You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

- Maya Angelou

The Young Reids

Overview

HREE THINGS HAD EMERGED AS CRITICAL to the viability of ice sports in Australia: an International size rink; established links to prospective athletes; and, in the case of hockey, the introduction of Canadian rules and equipment. Henry Newman Reid had presided over all three and the first to consolidate and develop it were Reid's own three sons and daughter. The first decade had brought the commencement of ice sports to Sydney, guided initially by Dunbar Poole and James Thonemann; consolidation of ice sports in Melbourne under the Reids; and the birth of Interstate hockey. In the second, the Reids moved to Sydney; developments in Melbourne leveled-out, when Leo Molloy took over the reins with Cyril MacGillicuddy and Molony and Gordon; and New South Wales achieved an enduring ascendancy, opening its first golden age. The organisers who had revived ice sports after the war, carried them through the latter years of the twenties, yet this was also a decade characterised by empire building in some areas, and a costly lack of Interstate cooperation.

The decade opened after the fire at the Melbourne rink yet, between 1917 and 1920, the net annual profits of the publicly-listed Melbourne Ice Skating & Refrigeration Co, ranged between £2,500 and £3,500. This was equivalent to about 10 percent of the net annual profits returned by the State Savings Bank of Victoria during the same period. The Gower Cup for women's interstate ice hockey competition was introduced in 1922, and the first series was played the following year, when the first National controlling authority for ice hockey in Australia was born, with John Goodall as president. Michigan-born Charles Uksila, a teammate of Victorian-born Tommy Dunderdale in the forerunner of the NHL Blackhawks, probably coached Victoria in the 1923 Goodall Cup federation series against New South Wales. The legendary Jim Kendall was farewelled with a six-test, double-header series split between Melbourne and Sydney in 1925. The official attendance at the second test of the 1926 Goodall Cup in Melbourne was 4,000 people; [167] similar numbers attended local and interstate ice sports carnivals; 15-minute "descriptions" of interstate ice hockey matches were broadcast in the evening on Melbourne radio 3AR by 1926; and by 1930, local matches were broadcast from the Melbourne Glaciarium on radio 3AR. [168]

The third decade was again interrupted by war. The stalwarts of the twenties stood aside for a new generation; and the early thirties saw remarkable progress and development. About 5,000 skaters reportedly attended the opening of the 1931 skating season at Melbourne Glaciarium, some of whom danced in a roped-off waltzing area with a resident orchestra conducted by Frank Bladen. The Victorian Public Schools junior ice hockey competition was founded this year, with Melbourne Grammar School and Wesley and Scotch colleges. These schools, which had figured so prominently in the foundation of ice sports in Australia, were re-introduced on the anniversary of the first quarter-century of ice hockey; the Silver Jubilee of Australian ice sports. Melbourne Grammar defeated Scotch in 1932, and former European ice skating champion, Henri Witte, trained the Victorian ice hockey team for the first time, following his success with the Oxford University team in England in 1931. [208] In the Goodall Cup that year, New South Wales and Victoria won a test apiece and drew the other, 3–0, 1–1, 0–2, although New South Wales held the Cup. [216] Australian ice hockey was innovative by world standards, Interstate clashes were extremely fast and competitive, and New South Wales' unbroken winning streak between 1923–38, the years before Australia joined the IIHF, was not quite as impressive as it appears today. Yet, in the end, Victoria resorted to stealing back the Goodall Cup.

The fourth decade, commencing soon after the Second World War, forged more national and international relations; established the first tentative Olympic affiliations; and raised ice sports in both Mebourne and Sydney to new peaks of popularity and participation. Australia joined the International Ice Hockey Federation in 1938, and the Goodall Cup competition resumed in 1946 after the war. Suddenly, under a unifying authority and International rules, New South Wales' unbroken "custody" of the trophy was ended by Victoria in 1947, after a quarter-century. Victoria dominated the next quarter-century, with twenty Cup wins compared to eight by New South Wales, and one by Queensland. The first junior Interstate ice hockey competition was introduced in 1951 when New South Wales played Victoria during the Goodall Cup series at St Moritz at St Kilda in Victoria. This decade had finally brought with it the last of the National controlling authorities, worldwide affiliations, and the second rinks in both cities; imported ice stars, trainers and managers; and the first fruits of the first generation of Australian International champions. By the fifth decade, Australian ice athletes were training overseas and gaining more recognition on world stages than ever before.

Both Reid's first rinks closed soon after the end of that first half-century; Sydney first, then Melbourne in 1957, the year following the Golden Jubilee of ice sports in Australia. A new era began from the mid-1960s, but with mixed success. New South Wales rebuilt from the ground up during these years, and ice sports eventually spread to almost all States but, ironically, the processes of decline had begun in Victoria, from where they had first started and spread nationally. Despite the unprecedented spate of new rinks there, most proved to be merely speculative and short-lived, and ice sports in the State mirrored their rise and fall. Although Victoria still produced some of Australia's best ice athletes, some had moved Interstate for world-class facilities that were no longer available at home, and participation had dwindled generally to a pale shadow of its foundation years. Elsewhere, administrative innovation and more enterprising approaches had taken some State controlling authorities to new heights of professionalism for amateur ice sports, producing the first semi-professional participants, and some of the best facilities, athletes and leagues Australia had so far seen. Much of that infrastructure still forms the nucleus of Australia's modern ice sports as we know them today, and it was largely inspired by these champions of champions.

Andrew Lambert Newman Reid

Andy (1889 - 1917)

BORN ON SEPTEMBER 21st, 1889 at Hawksburn, next to the Melbourne suburb of South Yarra, eldest son of Henry Newman Reid and his wife Lucy Marsden. He was named after his uncle, a pioneer of Mildura in north-western Victoria who died at the age of 23, the same year Andy was born. A mechanical engineer and soldier, Andy lived at the Reid family home, Locksley at Haverbrack Avenue in Malvern. He was a notable athlete at Melbourne Grammar School (MGS) where he won the football championship and other honours, and came to be regarded by school mates as "one of the best". He represented MGS in the athletic teams of 1907 and 1908, the football eighteen of 1908, and 'he was well-known as a champion ice skater'.

Andy was a volunteer Cadet at Melbourne Grammar and also at St Peter's College, Adelaide, with which it was associated, when the Reids moved there in 1904 to build the Glaciarium Ice Palace. Sir Stanley Melbourne Bruce (1883–1967) commanded the Melbourne Grammar Cadets during Andy's time. Bruce was born at Stadbroke, a few doors from the home of John Goodall's grandfather in Grey Street, St Kilda, and he later became Prime Minister of Australia. Andy attended St Peter's when Rev Henry Girdlestone (1863–1926) was headmaster. Girdlestone was a former stroke of an Oxford Eight, who became acting headmaster of Melbourne Grammar School between 1917 and 1919, and patron of the Melbourne University Boat Club when Barney Allen was president of both it and the National Ice Skating Association of Australia. In 1912, Andy's schoolmate, Simon Fraser Jr, rowed in the first Australian eight to compete at the Olympics. Andy and his brothers probably played bandy at Adelaide in late-October, 1904, "... The advertisement below announces that a "Great Ice Hockey Match" would be played on Wednesday October 12th, 1904. Names of the players are not known, but four of them would have been Mr Newman Reid's sons; Hal, Andy, Les (Snowy) and Dunbar Poole." [2] At that time, Henry was about 42 years-old; Andy was aged 15, Hal was 13, and Leslie was 10.

When the first officially-recognised ice hockey game in Australia was played in Melbourne in 1906, Andy did not play. He was only 16 years-old but his father had established the first suitable surface for ice hockey in Australia that year, and by the outbreak of the First World War, he would inaugurate the first phase of the sport's development through Andy and his brothers, and their links with Melbourne's earliest Anglican schools. The schools the Reids attended had been established by early colonists who had benefitted from the Public Schools they attended in Britain, and who wanted equivalent institutions for their sons. The first ice hockey clubs in Australia were formed from them — the first Australian club team in 1907, simply named Melbourne Glaciarium, and in 1908 Melburnians IHC, Beavers IHC and Brighton IHC; the original four. They were joined by Ottawa IHC in 1910. Andy matriculated in 1907 with Physics honours from Melbourne Grammar School and did his Senior Public in 1908. Andy was captain of Beavers IHC from inception and its top goal-scorer. [278] This club competed between 1908 and 1921, never winning a VIHA Premiership.

Andy represented Victoria in the first match played against New South Wales at Melbourne in 1909. [1] New South Wales won the first game 1–0 but lost the other two 0–1 and 1–6. Andy was about 18 years-old, and he played for Victoria against New South Wales again the following year in Sydney; the first Interstate match played by Victorian John Goodall, donor of the Goodall Cup. Victoria won the first two Cups with Andy in these years, and then lost in 1911 and 1912, the years Jim Kendall first represented New South Wales. Victoria won again in 1913 with Andy and his brother Leslie, [279] then interstate ice hockey was interrupted by war for six years. In his prime, Andy was 5-feet 7 1/4-inches tall (171 cm), with a 35- to 37-inch chest and weighed 142 pounds (64.4 kg). He had a fair complexion, brown eyes and dark brown hair. Three scars on his left arm and shoulder blade, and one on his left knee, just might have been stick or skate-blade injuries. He attended university shortly after 1909 and became a refrigeration engineer like his father, with whom he had probably briefly worked at the Melbourne Ice Skating & Refrigeration Co. Years later, a newspaper obituary noted, "...after leaving school for the 'Varsity he won the ice skating championship and other Glaciarium prizes". His younger brother, Hal Reid, was the first NISAA National skating champion on record in 1911, when Dunbar Poole was overseas. Andy was the National champion two years later in 1913. [377]

By 1911, Australia had seven ice hockey clubs, three in Sydney (New South Wales) and four in Melbourne (Victoria). In the years between 1911 and 1929, Australian men aged between 18 and 60 were required to perform militia service. Training and service had been compulsory in time of peace since 1911, and the Government was empowered to call up 'unexempted’ males in time of war. All three Reid boys had to train and serve in the army at some point, but Andy had chosen to soldier earlier in the Commonwealth Cadet Corps in Adelaide and Melbourne, for two years from the age of 13 or 14. He entered Duntroon Military College about 1913, just two years after it had been established on the old Campbell family homestead in Canberra. Duntroon was modeled on the Royal Military College of Canada, and the military colleges of Britain and the United States. There he gained a commission as 2nd Lieutenant on June 5th, 1915, graduating with a Diploma of Arts (Military) after completing the 18-month military and academic course. He served seven months as Provisional Lieutenant and six months as a Lieutenant with the 48th Kooyong Infantry of the Australian Citizen's Military Force (CMF), now the Army Reserve. He enlisted on January 18th, 1916 with D Company of the 38th (Bendigo) Infantry Battalion and transferred from the Royal Park Depot to Bendigo. Sir George Victor Lansell (1883–1959), a former Melbourne Grammarian, became its captain in May 1916. Andy subsequently transferred to 49th Battalion, and left Australia on A54 Runic on June 20th, 1916. He was attached to the 51st Battalion and proceeded to France in October where he served throughout the winter, and where he was promoted once again to Lieutenant a few months later. He spent a few days leave in London immediately prior to going into action at Messines.

