areas about the great opportunities for immigration, investment and holidays in a young and relatively carefree nation. The campaign succeeded, but it also had another, more enduring

8 Sport and pl ay< Gert Sellheim (1901–1970)Australia for Sun and Surf, 1936. In one of the Australian National Travel Association’s most famous posters, artist Gert Sellheim evokes for an international audience the exuberance and enduring allure of Australia. Colour process lithograph, 105.6 x 61.8 cm, courtesy Nik Sellheim and Josef Lebovic Gallery Sydney

Narelle Autio (b 1969) and Trent Parke (b 1971) Untitled #11 from The Seventh Wave, 2000. After travelling the globe as award-winning photojournalists, Autio and Parke wanted to explore Australia’s underwater world. Here under the pier, swimmers float in water, in shadows and light, as much at home as the fish. Silver gelatin print, 109.7 x 288.1 cm © Narelle Autio and Trent Parke. Image courtesy of the artists and Stills Gallery, Sydney

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they are a part of this country’s water-based heritage. The museum holds a significant collection of posters that refer to Australia’s beach culture and other aspects of life and the environment in coastal and river areas. It also has a far-reaching collection of objects that attest to Australia’s love of the outdoor life and its prominence in aquatic sport.

Australian swimmers have won a total of 58 Olympic gold medals, easily securing their status as Australia’s top athletes. There has been a similar progression in sculling and rowing, from Henry Robert (Bobby) Pearce’s Olympic gold medals in 1928 and 1932, to the internationally celebrated ‘Oarsome Foursome’, who won three Olympic gold medals and four world titles in the 1990s. From the 1960s, our surfers have been carving their place in world competition. And in sailing, Australia has always moved well in international company – never more triumphantly than that breathtaking September in 1983 when Australia II snatched the ‘unwinnable’

America’s Cup from the Americans who had held it for 132 years.

What has driven such high levels of achievement in and on the water? Climate is clearly part of the answer. And so too, in all likelihood, is the perception held elsewhere in the world and by us in this country that Australians are strong, healthy people who enjoy their time outdoors in the sun.

B i l l R i c h a r d seffect. Its imagery of sunshine, open space, good health and physical strength defined Australia and Australians for people overseas, and generally confirmed in the minds of Australians the perceptions they were forming of themselves and life in this country. And it didn’t end there.

The themes of that ANTA initiative have reverberated down through the years in successive corporate and govern-ment campaigns that sought to capture an aspect of ‘Aus-tralianness’. The qualities that this early campaign captured are still considered central to the Australian identity.

A focus on watersports and pastimes is one of the ways that this museum has expanded the traditional ambit of maritime history, to give even more people a sense that

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As the fledgling colonies developed, aquatic spectacles became a focus of community celebration and an assertion of growing mercantile confidence.

The Australia Day Regatta has been held on 26 January every year since 1837. Then known as the Anniversary Day Regatta, it celebrated the establishment

Colonial boating was much more colourful than suggested by the pictures, popular on yacht club walls, of the glorious white-winged yachts of wealthy owners and sailors. In fact, it had more in common with the ramshackle antics of the Northern Territory’s infamous Henley-on-Todd Regatta (held on a dry riverbed) than with races for elite craft off Cowes in the United Kingdom. From the 1830s, colonial leaders assembled whatever boats and crews they could to shape a pageant for sailors, rowers, scullers and spectators alike.

Regattasof the British colony in New South Wales in 1788. Picnickers at harbour vantage points watched races between amateur and professional rowers, or between working craft and elite sailors in the few large yachts, while the cream of colonial society watched from the flagship, usually a visiting naval or important merchant vessel. The Sydney Gazette described the first regatta in 1837 as ‘entirely devoted to pleasure’, setting the pattern for Australia Days to come.

> Charles Louis Napoléon d’Albert (1809–1886) The Regatta Waltzes, 1855 Sheet music, 34.4 x 25.7cm

< J Henderson Picnic at Lady Macquarie’s Chair, Sydney N. S. Wales in 1852, 1870s Hand-coloured lithograph after oil painting by unknown artist, 47.5 x 68.5 (image)

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ram with silver detailing (below), offered by the John Walker Whisky company to the boat that won the event twice – the 22-footer Effie, owned by James McMurtrie.

Competition grew with the various colonies’ development, with more boats, more races and more opportunities for the many clubs supporting aquatic sports. Rowing was especially strong in river communities, large and small.