Oddly, Andy had resigned his officer commission and re-enlisted in January, 1916 as a Private, then a Sergeant, in the same Battalion. This story is more accurately described in another of his obituaries, "Enlisting soon after war broke out, he soon earned his stars; but finding that owing to a surplus of junior officers he would be detained in camp for some months, Andrew Reid resigned his commission and re-enlisted in order to get to the trenches with his pals. When the newly enlisted ex-officer marched back to camp the whole place rang with cheers and applause. But the lost commission was soon picked up in the trenches. Liuet Andrew Reid died as he lived — a sport in the highest sense of the word." Andy was killed in action on the boggy, shell-torn and poisoned Messines Ridge, fighting for Belgium’s freedom. The conditions made that battle a byword for suffering, and few landscapes are more redolent of war. Over 850,000 died there, including 325,000 British soldiers. He was 27-years-old when he was killed on June 9th, 1917. He was buried West of Yaer Canal on the northern outskirts of Ypres (now Ieper), West Flanders, Belgium and he is listed on the Menin Gate Memorial at the eastern exit of the town, 'REID, Lt Andrew Lambert, 51st Battalion, 9th June 1917, Age 27. Son of Henry Newman Reid and Lucy Reid, of 9 Blackfriars St, Sydney. Native of Melbourne.' [97, 99] Since the 1930s, with the brief interval of the German occupation in the Second World War, the City of Ieper has conducted a ceremony at the Memorial at dusk each evening to commemorate those who died in the Ypres campaign.

Messines was considered a strong strategic position, not only from its height above the plain below, but from the extensive system of cellars under the convent known as the 'Institution Royale.' The village was taken from the 1st Cavalry Division by the Germans in November, 1914. An attack by French troops in November, 1916 was unsuccessful, and it was not until June, 1917 at the Battle of Messines in which Andy was killed, that it was retaken by a New Zealand Division; perhaps the first clearcut British victory. Now marked on maps and signed as Mesen, there is a well-known sequence of aerial photographs that show, over a few months, the total destruction of this village. It was ground into dust. Andrew Reid's name is also carved on the Great Cross at Messines Ridge British Cemetery, on the Nieuwkerkestraat road at Mesen in Belgium.

Trained from the age of 14 by Dunbar Poole; Professor Brewer, the professional world skating champion from Prince's Skating Club in London; and such players as Australian roller skating champion John Caldwell and Canadian Herbert Blatchly, the captain of Australia's first ice hockey team, Andy Reid had developed into an exceptional ice sports athlete within a few short years. The peer respect he earned helped to introduce other athletes to his father's enterprise. It was through Andy Reid that Australia's fledgling ice sports first gained access to grammar school and university athletes. He was 14-years-old when the first experimental rink opened for a year in Adelaide; 16 by the time Melbourne Glaciarium opened; and not quite 18 when he represented Victoria in the first Interstate series in 1909. He played an active role in the formation of that first Victorian team, and in the very first ice hockey clubs in Australia. He was among the first few Australians to develop skating and hockey skills locally, and to a standard that won both Victoria and he, some of the very first championships during the start-up years of Australia's first ice rinks. Although his life was foreshortened by the Great War, and he neither married nor competed internationally, Andrew Lambert Reid was Australia's first home-grown ice champion.

Historical notes:

[1] Andy's Battalion, the 49th, was first raised in Egypt on February 27th, 1916 as part of the “doubling” of the AIF. About half of its recruits were Gallipoli veterans from 9th Battalion, and the other half, fresh reinforcements from Australia. It became part of the 13th Brigade of the 4th Australian Division. The 49th arrived in France on June 12th, 1916, then moved into the trenches of the Western Front for the first time on June 21st. It fought in its first major battle at Mouquet Farm in August and suffered heavily, particularly in the assault launched on September 3rd. The battalion saw out the rest of the year alternating between front-line duty, and training and labouring behind the line. This routine continued through the bleak winter of 1916–17. Early in 1917, the battalion participated in the advance that followed the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line, supporting the 13th Brigade’s attack at Noreuil on April 2nd. Later in the year, the focus of the AIF’s operations moved to the Ypres sector in Belgium. There the battalion fought in the battle of Messines, which claimed Andy's life on June 9th.

[2] Melbourne Grammar School, also known as MGS or Melbourne Boys, is an independent, day and boarding school predominantly for boys', located in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1858, the school is a member of the Associated Public Schools of Victoria. It is associated with the Anglican Church of Australia, and was formerly named Melbourne Church of England Grammar School. From the start it was exclusive, catering to the young gentlemen of rich immigrant English and squatter families, and originally the student body consisted only of boarders. The junior school (years prep to 6), Grimwade House, is co-educational. It is located in the suburb of Caulfield, east of Melbourne city itself, and is named after the Grimwade family, who in 1918 donated the land and house for the use of the school. All the Reid children had completed their schooling before it opened. The waiting list at Grimwade was huge — if not enrolled at birth, there was no chance of ever attending. Whilst Grimawade has long catered to students of both sexes, the Old Melburnians have resisted any moves to inroduce girls to either the middle school (Wadhurst) or the Senior School. Of 1,327 Old Melburnians who enlisted in the Great War, 207 or 1 in 6 were killed. There were nine Melbourne Grammar families who lost more than one son.

[3] Melbourne Grammar was of seminal importance to Australian Rules football. It provided one of the two participating teams for "a grand football match", commencing on August 7th, 1858, and ending, after several sessions of play, almost a month later. This match is considered the direct progenitor of the modern game of Australian Rules football. The MGS Old Melburnians football club was later formed in the Victorian Amateur Football Association (VAFA) at Junction Oval St Kilda in 1920. See Reginald Wilmot

[4] St Peter's College is an independent boy's school in Adelaide, South Australia. Founded in 1847, also by members of the Anglican Church of Australia, the school is noted for its famous alumni, including three Nobel laureates and forty-one Rhodes scholars. Three campuses are located on the Hackney Road site near the Adelaide Parklands in St Peters. It was established two years before St Peter's College at Eastern Hill in Melbourne, forerunner to Melbourne Grammar School.

[5] The advertisement referred to above appeared in the Adelaide Advertiser on Tuesday October 11th, 1904 according to research by Ray Raines, Department of Trade and Economic Development, SA. Tange claimed this date was supported by early programmes. [2] A 'proposed' ice skating rink is discussed in the Advertiser, p 6e and The Register, p 3e on June 3rd, 1904. Actual photographs of Adelaide Glaciarium are in The Critic, May 24th 1905, p 6, and August 9th, 1905, pp 8, 9. The first newspaper account of ice skating there is in June 1905, and the first hockey match on an ice skating rink is reported in the Express, July 5th and 12th 1905, pp 2d, 2e.

Henry Newman Reid Jr

Hal (1891 - 1942)

BORN IN 1891 IN BRIGHTON, second son of Henry Newman Reid and his wife Lucy Marsden. Hal lived at Brighton in Melbourne and the Reid family home, Locksley at Haverbrack Avenue in Malvern. He attended St Peter's College, Adelaide, in 1904–5 and Melbourne Grammar School with his brothers, two years behind Andy, and three years ahead of Leslie. Hal was first trained by Professors James Brewer, Claude Langley, and John Caldwell and also no doubt by Dunbar Poole. He played bandy in Adelaide with his brothers and when he returned home to his father's new competition-size rink, he became the first captain of Melburnian Ice Hockey Club in which his younger brother Leslie and John Goodall also played. Melburnians dominated the first league for over a decade, winning every contest on record from 1909 to 1913, and two after the war in 1922–3 as Melbourne IHC. Hal competed in the 1909 and 1910 Goodall Cups won by Victoria from the age of eighteen, and the 1911 and 1912 Goodall Cups won by New South Wales in which Jim Kendall played his first two seasons. In 1910, Hal won the one mile speed skating interstate championship over his brother Andy and others. [393] In 1911, he won the men's figure skating event in the inaugural NISAA "Nationals", and he was still captain of Melburnian IHC in 1913. Hal positively shone, yet it appears he did not return to the sport after the long war interruption. He married soon after and for the first time none of the Reid founders were directly involved in Victorian ice hockey.

Unlike his two brothers, Hal did not enlist for active service, and little is known about his life during these years, although he was the only family member to remain in Melbourne. Correspondence related to his brothers' war service held at the National Archives, includes a hand-written note with the contact details: "Brother: Mr H N Reid, Private: 6 Elwood Street, Brighton, S5 X4471; Business: 23 Grant Street, South Melbourne." His Grant Street business address was located nearby the Glaciarium in City Road where his father also operated cold stores. His Elwood St residence was near the foot of North Road in the heart of Brighton where his brother Leslie was born. Hal lived there until his death.