Today, aquatic spectacles remain a focus for public celebrations on waterways around Australia – witness the annual New Year’s Eve celebrations. Although no longer the feature event as it was in colonial times, the regatta remains one of many offerings in a smorgasbord of public entertainment. The former Anniversary Day Regatta is today known as the Australia Day Regatta and, evoking its spirit, local working craft feature on the day – the ubiquitous Sydney ferries race to huge public interest and enthusiasm.

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The Hobart Regatta was inaugurated one year later, under the patronage of Governor John Franklin’s wife, Lady Jane. Far more than a yacht race, it was held every year, usually in early December, to commemorate the anniversary of Abel Tasman’s ‘discovery’ of the island in 1642. It hoped to demonstrate the unity and patronage of civil and military elites, promoted whaling and other free-settler enterprises, and even aimed to reduce the colony’s convict stain.

The program reveals the commercial and leisure activities at the time. Professional watermen who carried people and goods across the waters raced the crews of the many visiting naval, whaling and trading ships and ketches, in gigs, pulling boats, skiffs and sculls. The spectators mixed more freely, representing a broad cross-section of society. A public holiday was declared and free beer and food dispensed to those who took part from the fledgling convict settlement. By the 1900s, the boat races were competing with other novelty

entertainments, including fancy costume parades, bearded ladies, greasy-pole fights and snake charmers.

The museum’s collections feature many rare and exciting artefacts, which show these early colonial regattas as public celebrations and assertions of progress. There are also more humble artefacts showing the activities of smaller communities, where the regatta played an equally pivotal role as a sporting forum and source of community pride. Illustrated (on p. 199) are a rare piece of English piano sheet music entitled The Regatta Waltzes, published in Sydney with vignettes of local scenes in 1855, and (below) a variety of cups, trophies and other prizes awarded to regatta winners.

These prizes varied, and included highly crafted silver trophies, purses, amounts of money and, for the Intercolonial Sailing Carnival held from 1897 to 1899, a most idiosyncratic trophy made from the head of merino

An assortment of trophies from the 19th and 20th centuries Gifts from the Wright Family of Roma, Queensland through Donna and Ross Fraser & Lesley and Stanley Harrison; Francis Pinel, Judy Gifford, Carol and Gordon Billett, Faye Magner, Dr David Lark, Lady Desolie Hurley, Iain and Alex Murray

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the yacht passed through many owners, whose photographs show a life of pleasure, cruising on the harbour and Broken Bay, with parasols and picnics.

Akarana raced again in the 1940s in Sydney and, as expected for a yacht that survived two world wars and economic vagaries, underwent many modifications and permutations, including the souveniring of its Maori figurehead (subsequently located in a former owner’s garage during a museum research program). Nonetheless, it was much loved.

In 1987 the New Zealand Government bought Akarana, intending to present it to Australia as a

In October 1888 a group gathered at Auckland docks to see Scottish boatbuilder Robert Logan’s new 39-foot yacht loaded on board the SS Nemesis to sail for Melbourne, to take part in the Intercolonial Regatta to celebrate the centenary of British settlement in the colonies. Akarana, the Maori name for Auckland, featured a figurehead of a Maori on its bow and took with it New Zealand’s honour and Logan’s aspirations, with the boatbuilder and his skipper Jack Bell on board. Logan returned six months later, but it was a century before the plucky gaff cutter was back in New Zealand again.

Colonia l

enterpr ise

Among the small yachting fleets of the colonies every new yacht was eagerly reported, and especially so an intercolonial challenger racing under the burgee of the Auckland Yacht Club. The Auckland Star wished Logan well, describing the narrow, triple-skinned diagonal kauri-planked gaff-cutter as ‘built on beautiful lines. She is of the deep-sinker type, and has a lead keel weighing five tons, while another one or two tons will be carried for additional ballast’.1 The Star also reported that Logan hoped to sell Akarana for £500.

On Port Phillip Bay, Jack Bell sailed Akarana in trials in late October and early November, and they were then invited to compete in the gala opening of St Kilda

Maori figurehead from Akarana, 1888, made into a domestic ornament 1890s Kauri, mahogany, paint, glass, 37.5 x 28.7 cm Gift from Arthur and Nancye Goard

William Frederick Hall (working 1880s–1900s) Akarana (at left) racing Sirocco on Sydney Harbour, 1889 Glass plate negative 12 x 16.5 cm Gift from Bruce Stannard

Yacht Club’s season. With a six-minute time allowance, they beat St Kilda’s centre-boarders to the gold medal by 12 minutes, in light airs, without even hoisting a topsail.