The burnt-out Glaciarium had reopened by 1919, not 1922 as recorded in ISA history, and the Victorian Ice Hockey Association had reformed by 1920, starting virtually from scratch. Irreplaceable records including the rules had been lost, gear and equipment was gone, and players had drifted away, some never to return. Still, unofficial games were played in Melbourne in 1920, and all preparations were aimed at soundly rebuilding the sport in the bigger and better Glaciarium for the 1921 season. [1] It was a new rink, a new Association, a new era; and at the centre of all this change were John Goodall, Ted Molony, Jack Gordon, Cyril MacGillicuddy and rink manager Leo Molloy, who held his postion until the Glaciarium closed in 1957. Although Hal Reid did not return to the sport, he remained a friend of John Goodall for a long time. In 1924, Hal, Goodall, and Hal's brother Leslie in Sydney, floated a public company with a capital of £15,000. They were the first directors of Galvanised Products Ltd at Glebe in Sydney, manufacturers of sheet metal products. Leslie Reid was Managing Director until his early death in 1932. [395]

Hal Reid married around 1920 and had a son named Andrew Lambert (1921 – 2000), and a daughter named Airdrie Mireylees (b. ~ 1923). These two children are the only direct descendants of the Henry Newman Reid Sr family line. In the 1920s, Hal and his wife played golf at the Victoria Golf Club in Port Melbourne and the Sorrento Golf Club. Hal and Jack Goodall, both Old Melburnians, were regular public school "old boy" golfers throughout the 1930s. Hal's brother Leslie was also a golfer. Hal's wife was a committee member at Victoria Golf Club (note 3 below) where Goodall's first wife, Vera, played. She won the Grant Hayes trophy among others, and played pennant golf throughout the 1930s. Hal competed in golfing championships against other old boys such as Wimbledon champion and curling association president, Norman Brookes. Henry Newman Reid Jr died suddenly at Elwood on March 27 1942, aged 50. [187, 389, 391]

Son Andrew Lambert Reid was born in Melbourne on 26 April 1921 and died 29 September 2000 at age 79. He was cremated at Springvale Botanical Cemetery. It is not yet known whether he had children.

Daughter, Airdrie, was probably in her early 80s and still living in Washington, Missouri in 2011. She obtained her Intermediate Certificate at St Catherine's School, Toorak, in 1938. [389] She met her husband, Vernon Douglas Larson (1919 – 2008), a few years later in Melbourne following the battle of Guadalcanal (November 1942). Larson was an American Naval Medical Service Corpsman assigned to the First Marine Division who retired from the US Navy as a mid-ranking Lieutenant Commander. [390] The couple married on 30 October 1947 at the Chapel of Grace in Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill, San Francisco, where much of the American branch of the John Goodall family were buried. [389] The newly-weds lived in St Louis. Larsen had graduated from Washington University in St Louis and from Southern College of Optometry in Memphis, and he became a long-time optometrist in the downtown St Louis ophthalmological practice of Doctors William Lewin MD and Clyde Milster MD. The Larsen family later moved to Washington, Missouri where Vernon died on June 26 2008 at the age of 88. He was interred at the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery near St Louis on the banks of the Mississippi River. He was the father of Vicki Burton, Sue Heitz and Robert Larson; grandfather of Heather Wood, Brittany Burton, Ashley Burton; great-grandfather of Jagger Wood. [390]

Historical notes:

[1] The founder of Brighton Grammar, George Henry Crowther (1854-1918), was an ardent supporter of private schools and the founder of the Secondary Schools Amateur Athletic Association. He was a foundation member of the (Incorporated) Association of Secondary Teachers of Victoria with Otto Krome, formed in 1904 to combat moves by the government to establish high schools and technical colleges that threatened the very existence of many private schools.  He was critical of Frank Tate’s ‘state socialist’ agenda arguing against the centralisation and rigidity of a state education system. With the passing of the Education Law Further Amendment Act (1910) some 337 private schools, which had existed between 1885 and 1910, eventually closed. Tate was a contemporary of Henry Newman Reid, and a member of the Shakesperean Society in which Reid's father, John, was actively involved.

[2] There is some evidence that field hockey was promoted in Australia by the Royal Navy. In the late 1800's, British Naval officers who secured Australia's coastline before it formed its own Navy, taught the locals field hockey. The establishment of a naval base at Flinders in 1913 is believed to have assisted the diffusion of the game. The South Australian Hockey Association was formed in 1903 and associations formed in Victoria (Victorian Amateur Hockey Association) and NSW in 1906, the year the Glaciarium opened in Melbourne. Competition in Victoria had been organised between four clubs as early as 1905. In 1906 or earlier, “The Haileyburians” was founded by Haileybury College students who had played “shinty” during the winter school holidays.  After they had left the school, the Officers and the Watsons formed with others a team known as Iona, which later became the Elsternwick Hockey Club. It was one of the original four, the first club established in Victoria, and the second in Australia. The uniform resembled that of the Richmond Football Club, a yellow diagonal stripe on a black guernsey.  Founders included Stan Edwards, Les Pullman, Jack Macansh and Frank Rochussen.  Other members included Arthur and Harry Turner, J A “Ginger” Blainey, E G “Chook” Cuddon, Chester and Maurice Officer, and Geoff Watson. The club did not field any teams after 1910. Old Grammarians Hockey Club formed in 1908 at Melbourne Girls Grammar School. The Club won three consecutive State premierships, 1911–13 and the Dunraven Cup for the hat-trick. Lack of support led to its disbandment during the 1980s. By 1914 there were 22 teams and 350 players registered to play field hockey with the VAHA. Elsternwick is situated between Brighton and Caulfield where the Reids lived.

[3] Sorrento Golf Club was established in 1907 by a group of business and professional men of Melbourne including the Baillieu family who had established their seaside homes at Sorrento or Portsea and were keen on playing golf. John Goodall's cousin Phyllis (Mrs Simon Fraser) also played golf at Sorrento. Victoria Park Golf Club was opened by Old Melburnian Prime Minister Stanley Bruce. It was located at old Fishermens Bend course at Port Melbourne before 1925, and relocated next to the park at Cheltenham. Women were first admitted as associate members there in 1927. The beautifully landscaped par 72 course is designed to challenge both the amateur and professional golfer and was the host club for the 2002 Australian Open Championship and the 2010 and 2011 Australian Masters.

Leslie Herbert Reid

Snowy (1894 - 1932)

BORN IN JANUARY 1894 AT BRIGHTON, a bayside suburb of Melbourne in Victoria, youngest son of Henry Newman Reid and his wife Lucy Marsden. A trade insurance inspector, accountant and wartime air mechanic, Leslie lived at the Reid family home, Locksley at Haverbrack Avenue in Malvern, until shortly after his return from the Great War in July 1919. His brother Hal did not enlist but he was living at Brighton, and working at Grant Street, nearby the Glaciarium Ltd in South Melbourne. Although, as some suggest, Leslie may have somehow been involved with the Sydney Glaciarium since it had opened its doors in July 1907, [2] he was only 13 years-old, and he had certainly lived in Melbourne until after the war. It is, however, likely that Leslie attended the opening celebrations that year. He probably performed there on July 27th, with his sister Mireylees, in Professor Caldwell's skating exhibitions. Leslie was a member of the 1909 and 1910 Victorian teams, in which both his older brothers Andy and Hal also played. He was only fifteen in his first Goodall Cup, and he was the first ice hockey player to represent two States, competing for New South Wales after the war.

Leslie was trained by Dunbar Poole, John Caldwell, Professors Claude Langley and James Brewer, the professional world skating champion from Prince's Skating Club in London. Leslie first skated and played hockey in Adelaide and Melbourne. He was three years younger than Hal and his junior development had commenced at about age 9, five years earlier than his eldest brother, Andy. Their age difference also meant their attendance at the same schools and cadets had only ever overlapped once or twice, and only for a year or so. Like his brothers, Leslie attended St Peter's College, Adelaide, in 1904–5 and Melbourne Grammar School (MGS) when the headmaster was George Ernest Blanch (1899–1914). He matriculated and later studied accounting. He had joined the senior cadets, at Caulfield, Victoria for twelve months and he had served three years in the Australian Citizen's Military Force (CMF), now the Army Reserve. He may have traveled to Britain, Canada and the United States with the Victorian cadets in 1910. [375] He rode a motor cycle in his youth, and with relish, because he was fined two pounds by Prahran Court for speeding in September, 1915.

Leslie enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force at age 22, but he was discharged after three and a half months to join 2 Squadron, C Flight of the Australian Flying Corps on August 29th, 1916, as soon as it had first formed at Point Cook in Victoria. Confusingly, this unit was finally designated 3 Squadron AFC on January 20th, 1918 and it is referred to as that in military history. He was appointed on October 4th, 1916, at Laverton and he became an Acting Sergeant in the 38th Fortress Company, Australian Engineers. The Engineers were first founded in Victoria in 1860 and the former Drill Hall in Moore St, South Melbourne was their base. Leslie was soon promoted to Sergeant serving from the Sturt St Depot, virtually next to the Glaciarium ice rink and the workplace of his father and his brother, Hal.

HMAT Ulysees departed Melbourne on October 25th, 1916, arriving in Plymouth, England a few days after Christmas with Leslie's squadron. It was commanded by Major David V J Blake and based at RAF South Carlton in Lincolnshire. It's motto was 'Operta Aperta' or 'Secrets Revealed' and, at least as far as the British were concerned, it was reformed as 69 (Australian) Squadron, Royal Flying Corps. The air crews trained for eight months in Avro 504 and BE-2e aircraft, in co-operative roles with the artillery and army, before they were re-equipped for three flights of six British RE8 two-seat, biplane reconnaissance and bomber aircraft. These planes had experienced high casualty rates for most of the war. They were the first of the two seater bi-planes, with guns front and rear, and so they needed to be very carefully balanced. They were outclassed in speed and maneuverability by the German Scouts, and the Allied reconn squadrons had to soldier on with old, slow and antiquated British machinery. Leslie was promoted to First Class Air Mechanic in February, 1917.

These men and their machines set out on the first leg of their journey to France in August of 1917, without Leslie. He had been admitted to Hospital with influenza for three weeks, treated for six weeks and, for whatever reason, served as a storeman at the Engineering Depots at Lichfield, Bulford and Hurcott where he was also trained in aerial gunnery. He did not rejoin his squadron until early 1918 and, in the meantime, they were deployed at Savy aerodrome where they worked closely with two other RFC squadrons until they were confident enough to take on a sector of their own. In early November, they moved to Bailleul, in direct support of Australian Infantry there. Their sector covered the Messines area where Leslie's brother Andy had been killed a few months earlier. They fought grimly and extremely aggressively to maintain their patch of the sky. Their first victory was recorded on December 6th, and Leslie arrived in February to find them flying in a sector of the Somme Valley facing German planes commanded by the "Red Baron"; Manfred von Richthofen, the German air ace who had been credited with eighty confirmed victories. Richthofen was engaged in air battle with RE-8s from Leslie's squadron when he was shot down and killed behind Allied lines on April 21st, 1918, and the disposal of his remains became their responsibility. Blake initially reported that one of his RE8s shot down Richthofen, but he later formed the view that ground-based Australian machine-gunners had killed him. The 'Baron' was twenty-five years old.

Late in the June of 1918, Leslie's Squadron was involved in experiments in aerial supply methods for ground troops; in July it contributed to noise diversion operations related to the battle of Hamel; it assisted Allied movements in the battle of Amiens by dropping smoke bombs; and it continued its reconnaissance duties during the Allied advance to the Hindenburg Line. Its last offensive operations were on the day before the signing of the Armistice. The squadron disbanded in February, 1919 after providing a military air mail service from the end of the war. During its year of battles, Leslie's squadron suffered 23 fatal casualties and lost 11 aircraft over enemy lines. But it had shot down 51 enemy aircraft and flew over 10,000 operational hours of bombing, artillery spotting and reconnaissance missions, supporting ANZAC and other British Empire ground forces. It flew from ten different aerodromes, observed and reported on 735 artillery exchanges, dropped over 6,000 bombs, fired at least a half a million rounds against enemy targets, and exposed over 6,000 photographic plates covering some 1,200 square miles of enemy territory. During that time, 88 pilots and 78 reconnaisance observers were attached to the Squadron, of whom 11 pilots and 13 observers were killed in action, and another 12 pilots and 12 observers were wounded and hospitalised. [100] Leslie had served in England and France as one of a total of twenty-seven First Class Air Mechanics in the Australian squadron that first entered the Western Front, and left it with the greatest battle honours. The "Ghost RE8" was theirs; they were intimately involved in the Red Baron's last battle and the subsequent medical inquiries into his death; and they also flew "Sylvia", the RE8 that had flown more flights over German lines than any other Australian or British aircraft.

Meanwhile, back in Melbourne, international liaisons were already afoot that would soon dramatically transform ice sports in both Melbourne and Sydney, elevating them to world standard (see Robert Jackson). However, Henry's elderly mother had died, one son had been killed, and the odds of the other returning home safely from the same Front line, worsened before they improved. Then, to top it off, the Glaciarium in Melbourne had been destroyed by fire in 1917, the same year in which Andy was killed. Not surprisingly, the Reids had decided to move on. Henry and Lucy had been dividing their time between Melbourne and various Sydney hotels and guest houses, but they had settled at Cremorne Point on the North Shore of Sydney Harbour around June 1917. A Monster Benefit at the Sydney Glaciarium on June 21st, raised proceeds for the French-Australia League of Help, to assist war devasted areas in France, and Leslie's father now worked with the Kent Brewery of Tooth & Co. Its founder, Robert Tooth (1821–1893) had since died, but he had been a contemporary of Henry's father from Kent in England, where Henry was born. He was also an associate of Thomas Mort, who had established the New South Wales Fresh Food & Ice Co in 1875, with patents purchased from its Melbourne pioneer, James Harrison. This was the first commercial refrigeration company in Australia. Henry's business address was George St West from 1922, Sydney's most famous street, in which the Glaciarium was located at number 849. George Street begins near the Harbour Bridge, and extends to the southern end of the city, near Central Station and Ultimo, where it leads into Railway Square, and the former Sydney Cold Stores and Glaciarium. Samuel Barraclough, engineer of the Sydney Glaciarium, and the New South Wales Association's Doc Murphy, both worked nearby at Sydney Technical College, in Ultimo. Today, George Street continues from there as Broadway, where the Kent Brewery is still located, leading to the western suburbs as the Parramatta road (images below).

Leslie's sister, Mireylees, also moved to Sydney, probably with her parents, although their father had still kept an address at Collins Place in Melbourne, at least until 1918. The Reids may have planned to return when the fire-gutted Melbourne rink was rebuilt but, either way, that was not to be. P & O's RMS Kaiser-i-Hind departed Southampton, England for Melbourne on May 6th, 1919 with Leslie and the personnel of all four AFC squadrons onboard. They disembarked on June 16th, and Leslie was discharged six weeks later on July 31st. His father had tried to pre-arrange Sydney disembarkation, only to be told his sons or relatives would have 'to undertake the cost of their return when they were required to rejoin their respective units'. Leslie was now 23-years-old and he had spent most of his teens and adult life soldiering, including Cadets and Army Reserve. Hockey re-started in Melbourne that year, [1] and he may have played-out a season that was yet to be properly organised, but only his older brother Hal stayed on. And so it was, that all but one of the surviving founders and original builders of ice sports in Australia had congregated in Sydney when hockey resumed there in the winter of 1920.

Since inception in 1907, both Glaciarium Ice Hockey Club (GIHC) and Glaciarium Figure Skating Club (GFSC) in Sydney had been controlled by Dunbar Poole, in the employ of the rink's management company, South Pole Ice Rink Limited. On April 30th, 1920, it was taken over by Sydney Cold Stores, on the condition that the old company continue the business until completion of the purchase. Like its predecessor, it was a publicly listed company; James Thonemann was a major investor, along with other Melbourne investors; and it was expected to return dividends to its shareholders. [126] On May 15th, The Argus in Melbourne reported, "The Melbourne secretary to Sydney Ice Skating Rink and Cold Storage Company Limited advises receipt of a telegram from the head office that the company is to be reconstructed..." [188] and went on to outline a new capital and share structure of £200,000 divided into 300,000 shares of £1 each. The number of shares were doubled and issued to the existing holders, providing them with two £1 shares for each one they presently held. At that time, the business administration of the Sydney rink was still carried out by a company secretary based in Melbourne. The Thonemanns were a wealthy Melbourne family of ASX security brokers and dealers, trading as Thonemann Robertson Thompson Pty Ltd. James' brother, Harold, held financial interests in at least five ice works and distilleries over the years, and James himself was a veteran of the first Australian ice hockey team of 1906; captain of the first ice hockey team to visit Sydney in August 1907; [2] and a financial associate of Henry Reid.

Leslie was a trained accountant when he became vice-president of the GIHC that year, with Dunbar Poole as patron and Jim Pike as president. American hockey star, Charles Uksila, was engaged as an "athletic trainer" in Australia this season. He arrived in Sydney with sister Lena, another champion skater. They were no doubt engaged to train skaters and hockey players in Sydney, and possibly also Melbourne, after the long break due to the war. In June 1921, when Interstate games resumed, the GIHC was replaced by the Sydney Ice Hockey Club with Poole as president. However, within a few months a benefit night had been organised for Poole; a documented club constitution had been adopted and, "a committee elected at the Annual General Meeting were responsible for the day to day organisation of Ice Hockey. There was no further mention of Poole as Patron or president. There was no permanent Chairman of the Committee ... one was elected at each meeting from the club delegates." [2] In 1922, communications commenced with the VIHA in Melbourne on the subject of rules. In 1923, the first National ice hockey association was formed from both States [2] and John Goodall, VIHA president and captain of Victoria, was appointed inaugural president.

The Melbourne founders had arrived in Sydney, and they were not on holiday. It was vice-president Leslie Reid who had proposed the GIHC name be changed to Sydney Ice Hockey Club, foreshadowing its transformation from Poole's autocracy, to corporate body; from city to State; and from State to National Association. [2] The Reid and Thonemann families of Melbourne stood a little behind him, overseeing their investment. Although the VIHA was set-up in Melbourne in 1908, comparatively little had been achieved for New South Wales or National ice sports during the thirteen years that Poole had been administrator. Suddenly, in quarter time, ice hockey was re-organised from scratch in Sydney; extended Statewide for the first time; then Nation-wide in collaboration with the VIHA. Poole had been politely but expertly sidelined, and a similar task still lay ahead of Leslie and Mireylees Reid in the skating disciplines. The story that unfolded there was quite different, but this had all been built for ice hockey in a few seasons, to the lasting credit of both States, from the trusted friendships and powerful alliances that had landed in Sydney with Leslie Reid. Little more than a decade on, ice hockey in New South Wales had been re-engineered and was poised on the brink of its first Golden Age.
The Reid's new home. Heartland of the North Shore IHC, with an unrivalled view of the rise of the new ice capital of Australia from 1920.

Leslie was slighter than his brother Andy, standing 5-feet 6-inches tall (168 cm), with a 34 to 36 1/2-inch chest and weighing 9 stone 11 pounds (62 kg). He had a fair complexion, blue eyes and fair hair, all of which had conspired, of course, to produce the nickname, Snowy. He was sporting scars on his knee, thigh, back of neck and forehead at the age of 22, before he had gone overseas. In 1921, he was the founding Captain of North Shore Ice Hockey Club, named after the Sydney district to which he and his family had moved a few years earlier. Numerous Sydney public schools associated with Melbourne public schools were located on the North Shore, and Reid's club recruited from them. It has been said that Leslie's ability rivalled the legendary Jim Kendall, who was 5-inches taller and almost 3 stone heavier. He represented New South Wales for many years, and he was unbeaten ice dancing champion of Australia (New South Wales) with his sister Mireylees, before the advent of ISU-affiliated National titles. He was also a key selector of New South Wales State teams from the early 1920s, with Norm Joseph and Jim Pike, [2] at the start of the long period of New South Wales dominance of the Goodall Cup. Kendall, Reid and Pike shared the captaincy during the early 1920s. Reid played cover-point (defence), with Jim Kendall at point (defence), and Jim Pike at centre in the 1924 and 1925 interstate teams. [132] He captained the 1926 team, with Pike as vice-captain, in the first Cup clash following Kendall's retirement as a player.