But the Intercolonial Regatta yielded uneven

results. On day one, 24 November, in still air,

Akarana (by then the race favourite) beat its rivals in the

5–10 tonne class and claimed the £130 prize. On day two, in stronger

winds, Akarana trailed the fleet behind many of the vessels it had beaten the previous day,

providing one of the surprises of the regatta.Logan took the yacht to Sydney for the Anniversary

Day Regatta on 26 January 1889, and entered it in the second class race for yachts under 20 tonnes. Akarana won, despite losing three minutes after grounding off Fort Denison – earning Logan £20, three cases of Moët et Chandon champagne, and an even higher regard for Akarana’s performance and his own patriotism in sending a New Zealand challenger to the Australian centennial regattas.

Logan did indeed sell his yacht in Sydney, to a Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron sailor, chemist John Simpson Abraham, and Akarana became a feature of late-century events on Sydney Harbour. During the ensuing decades

bicentennial gift from the government and people of New Zealand. So after 99 years, Akarana made its way across the Tasman to Auckland for restoration. For the bicentennial celebrations in Australia, the (then) Prime Minister of New Zealand, David Lange, presented Akarana to his Australian counterpart, Bob Hawke, on 20 August 1988 at the Australian National Maritime Museum site in Darling Harbour, three years before the museum’s opening.

Akarana’s speedy reconstruction in New Zealand allowed little time to research changes to its former configuration. The yacht was taken from the water in

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1997–98 in a year-long project to return it as close as possible to its original keel design.

This work included reinstating its five-tonne lead keel, with adjustments to the spars and sails. Akarana now has greatly improved sailing performance, yet after 110 years it remains a fair-weather yacht. Today, the deep-keeled gaff cutter is testimony to its builder Robert Logan’s adventurous spirit, and indeed to the enduring spirit of friendship and rivalry with our neighbours across the Tasman.

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> Builder’s certificate for Akarana, October 1888 Paper, ink, 44.5 x 28.4 cm Gift from John Beach (MBE)

It’s a Saturday race day on Sydney Harbour in 1922, and the heavy timber skiffs are launched from working sheds dotted around the harbour foreshore. The crews assemble and hoist the huge sails to career down the harbour, eventually setting topsails and ringtails, tacking and gybing through a triangular course. They are chased by a little motorboat sporting a small flag on its bow, printed ‘Hall Photo’. William Hall is there with his camera, intent on capturing the exciting antics.

The Hall photographic studio played a vital role in the Sydney boating world from the 1880s, when it was established by William Frederick Hall, a fingerprint expert. His son, William James, took over the business in 1902, and went on to record the explosion of leisure craft on the harbour into the 20th century. Although neither man was a sailor, both developed a keen interest in boating, documenting the weekend sailors, their craft and their supporters on Sydney Harbour. Each Monday, Hall displayed photographs of weekend races in the window of his Hunter Street studio, advertising and selling his work to the sailors, boat owners, their family and friends. Yacht clubs, too, proudly displayed their champions on their walls.

Hall photographed all manner of boating and boats. The museum’s collections number in the thousands, and the Hall studio’s subjects include early craft, from rowing eights, fours and skiffs and naval cutters of the late century, to the first surf rescue boats, and the handful of glorious first-class

William Frederick Hall (working 1880s–1900s) Akarana sailing on Sydney Harbour, 1893 Glass plate negative, 16.5 x 21.5 cm Gift from the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron

Chasing the

act ion on Sydney

Harbour

yachts and smaller second-class yachts of the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron and the Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club. Regattas also feature, with the large liner as flagship shown in a harbour crowded with vessels.

William James Hall photographed the action in a series, hoping for that magic image, hurriedly pressing the shutter as the boats raced or sailed past. Some of the images don’t work, but some do. He captured the rise of motorboating as a gentlemen’s sport, when engineers fired the inboard engine and goggle-clad drivers took the wheel. In one series, he did indeed capture a magic image when the exuberant crew on board the half-cabin cruiser Miss Phyllis heralded his arrival and that of the speedboat tied up alongside.

William James Hall (1877–1951) Miss Phyllis, 1930s Nitrate negative, 12 x 16.5 cm Transfer from the Mitchell Library

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from top All photos by William James Hall (1877–1951) Hall’s motor boat chasing 12-foot cadet dinghies, Sydney Harbour, 1920s; Spectators watching a sailing race aboard the ferry Newcastle, 1920–25; Spectators viewing the start of an 18-footer race off Clark Island, 1920s All glass plate negatives, 12 x 16.5 cm, All: transferred from the Mitchell Library

It is a very warm image, enhanced by information provided by studying other images from the same series in the collection, which show us that the two boats were motoring on the George’s River, south of Sydney, and that the speedboat alongside is the G-Whiz and that it raced with the St George Motor Boat Club.

Similarly, the series of images of the 10-footer Commonwealth in the 1920s show the five crew clad in their rugby league jerseys careering down the western reaches of the harbour, with massive sail, topsail and ringtail variously set. The class echoed the larger 18-foot open boats, which the studio and especially William James Hall captured so well. They were classes that were, up to the 1930s, defined largely by hull length only.

Dramatic and colourful, they were great subjects for a photographer, but Hall also sought images of the sailors, and he was often able to get close chasing the crews in his little motorboat. Many of his images buzz with the excitement of the class. See the photograph of Arakoon (right) during the one day of the year when the big boats carried a woman crewmember: the Queen of the Harbour competition held to raise funds for charities. We see the crew hanging off the gunwale, backs bent down to the water. And we see the delighted female crewmember, standing out in her light sweater and beret.

Documenting the rise of the exciting open-boat racing was to become the Hall studio’s signature work. As a collection, it provides a detailed record of the fortunes of these boats and their crews, from the huge 22-footers of the 1880s to the sport’s boom time in the 1930s.

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William James Hall (1877–1951) Arakoon in the Queen of the Harbour yacht race, 1931 Glass plate negative 12 x 16.5 cm Gift from Bruce Stannard

William James Hall (1877–1951) Following the 10-footer Commonwealth on Sydney Harbour, 1920s Four glass plate negatives, all 12 x 16.5 cm Gift from Bruce Stannard

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Model yachting has captivated sailors and would-be sailors for ages, and the craft have become works of art in their own right, home built with obsessive and often lavish attention to detail. Their owners showed them off as though they were a new family member, then raced them hard against fellow competitors.

Model yachts

The museum has collected a number of typically Australian examples, spanning the local classes from the early 1900s through to the present internationally raced yachts. Covering hand-carved wood to hi-tech composite fibreglass construction, the collection also tracks the changes from hands-on, on-the-water involvement to onshore radio control.

In Sydney, the ponds at Centennial Park were a popular, enclosed stretch of water for model yacht sailors from the early 1900s. Congregating at one end of the pond, on the starter’s orders the owners released their boats together, cheering them on as they sailed toward the opposite shore.

Around the same time, model skiffs began racing on open water, creating a new community event. The skipper and another rower, in a typical 10- or 12-foot clinker dinghy, tracked the model as it raced, coming alongside to adjust the rig or tack the boat. These dinghy teams often comprised brothers, fathers, sons, cousins and nephews, and sometimes even their girlfriends. Ferries carried spectators, crowds lined the shore, and bookmakers circulated to take advantage of Australians’ desire to bet. The models often raced in large fleets, even out on the main harbour, up to the mid-1950s.

Building and sailing a skiff was done by eye and feel, based on experience handed on by each generation. Hulls took form in the evening after a day’s work, and the model boatyard could be a kitchen table as easily as a shipwright’s bench. Builders conjured fittings from offcuts of metal, and sails were scrounged from leftover materials. Getting the rig proportions right and the trim correct each day was an art form, but balanced correctly the unmanned craft sailed true and fast, even under spinnaker.

The early model skiffs were carved from solid Queensland red cedar, a light timber used for planking the real skiffs, while later models were planked up on frames, also like the real skiffs. The large two-footer Lily (left) was home-made at Redfern during the Depression era. Henry ‘Waltho’ Mobberley carved Lily out of a solid block of cedar, and made the wooden spars for the two rigs it used to suit different conditions. Henry’s wife, Rose, made the sails and a bag for carrying the rigs. Lily was a successful skiff for Mobberley, winning many trophies.

As the model skiffs faded from the harbour in the 1950s, model yachting in other classes maintained a strong following on lakes and other more sheltered waters. It was an international sport, one of the most popular classes being the American Marblehead boats. Snoopy, built by John Pollnitz in South Australia in 1970, is typical of boats built in this era. Because fittings were not commercially available then, Pollnitz meticulously fabricated everything, including the gears and other parts of the vane steering assembly – an example of the skill and ingenuity of the craftsman that remained on show with the new classes.

The mid-1970s saw the introduction of radio control for steering and sail trim, and then composite construction. Builders adopted on a micro scale the exotic high-strength materials, such as carbon fibre and Kevlar, which now dominate contemporary yacht building. Engineer Bob Sheddon built his international 10-rater, Toad, in 1997. Even though plans, boats and fittings had become freely available, Sheddon, like other dedicated model yacht builders, still designed and built the carbon fibre hull and all its fittings himself. It was a championship-winning combination in 1997 and 1998, and is a wonderful expression of Sheddon’s devotion to the sport. Model yachting continues strongly in the 21st century, adopting the latest big-boat trends, such as canting keels, and shows no signs of ever declining.