Reid was just 38 years-old when he died, but he had established an imposing record as an administrator of New South Wales ice sports over a period of twelve years, from soon after the Great War, until his death on August 11th, 1932, on the upper North Shore at 74 Springdale Road, Killara, 14km north-west of the Sydney business district. His parents placed a notice in The Argus in Melbourne. In that time, New South Wales had won every Goodall Cup except one, according to the official record. In fact, it was tied the week before he died but New South Wales retained custody (see Ted Molony). His wartime flying squadron has been described as the best Corps squadron in France, yet he had never collected nor even seen his victory medals. They signified a war in which a whole year of preparation, illness and delay had kept him at arm's length of the aerodromes protecting his brother Andy's battlefield, until months after Andy had been killed. Leslie's father was the administrator of his estate, and it was he who fourteen years later collected his medals, as he had earlier done for Andy.

After the early work with the Reids in Adelaide and Melbourne, Dunbar Poole pursued his figure skating ambitions overseas, limiting his Australian contribution exclusively to New South Wales. The writings of Sydney Tange [2] lionized him long after he had died, at the expense of the Reids. "The History of the Goodall Cup" [1] was put aside, and Poole was credited with founding ice hockey in Australia, instead of Leslie's father, the accepted wisdom until then. Leslie was said to have been involved in the construction of the Sydney Glaciarium in 1907, and to have played in the 1910 Goodall Cup instead of Andy, when he was too young for either. [1,2] His service records show he lived at the Reid family home in Melbourne when he enlisted in 1916; returned to Melbourne briefly after the war in 1919; then moved to Sydney to join the remains of his family. The youngest of Reid's three sons, he was from Victoria, the birthplace of Australian ice sports; a mechanic, a fixer, and still on a mission. Within a few short years, he had completely overhauled the administrative engine of ice hockey and speed skating in Sydney, which had been Poole's responsibility for well over a decade. He was ably assisted by Norm Joseph, another Victorian, a trusted family friend of the Reids in Melbourne, long before either had moved to Sydney. In fact, their family ties stretched back over a century to Edinburgh in Scotland. Melbourne-born Reg Boyden was also a founding member of North Shore IHC, and he probably worked in his father's Sydney accounting firm, Boyden Sons & Co. [257] Between them, they developed the constitution, rules, organisational structures, and protocols for the first ice sports association of New South Wales, on behalf of the membership. In fact, their mandate went farther still because Leslie Reid, Norm Joseph and Jim Pike were elected as local and State team selectors during the foundation years; July 1920, May 1921 and again in March 1922. Neither Poole nor Kendall held office as a selector. [2]

This new wave of organisers in Australia were well-connected on multiple fronts to innovations in American ice sports, and by 1919 Australian ice sports no longer took their lead from Britain. This was a conscious and well-informed choice, determined cooperatively by the new organisers in both Sydney and Melbourne, and reflecting a deep respect and desire for the professionalism emerging in North America. Since its foundation in 1907, the International Skating Union of America (ISUA) had claimed governance of all sports on ice in North America — figure skating, speed skating and hockey — in direct competition with the International Skating Union (ISU) founded fifteen years earlier. In 1914, it delegated the regulation of figure skating to both of the national governing bodies which were ultimately created for figure skating in the United States and Canada. It then relinquished control of hockey and morphed into the governing body for speed skating in America after 1927. In this way, America ended up with separate governing bodies for figure skating and speed skating. By comparison, the ISU (Europe) started out in 1892 as the international governing body for both figure skating and speed skating, and it remains that way still today. All of which serves to highlight how remarkable it was that ice hockey and speed skating in Australia, led by Leslie Reid and John Goodall, were officially combined under a unified national authority in 1923, and remained so until the early-1950s (see Racing Champions). Part of the reason for this was an association that ran much deeper than their prominent families, Melbourne Grammar and ice sports. In 1924 they and Henry Newman Reid (probably Leslie's brother Hal in Melbourne, and not his father) floated a public company with a capital of £15,000. They were the first directors of Galvanised Products Ltd at Glebe in Sydney, manufacturers of sheet metal products. Leslie Reid was Managing Director until his death. [395]

When Leslie Reid arrived in Sydney, he was the last undisputed heir to the State's first skatable ice. His brother, Andy, had earlier thrown away his officer commission to join his mates in the trenches, and Leslie Reid did likewise. He picked up where Andy Reid left off, and finished it with the same unrelenting clarity of vision, the same kind of humilty, that defines great leaders. His administrative record has been described as "imposing". He gave ice sports in New South Wales the wings to fly, and that is exactly what they did. Within a decade and a half, they had produced some of the fastest and most successful speed skaters and amateur hockey players in the world. We will never know whether "the whole place rang with cheers and applause" as it did for Andy, but it appears not. Tange was no doubt a good man, and this is no slight on his notable contribution, nor on the National trophy which has perpetuated his name since 1969. But his reasoning was affected by sentimental allegiances. As a result, the historical record to which he had access was diminished, as were the quieter achievements of those who died young.

Leslie Reid was Australia's first home-grown speed skater of note, and one of it's first outstanding hockey players. He was one of a handful of the earliest and best, native-born male ice dancers in Australia, after Albert Enders and Robert Jackson. He symbolised the very foundations of Australian ice sport in all its disciplines, and it was Leslie and his family who were inspirational in establishing Sydney as the new capital of Australian ice in the Roaring Twenties. He never married and he had lived near his sister Mireylees for most of his time in Sydney. Leslie Herbert Reid led New South Wales ice hockey out of the woods. He played the pivotal role in organising ice hockey and speed skating in that State, and then Nationally with John Goodall. He was, without question, the founding president of the New South Wales Ice Hockey and Speed Skating Council; the first controlling authority of any ice sport in that State. Yet, in a sad twist of irony, Dunbar Poole was made the first Life Member of the New South Wales Ice Hockey Association, the year after Leslie Reid died.

OBITUARY. MR. L. H. REID.
Mr Leslie Herbert Reid, who died at a private hospital on Thursday, aged 39 years, was born In Brighton, Victoria, and educated at Melbourne Grammar School. During the Great War he served for three years with No 3 Squadron of the Australian Flying Corps, and returned to this State in 1919. Up to the time of his death he was managing director of Galvanised Products, Ltd, Glebe. Mr Reid, who was unmarried, was a well known ice skater and ice-hockey player, having played for both Victoria and New South Wales between the years 1912 and 1926. He was also interested in yachting and golf, and was a member of the Concord Golf Club. The remains were privately Interred at South Head Cemetery on Saturday. The Rev. E. Shipley conducted the service at the graveside. [394]

In 1949, fifteen years after Leslie's death, the St George Ice Hockey Club of Sydney presented the New South Wales Association with the Les 'Snowy' Reid Memorial Trophy for interteam speed skating, when former St George captain, Jim Brown, was still a manager and coach (until 1950). Harold Hoban had retired as president of the New South Wales ice hockey association three years earlier in 1946, and Brown was made an Honoured Life Member in 1951, the year the Brown Trophy for speed skating was discontinued (see Racing Champions). Poole had retired as manager of Sydney Glaciarium years earlier in 1937, but he returned in 1938 to open and manage Bendrodt's Ice Palais rink at Moore Park in Sydney. Late that year, in the aftermath of the Canadian Bears vs St George match, he was manager of the Ice Palais when his employer formed the break-away group that posed "the first threat to Australian controlling bodies" (see Tom Coulter). St George was one of the most successful New South Wales clubs in Australian hockey history, and this controversy took place seven months after Australia had finally affliated with the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) on February 11th, 1938. Sydney rinks opened in March and closed in early-October during these years, [2] and so Australia's affiliation with the IIHF had occurred in the off-season, shortly after Poole had retired, and before he returned as manager of the newly opened Ice Palais. Poole retired again a few years later in 1941; permanently this time, when the Ice Palais was requisitioned for the war effort. He was 64 years-old.

Footnote.

The Great War was the greatest tragedy of our time yet, for many Australians, it was also the defining moment of their Nation. It gave birth to the ANZAC legend, and most authorities in a position to know, agree that the Australian Imperial Force had a unique character all its own. The Australians weren't born to kill, but they had learned from their bitter defeats; built a reputation for success at turning-point battles; and considered themselves to be among the best soldiers of their time, with some justification. The New Zealand Expeditionary Force were equally as good, and possibly even a little better. The Canadians and a few British units were also very good. The Americans were not involved for some years. During the early stages of the war, Australia and Canada allowed Britain complete control over strategy and policy. As the conflict dragged on with its horrific loss of life, however, the Dominions began to demand a greater voice in the conduct of the war. In April 1917, Canadian Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden and Australian Prime Minister W M "Billy" Hughes managed to secure membership in the Imperial War Cabinet and a direct voice in the direction of the war. The efforts of the two prime ministers culminated in separate dominion representation at the Paris Peace Conference. Nearly a century later, many Australians, including war historians, have come to the realisation that the ANZAC battles on the Western Front best symbolise the ANZAC spirit, not the defeats and senseless loss of life at Gallipoli.

Even so, the Great War was won, not by Australians, New Zealanders or Canadians in turning-point battles, but by technology; by the kind of military intelligence that Leslie's squadron collected, even though it wasn't considered glamourous at the time. Knowing the secret positions of enemy guns or whatever, meant that they could be eliminated by the Allies before their ground attacks, and it was largely this that allowed the Allied forces to eventually prevail. This squadron did not know at the time, but their motto, 'Secrets Revealed', foreshadowed how the war would be determined. Although it had been mandatory for young men in Australia to do militia service in the years leading up to this war, the AIF was comprised entirely of volunteers, although many athletes, particularly professionals, did not volunteer. This prompted the noted sports journalist, Reginald Wilmot, to scorn them in the press, claiming they were effectively "conscripted" to sport by some of their associations (link below). Yet, at least four of seven players from the 1910 Victorian Goodall Cup team served on foreign soil, and at least two were killed; Reid in France, Walker in Palestine. There were more than a few ice athletes and organisers among the Australians who wanted to fight, and it is this fighting spirit, their extraordinary 'mateship' under extreme adversity, that every Australian should remember. Almost a century on, none of the men and women of the AIF are forgotten; not at home nor abroad. Those who died, did not die in vain.

Historical notes:

[1] The first controlled powered flight in Australia was on March 17th, 1910, when Leslie Reid was 16, about the same time as the site for the National Capital was being chosen. Barely two years later, a report on the suitability of sites for a flying school near Duntroon was prepared by Captain Oswald Watt of the Australian Army. The RAAF began in March 1912 as the Australian Flying Corps and became a fully independent Air Force in March 1921. Two pilots and four mechanics were appointed to create a flying school. Grazing land of 734 acres was purchased at Point Cook, Victoria at a cost of over £6,000 ($12,000), and the creation of the Central Flying School was announced on March 7th, 1913. The first flying training course commenced on August 17th, 1914. Point Cook is the World's oldest continuously operating Military airbase. Before and during the First World War, Australian military aviation was primarily the domain of the Army with some minor involvement by the Navy. After serving with distinction in the Middle East and France, the Australian Flying Corps returned to Australia in 1919 and was disbanded shortly thereafter. By the end of the war, only four Australian squadrons had seen active service. You might think attitudes would have changed as soon as people from several countries had made their first flights. But no. Wilbur Wright wrote in 1909 that no flying machine would ever make the journey from New York to Paris. Richard Burdon Haldane, the British secretary of war, told Parliament in 1909 that even though the airplane might one day be capable of great things, "from the war point of view, it is not so at present." Ferdinand Foch, a highly regarded French military strategist and the supreme commander of the Allied forces near the end of the First World War, opined in 1911 that airplanes were interesting toys but had no military value. Late that same year, near Tripoli, an Italian plane became the first to drop a bomb.

[2] No. 3 Squadron RAAF was known to the British military as "No 69 Squadron RFC", until well into 1918, to avoid confusion with the British No 3 Squadron RFC. This terminology was never accepted by the squadron, nor by the Australian Imperial Force. For a good history see 3 Squadron AFC

[3] Sydney's St George District encompasses the southern suburbs of Hurstville, Rockdale, and Kogarah Council regions. St George IHC evolved from South Sydney IHC, one of the four clubs formed with Leslie Reid's North Shore IHC in 1921. The founding captain was Tommy Gibson, and Doc Murphy was a foundation player. Sidney Tange, who commenced hockey in 1937, served in his first administrative role as club treasurer for St George, before he became president of Glebe and East Monarch ice hockey clubs. St George won the National championship in 1963 and 1971, and produced several Australian International hockey players from the 1960s, including Charlie Grandy for a season, Elgin Luke, Roddy Bruce, Phill Hall, Rob Dewhurst, Bruce Thomas and David Mansted. St George Flyers became Iceland Saints and then merged with the Finn Eagles to become Sydney Icemen from 1978 to 1992. Home ice was Iceland in Chalmers St, Redfern, and later Narrabeen Ice Rink and Blacktown. The St George district has also had a field hockey club since the 1920s, which began as Illawarra Men's Hockey Club in 1927, and which is now the St George Randwick Hockey Club.

[4] Cremorne Point is named after a former amusement park named Cremorne Gardens, which opened there in 1856, three years after Coppin's Cremorne Gardens in Melbourne (see Henry Newman Reid). It closed after six years.

Lucy Mireylees Newman Reid

Mirey (1896 - 1956)

BORN IN 1896 AT PORTLAND IN VICTORIA, the year her father, Henry Newman Reid, moved there to become the advisory director of the Portland Western Districts of Victoria Freezing Company. She was the only daughter of Reid and his wife Lucy Marsden. [187] Mirey lived at the Reid family home, Locksley at Haverbrack Avenue in Malvern, and probably attended Melbourne Girls Grammar School at Merton Hall in Anderson Street, South Yarra. It was founded in 1893 and became the first girls' school to be owned by the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne. It has a strong association with Melbourne Grammar, the school for boys her brothers attended. However, Mirey certainly completed Form 4 Drawing at Toorak College in 1909. Mireylees first skated at the experimental rink in Adelaide for a year when she was about 9 years-old. She developed under Dunbar Poole and Professors Caldwell and Brewer in Adelaide and Melbourne, then Professor Webster and Professor Claude Langley; two more early instructors at Melbourne Glaciarium. She may have attended the opening celebrations of the Sydney Glaciarium when Professor Langley and his pupils performed a figure skating exhibition there on July 27th, 1907, two days after it had officially opened. [2]

According to Tange, Mireylees, '... held the Victorian and New South Wales Figure Skating Championships for many years and Leslie and Mireylees Reid were unbeaten ice dancing champions of Australia'. [2] The Victorian Ice Hockey Association (VIHA) had been formed in Melbourne in 1908, the same year as the International Federation, and Mirey was 15 years-old when the National Ice Skating Association of Australia (NISAA) first formed there in 1911. She won the first ever NISAA Ladies Figure Skating title that year, and her brother Hal became the inaugural Men's champion. [377] Mirey turned 18 the year war broke, and ice sports were suspended until 1919 in Melbourne, and until 1920 in Sydney. She probably left Melbourne for Sydney with her parents in 1917, when she was about 21 years-old; soon after her eldest brother, Andy was killed in action in France. Mirey and Leslie were the youngest Reid children, born less than two years apart, and their skating had developed somewhat separately to their older brothers, Hal and Andy, who were five and seven years ahead. Although the NISAA Mens titles were interrupted by the war, the Ladies titles continued, but Mirey Reid was never again the National Ladies champion representing Victoria (see table below, First NISA of Australia Ladies Skating Champions). [377]

Hal Reid had won the first 'Independent' National in Melbourne in 1911, while Dunbar Poole, manager of Sydney Glaciarium and organiser of its hockey and skating, was overseas in Berlin representing Sweden in figure skating. He had also been in Europe and Britain in 1909 and 1910 when the Sydney magazine The Theatre published a brief note on his holiday in Switzerland, [109] and he represented Sweden again in 1912 in Manchester, England. Three British judges from a total of seven officiated the Men's event in which he competed, and Louis Magnus was a judge for France. Magnus was the 1908–11 French national figure skating champion, and the builder and first president of the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF). Poole was placed last in both Worlds, but he went to America in 1914 and 1915 where he further developed in the International Style. These experiences elevated his standing in the figure skating world, and he later gained a professional position as a figure skating instructor at the Minto Skating Rink in Ottawa, Canada. He probably first worked there during the Sydney Glaciarium off-seasons in the European winter of 1921–2 (see Dunbar Poole). [113]

Poole was described as an "entertainment industry manager" prior to his participation in World figures, never a figure skating competitor, and it is doubtful that International competition was ever his true ambition. He could have competed for Britain or Australia rather than Sweden, had he possessed world class figure skating skills. He could have collaborated with the NISAA in Melbourne and affiliated it with the International Skating Union (ISU), but there is no evidence whatsoever that he was the most accomplished skater in Australia by this time if, indeed, he ever was. The Reid boys had excelled quickly and it was they, not Poole, who had won the first National titles, while Poole was gathering sufficient credentials to become a professional skating instructor. Swedish connections opened the door for him when he was in his early thirties, yet he never again competed at that level, nor even Nationally. The Sydney Ice Skating Club had been established by Chas Maclurcan, and it presided over skating at the Sydney Glaciarium for years, despite the existence of the National Association established a year earlier in Melbourne.

Later, in 1921, the Sydney Ice Hockey Club drew up a State constitution, making "the Hon. Secretary of the Figure Skating Club ... a member of the Committee". [2] Its minute book for the years 1921–4 were sub-titled 'New South Wales Ice Hockey Association'. The Secretary of the skating club was not identified, but the first New South Wales controlling authority for hockey was established during those years, with representation for figure skaters officially incorporated. [2] Yet, this made little practical difference because some organisers in New South Wales still had no intention of recognising the National ice skating role first established by the Association in Melbourne a decade earlier, when Mirey's brothers, Hal and Andy, and Robert Jackson, Victoria's first State ice hockey captain in 1909, dominated the men's skating championships, followed a little later by Jack Gordon and Cyril MacGillicuddy, Australia's first ever International Skating Union (ISU) judge. Mireylees probably became active in the skating club soon after she arrived in Sydney, but it took a further decade for the organisers there to formally agree to even co-exist with Victoria in a National role, and it was much longer than this before a uniform approach and National standards were to emerge.

Although the National controlling body for ice hockey was formed in 1923, when the Victorian team was visiting Sydney for the Goodall Cup series, [1] the annual Interstate competition had commenced over a decade earlier in 1909, and there is documentary evidence that there had long been at least a modicum of cooperation between States in hockey, including uniform rules. The Sydney Glaciarium had been conceived and largely financed by Melbourne organisers, and the Academy of Skating in Melbourne had helped to establish its hockey and skating programs from inception. The NISAA in Melbourne had a documented constitution, broad objectives and an obvious legitimacy as the National ice skating authority. Yet, this was all but consumed in later years by Interstate pride, politics and parochialism, mirroring the long-standing dispute that was the reason neither Melbourne or Sydney was chosen as the National capital in 1901. Rivalry and differences between the colonies (States) was a feature of life in Pre-Federation Australia, particularly in trade and sport. Neither had diminished in ice sports during the period that Melbourne operated as the temporary National capital from 1901, until 1927 when Canberra's Parliament House was opened. The Federation of Australian colonies involved a central government, but independent State governance of internal affairs. Although it succeeded in Australian politics, New South Wales had voted against it, and some administrators there had real difficulties with the concept applied to ice sports.