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Henry ‘Waltho’ Mobberley Model of two-footer Lily, with trophies, 1920s–1930s Cedar, brass, 63.2 x 14.5 cm Photo: Jenni Carter, ANMM Gift from Ron Mobberley

> from top George McGoogan (1922–2009) with Joan in Balmain; Max Howard prepares his model Comet before the race; Janice Mahoney holding the hull of Max Howard’s model yacht Comet. All: Photographer unknown

> from top Vera makes a good start on the first leg; Ivy’s skipper and crew row hard to keep up with the skiff; K Haydon tacking

his skiff Dynamic by holding the boom tip; M Phillips reaches under Fay to move the keel

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The ANTA shaped the work of the local state tourism agencies, working with railway companies and tourist agencies to better promote local tourism and leisure sites for the national market. With that mandate, it produced the magazine Walkabout from 1934 to 1974, and more posters, booklets and brochures as a powerful mouthpiece for ‘Australianness’.

All this catalysed a new national image – an outward-looking consciousness, based on marketing unique Australian forms and attributes.

The prominence of beach, coastal and river culture in this poster imagery is of interest to the museum. The posters promoted a national image that drew fresh emblems from liberal beach, bay and swimming cultures, a unique lifesaving culture specialised in the surf, national and international sporting success at swimming and, later, surfing and the rise of the Great Barrier Reef as an international tourist site.

James Northfield (1887–1973) Try Wangaratta Victoria Australia, 1949 Colour process lithograph, 109.3 x 71.1 cm © James Northfield Heritage Art Trust, reproduced with permission

Gert Sellheim (1901–1970)Sea & Sunshine Go By Train! 1930s Colour process lithograph, 100.6 x 63 cm, Courtesy Nik Sellheim and Josef Lebovic Gallery Sydney

> Percival Trompf (1902–1964) Tropical North Queensland, Australia, c1930 Colour lithograph, 108.3 x 74 cm, Courtesy Percy Trompf Artistic Trust and Josef Lebovic Gallery Sydney

It’s the period between the wars during the years of the Great Depression. On a typical London winter evening, you’re walking past Australia House on the Strand or running through Victoria Station to catch the last train home. Your eye is drawn to the smiling suntanned beach girl splashing in the surf, to the magnetic yellow and blue geometry of surf lifesavers on parade or to the bright exotica of tropical fish in a blossoming colour field of coral. Australia beckons.

These posters – exhorting visitors to Australia as travellers, tourists, immigrants, investor settlers and industrialists – were produced by the Australian National Travel Association (ANTA), established in 1929 to promote Australia internationally. The ANTA employed a stable of brilliant graphic artists, many of whom were European immigrants versed in modernist design aesthetics and commercial advertising art practice (learned at Melbourne’s Art Training Institute). They included Douglas Annand, Gert Sellheim, Eileen Mayo, Percy Trompf and James Northfield.

These artists designed striking lithographs of geometric form in dazzlingly bright blocks of colour, using a lexicon of symbols of wide, sun-drenched beaches and vast grazing country, dotted with the exotic eucalypt. AUSTRALIA, they cried, was a land of visceral and spatial physicality – of large sunny skies over even larger landscapes. It was a place of freedom and fun, which also embodied more familiar characteristics of stoicism and a pioneering spirit – idealised images certainly, and now mythologised – but at the time, most certainly tempting.

By 1936, with an annual budget of £20,000, the ANTA had distributed more than 200,000 posters, 87,000 photographs and 3.5 million booklets and folders, and secured 3,000 permanent poster sites in travel agents, embassies, consular offices, shipping and airline companies, and even in the windows of leading department stores. It had mailed publicity material to 200 army messes in India, and brought writers to Australia from Europe and North America. It also organised promotional events in Australia and around the world, including representation at fairs and festivals.

After World War II, the ANTA eventually morphed into the Australian Tourist Commission, taking on a broader role of organising events as well as producing marketing material. In the 1950s, its Walkabout editorial declared that it would ‘underline the natural attractions of Australia, its climate, its outdoors, its plenty and its opportunities for people to settle in a more or less British atmosphere and way of life’. This was the time of then Immigration Minister Ben Chifley’s ‘populate or perish’ maxim.

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Austra l ia for sun and surf

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