During these early years, athletes commonly developed skills in ice hockey, speed skating and figure skating. Specialisation of each sport occurred gradually as skates and equipment evolved but, for a while, all three sports were either organised by the same people, or they were otherwise closely related. New South Wales ice hockey had entered a long period of Goodall Cup domination from the early 1920s, represented by players as skilled as Leslie Reid and Jim Kendall. Cup history records, "... the remarkable dominance of the Goodall Cup series by New South Wales, for almost the entire period between the two wars, is difficult to fathom. Of course, they had many fine players, but Victoria in the same period also had there share of men with plenty of ability" (see Ted Molony). [1] The organisers there, at least in skating, had no intention of playing second fiddle to Victoria, even if that meant no orchestra, and at the centre of these tensions was Dunbar Poole, an aspiring 'conductor' who was by then approaching fifty. The arrival in Sydney of his former skating pupils, Mireylees and Leslie Reid, was, quite simply, manna from heaven. By 1927, Melbourne was no longer the National capital, and it was soon after, during the Great Depression, that the true depth of this absurd power play became crystal clear. Following 'negotiations' in 1930, the NISAA in Melbourne and the Sydney Ice Skating Club were officially equalised. They became the National Ice Skating Association of Australia (Victoria), and the National Ice Skating Association of Australia (New South Wales).

On June 12th, 1931, both States finally signed an agreement to establish the Council of the National Ice Skating Association of Australia (NISAA). [4, 123] The Argus newspaper in Melbourne commented, "With the formation of a National Council of Ice Skating, embracing the National Ice Skating Association of Australia (the Victorian organisation), and the National Ice Skating Association of New South Wales, one body will now control the sport in Australia. This will mean that the certificates issued in this country will be recognised throughout the world. It has been decided to hold the Australian championships this year at the Sydney Glaciarium in August, after which the championships will be held alternatively in Sydney and Melbourne." [123] The Council was formed two decades to the year after the first controlling body with similar wide-ranging National objectives had been established in Victoria. It joined the International Skating Union (ISU) the following year in 1932, when Mireylees' brother and ice dancing partner, Leslie, died in Sydney at the age of 38. Australia did not compete in World Figure Skating Championships until 1947, but ISU affiliation was also of interest to members of the National Ice Hockey and Speed Skating Council led by John Goodall, who was responsible for National governance of the sport in which talented ice racers such as Leslie Reid, Jim Brown, Sydney Croll and Ken Kennedy had emerged. They had outgrown the local hockey rinks in which they had been reared, and they needed to train and compete Internationally. Sadly, Kennedy and Brown became champions representing Britain in these years, not Australia.

Speed skating had traditionally been part of the annual sports nights conducted by the managements of both rinks in Melbourne and Sydney, and Poole had probably been the first to organise them in both States. However, they had fallen under the jurisdiction of the VIHA from its inception in 1908, soon after Poole had left for Sydney, and Leslie Reid, an accomplished speed skater, did exactly the same in Sydney when he moved there thirteen years later. Speed skating championships in New South Wales were no longer controlled by Poole as part of his sports nights. They were placed under the control of the ice hockey association and unified National championships emerged soon after as a direct result of the federation of both State hockey associations in 1923. Poole had again left Australia in the early 1930s, when the skating associations were finally federated and affiliated internationally. This time he was off to London to manage Streatham's ice rink and hockey team, and although Tange records that he had retired from the Sydney Glaciarium by 1937, it was at least six or seven years earlier that he had taken the position of General Manager of one of the top rinks in England. Poole occasionally revisited in-between, but his involvement in Australian ice sports was, at best, occasional, and his political influence had been significantly diminished, at least by distance. He was honoured as the first Life Member of the New South Wales Ice Hockey and Speed Skating Council in 1933, and he returned to Australia in 1938, reportedly to open Bendrodt's Ice Skating Palais, by which time Australia had finally affiliated with the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF), on February 11th that year.

At last, Australia's National Associations for both skating and hockey had been formalised, on the twentieth and thirtieth anniversaries respectively, of their inaugural years in Melbourne. Their affiliations with the worldwide authorities for skating and hockey had been established in the very years that Dunbar Poole was mostly absent from the country, for unrelated personal reasons. Poole was simply not present; not when each had first formed, nor when each had properly nationalised and Internationalised. It was as if these things were only realizable in his absence and, indeed, that appears to have largely been the case. The first ice sports associations in Australia were born and raised in Victoria, where Poole was not. The first skating association sort, "the furtherance of the art of skating with the view of attaining the highest proficiency amongst the skaters at the (Melbourne) Glaciarium in Australia", [4] which Poole also sort, but from Sydney. He may even have considered this to be his right, since it was he who could claim to have first introduced figure skating to Australia, and with some justification. But not ice hockey.

Shades of such self-righteousness sometimes appear in the writings of Sydney Tange (1917–2005) [2] when they turn to the subject of Poole. Tange had played New South Wales ice hockey from 1937, then became IHNSW Secretary in 1947. His writings start from before the inception of ice sports in Australia, but he either omitted, or he was unaware, of one of the starkest realities of the time. Ice sports had become locked into this bitter rivalry for control when Poole left the Glaciarium in Melbourne to manage the other in Sydney, and the scales were well and truly tipped when the Reids did the same a decade later. Henry Reid had introduced modern ice hockey at Melbourne by 1908 and, although he had possibly left it with a burnt-out rink, it was in capable hands; a mixture of veterans such as Herbert Blatchly, Robert Jackson, Hal Reid, Claude Langley, Gordon Langridge, Cyril MacGillicuddy, and probably Leo Molloy and the newer breed of Melbourne organisers like Goodall, Molony and Gordon. Poole's contribution to skating in Australia was considerable, but it was also quite limited, and it became increasingly self-centred. Originally trained in the rigid British-style, it was not until a decade after he arrived in Australia that he developed artisitic skating skills in the International Style, by living in Europe and America for all but the Australian winters. It is certain that he also lived to see many of his prototégés exceed his own skating proficiency, including the Reids.

Brokering of the kind of cooperation necessary for truly National controlling authorities was eventually achieved by the more progressive organisers of the time, among them Herbert Blatchly, Robert Jackson, Barney Allen, president of the NISAA, John Goodall, president of the VIHA, selectors such as Morrie Bilsborrow, Ted Molony, Jack Gordon; and their Sydney counterparts including Leslie and Mireylees Reid, Norman Joseph, Jimmy Bendrodt and perhaps Sydney Croll, president of the ice skating association there. Molony's involvement in ice sports started in the 1920s or earlier, and it spanned forty years or more in four States. He was Australian National ice dance champion in 1938, and some of the records this man set in Interstate hockey competition, rink development and promotion of ice sports may never be broken. Goodall had also been involved with Australian ice sports since they had started, paving the way and becoming the first president of the Ice Hockey and Speed Skating Council; the first National controlling authority for both ice hockey and speed skating. From 1923, only figure skating laid outside his ambit.

Keeping Tange's account in perspective, any 'Independent' Ladies' ice skating and waltzing titles Mirey won for New South Wales, were won during this strange, duplicitous decade of the 1920s, when 'National' figure skating titles came in two State flavours, because New South Wales preferred their own judges and standards. Even after the National Council had been established, it had still not introduced National proficiency tests. It had still allowed each State to continue to operate with different rules to suit local opinion and requirements, even though the Council represented one of the first nations to join the ISU, following the acknowledged European skating countries. The first "Australasian Championships" were held in Sydney in late-August, 1930. The Victorian men's team were Dr Cyril MacGillicuddy, Frank Mercovich, Jack Gordon and Robert Jackson. The women's team were Winsome Thackeray, Phyllis Turner, Vera Pincott, and Dorothy Tickle. [166]

This was the state-of-the-art of ice skating in Australia when in 1935, at the age of 39, Mireylees Reid won the third ISU-affiliated Australian National Ladies' Championship, for the first and only time, after Victorian Winsome Thackeray had held the title for the first two years since inception in 1933 and 1934. For some unknown reason, National women's figure skating titles were not awarded in 1931 or 1932, but Thackeray was so accomplished by then that no-one would skate against her in the Victorian championships. She was the only competitor in 1932 in Victoria, so she had to skate against a set standard to satisfy the judges. [173] Poole was still overseas; Sydney Croll was president of the New South Wales Ice Skating Association; Harold Hoban had just become the second president of the New South Wales Ice Hockey and Speed Skating Council; and this was the first time that New South Wales had won an official National skating championship.

New South Wales also won the Pairs and Dance titles the same year but, in the twenty-three contests since the inception of the ISU-affiliated National titles until 1962, there were only ever three Ladies' champions representing New South Wales. Victoria won all others. The Men's events were little different. Sydney Croll was a one-time champion, and Allan Ganter four times, but otherwise Victorians led by Jack Gordon dominated, winning all but five of twenty-two contests, from inception until 1976. New South Wales were more competitive in the Pairs and Dance disciplines in which Mireylees Reid specialised, but the historical facts were these: Melbourne's Academy of Skating was the first in Australia; it was in a world-class facility; it had employed world-class instructors by 1915, including British, American and European professionals and champions; and it had established a controlling body for ice hockey by 1908, and for ice skating by 1911 — one and two decades, respectively, before New South Wales. When control was finally centralised with the NISAA Council, and titles were sanctioned by a unifying figure skating organization, it was the Victorian skaters who prevailed in National competition, and for a very long time.

Moreover, across the Tasman Sea, where the figure skating record was unarguably independent, this story was even more pronounced. From the 1940s until 1970, the year the NISAA council finally established national proficiency tests and rules, it was the Melbourne Academy that the vast majority of the future skating champions of New Zealand chose to attend. During these three decades, at least sixteen New Zealanders became National Champions at home, after training for and passing the Melbourne Academy's Bronze, Silver or Gold skating proficiency standards. In the same period, instructors in Sydney had done similarly for just two of that country's National title winners, twenty years apart. [96] In 1966, Australian Women's Champion Mary-Ellen Holland, and Dance Champions Edwina (Sloman) and William Hewison, gave exhibitions throughout the South Island. All three were New South Wales skaters, but by the time 65-year-old Sydney Croll visited there in 1977, the Academy in Melbourne had coached and tested several generations of New Zealand champions who, combined, had won over fifty National titles; a veritable Who's Who of New Zealand figure skating. For over twenty years, every National Ladies Champion of New Zealand came through Melbourne, except for the two who went to Sydney.

Consecutive Goodall Cup victories during the 1920s had left New South Wales hockey positively shining, but for Melbourne, and for Australia, that decade was best characterised by empire building; by a costly lack of Interstate cooperation. In retrospect, this is nowhere more obvious than in the New South Wales figure skating record. The cradle of Australian ice sports was indisputably in Melbourne, not Sydney or Adelaide. And it was a bitter rivalry, indeed, that could unfold yet still leave Australian ice sports bereft of their own story on the occasion of their centenary. Bereft of grace for acknowledgement, far less celebration. Yet, still the story comes, uninvited among all the other sound.

Mireylees also played ice hockey like her brothers. She was an emergency goalkeeper with the New South Wales women's team in 1924, and could still play well into her fifties. [415] She skated in ice shows such as "Hollywood Ice Fantasy" at Sydney Glaciarium in 1947. She became a professional instructor, training skaters for the end-of-year carnivals held by the Melbourne and Sydney Glaciaria, which were the biggest ice events in Australia during the 1940s. J Weedon won the National Championship representing New South Wales in 1939; Alison Paynter in 1948; and L Brain in 1952. From 1939, Mireylees was the first coach of Pat Gregory (1930? – present). There were no National titles during the war years, 1940 to 1946, and Gregory became the first Australian to achieve the British Gold Medal standard of free and figure skating in 1947. But it was the eldest daughter of Victoria's longest-serving State ice hockey captain and owner of the Melbourne Glaciarium who, that same year, became Australian National champion. Simultaneously, Molony and Hallam became the first Australian women to compete in World Championships, and Molony was also the first ever Australian competitor in both World and European Championships. Over the next twenty years, a steadily increasing number of Australians participated in international competitions in small ways, and a few in World Championships. Mirey Reid — Sydney's Foremost Teacher — was still teaching in 1950 at the age of 54 under special contract to the newly opened Ice Palais in Perth, Western Australia (see advertsement opposite). [388]

In 1918, the year after Mirey Reid had moved to Sydney, Victorian Doris Mostyn Armytage (1894–1947) won another of the earliest "Ladies Championship of Australia" on record. [152, 377] She was the daughter of George Herbert Armytage (abt 1860–1925) and Amelia Fanny Tyler (abt 1862–1955), born the year after Reid at Armadale, nearby the Reid family home at Malvern. [181] Armytage was also awarded the inaugural Sir John Grice Trophy this same year. It was the prize for winning three consecutive ladies free skating championship events. Armytage won again in 1919. The Men's titles had commenced in 1911 and, although none were sanctioned by a unifying figure skating organization until decades later, Dunbar Poole was present the night that Armytage received her prizes. [152]

Sir John Grice (1850–1935), after whom the trophy was named, was a former Melbourne Gammarian, and chairman of directors from 1901 of the Metropolitan Gas Company, which purchased Melbourne Glaciarium in 1926, and re-sold it to Victorian ice sports organisers in 1931. This trophy was still being contested by women in Victoria in 1932. It was won that year by Dorothy Tickle; Winsome Thackeray was placed second; and Kathleen McGill and Vera Pincott were placed equal third. [166] Sydney-born Sadie Cambridge (c 1900–1964) and her Melbourne-born partner, Albert Enders, were also contemporaries of Mireylees and Leslie Ried during the earliest years of Australian figure skating (see 1935 photo from Australian Women's Weekly above). This couple had first developed at the Melbourne Academy, and Cambridge was later to become Australia's first home-grown International women's ice skating champion. Even they were preceded by Robert Jackson (1890–1955) and his Sydney-born wife, Louise Larsson (1897–1958). Bobbie and Louise were highly accomplished skaters and ice dancers who performed in Britain, South Africa and New York from 1914. (Sir) Robert Helpmann (1909–1986) and his younger sister, Sheila, were members of Larsson's Melbourne dance troupe which had helped launch Helpmann on the path to International fame, and his world-renowned ballet partnership with Margot Fonteyn.

Although Reid never competed Internationally, she was also one of Australia's first home-grown women's ice skating champions. She and her brother Leslie were one of the best ice dancing pairs in Australia, winning State and independent National championships for many years prior to the introduction of Nationally and Internationally accredited skating standards and judges. As a professional instructor, Reid made one of the earliest and most significant contributions to the development of competitive ice skating in Australia, particularly for women in New South Wales, during some of its most difficult years. Fortunately for Australian skating, she had remained at home while others, such as Enders and Cambridge, had left Australia permanently for South Africa, England and Canada, where they developed both themselves and the champion skaters of those nations, some of whom also became world champions. Reid never married and lived in Sydney near her brother Leslie. Lucy Mireylees N Reid died suddenly in Sydney on March 2nd 1956, aged 60, the last of Henry Newman Reid's immediate family. She was survived only by a nephew Andrew, and a niece Aidrie, the children of her older brother, Hal, from Melbourne where her death notice also appeared. [389]

Historical Notes:

[1] Since 1970, the National Ice Skating Association of Australia has assumed responsibility in all areas of figure skating. It established national tests of proficiency; prepared and adopted rules governing all aspects of figure skating; and promoted the regular participation of Australians in international competitions, World Championships and Olympic Winter Games. It has also supplied officials and qualified judges for international competitions, the Olympic Winter Games, and ISU Championships, in all disciplines. In 1977, National Delegates voted to rename the Association 'Ice Skating Australia Incorporated'.

[2] Alfred Deakin (1856–1919) was Prime Minister when the first Australian ice rinks opened. Born in Collingwood in Melbourne and educated at Melbourne Grammar and Melbourne University, the brilliant pro-Federation speeches he made around Victoria in 1897 and 1898 did much to turn public opinion in favour of Federation. On June 3–4 1898, a referendum was held in New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria to approve the draft Constitution. It was accepted by the required majority in South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria, but not New South Wales. Deakin won the seat of Ballarat, Victoria, at the first federal general election on March 29th, 1901, and held it through the next three general elections. He died in South Yarra, Victoria, in 1919, and he was buried in the St Kilda cemetery. Stanley Melbourne Bruce was the only other Victorian Prime Minister in the twenty-seven years that Melbourne was the Federal capital. He was born at Stradbroke in St Kilda, a few doors from the family of John Goodall, and he was also educated at Melbourne Grammar, where he captained cricket, football, athletics and rowing teams. He was Prime Minister between 1923 and 1929, and then lived permanently in Britain from 1933 onwards. Both Deakin and Bruce were former presidents of the Old Melburnians Society. One ushered in the first temporary Federal Parliament in Melbourne, and the other presided over its transition to Canberra in 1927.

[3] Professor Webster, the skating instructor at the Melbourne Academy, was possibly C Webster who represented Victoria in the 1921 Goodall Cup with John Goodall, Gordon Langridge and, for the first time, Ted Molony.

[4] Winners of the National Figure Skating Championships of Australia are tabled in the right sidebars of Figures Champions. The Academy of Skating in Melbourne continued at St Moritz, St Kilda, after the Melbourne Glaciarium closed in 1957, both operated by Molony and Gordon. The NZISA, formed in 1937, first held National championships in 1939, and tabled below are the National Figure Skating Champions of New Zealand who are known to have trained in Australia. [96] All except Lynn MacDonald won their titles after Australian tuition. Ronald Hoskin became vice-president of NZISA in 1949–50, followed by Tom Grigg between 1951–3. Wendy Grafton and Jeanne Wyatt became ISU judges in 1979, and Wyatt was NZISA secretary from 1978, until sometime after 1987. John McKilligan (born August 28, 1948), a professional instructor at the Melbourne Academy in the 1960s, was a Canadian figure skater who competed in pairs. He won the gold medal at the Canadian Figure Skating Championships in 1967 and 1968 with partner Betty McKilligan (born November 16, 1949), and competed in the 1968 Winter Olympics at Grenoble. The McKilligans were coached by Britain's Jean Westwood. She and Lawrence Demmy, were the first ever World and European ice Dancing champions, and the first ice dancers to be inducted into the the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 1977.

Melbourne Glaciarium had employed other internationals before them, such as New Yorker, Lena Uksila, who was a professional instructor there in 1923. Her brother, Charles Uksila, had probably coached the Victorian ice hockey team that year and he had earlier trained skaters in Sydney and possibly Melbourne in 1920. Charles was the founding producer and choreographer of the original Ice Capades, and the first American to participate in the Stanley Cup playoffs. European champion, Henri Witte, was an instructor there for the 1925 season, and regualrly until at least 1932, with his wife and dancing partner, Heta. After training the successful Oxford rink ice hockey team in England in 1931, Witte trained the Victorian ice hockey team from 1932. In addition, many International skaters toured Australia and gave exhibitions, including World champion Howard Nicholson, the coach to Sonja Henie. [189] World champion Megan Taylor (1920–1993) toured America, Australia and New Zealand in 1939. [172] Taylor finished second behind Sonja Henie at the World Championships in 1934 and 1936, and won the World Championships in 1938 and 1939. She and Cecilia Colledge are the youngest ever female competitors in any Olympic sport and the youngest ever competitors at the Winter Olympics. She joined the Ice Capades with Rona Thaell and Charles Uksila after retirement from amateur competition.

© 2007 - 2013 Ross Carpenter B Arch (RMIT) M Des (Urban Design) ARAIA.
All Rights Reserved. Original Research Nov 2007.

Reproduction prohibited without prior written permission of the author except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

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