Ice hockey began here with the generation that gave the world the first Anzacs. A reading of the history of Australian Defense Force men and women in active service who played, is like a reading of the history of the game itself. They were there from the beginning, they still are, and more than a few were major influencers.
Australian hockey was in big trouble before the arrival of overseas coaches in the early Eighties. When the nation reached out to Canada for help, the CAHA considered it carefully, and were very particular about who they sent. Scott Davidson was one of the young uni grads who stuck his hand up, and it wasn't for a hockey holiday.
Against a grey backdrop of senior self-interest, interstate parochialism, and a general malaise of indifference, Part 1 of this story explains how Syd Tange came to be associated with the first junior National; when the other junior tournaments arrived; and why it took 39 years for John Goodall's original junior hockey initiative to reach the national stage.
In the late Seventies and Eighties, Junior development snowballed. Branded white on the dark navy of the state's ice hockey finery, this veritable ministry of youth development was a shot to the veins of Australian ice hockey. But, before then, it was known as the VIHDC. The Victorian Ice Hockey Development Council.
With healthy youth development programs, Australian soccer eventually emerged from underneath the import business, but amateur ice hockey, begun in Australia as a diplomatic gesture for a world trade in frozen export products, turned into a world trade in imported ice hockey pros within 50 years.
As the NSW Superleague stumbled and fell in the Nineties, three teams survived to decide its future: the Adelaide Avalanche, the Sydney Bears, the Canberra Knights. They met among the smouldering embers one last time to announce the start up of a new three-team competition with a remarkable founding principle.
If someone said the growth of Australian ice sports was limited by a shortage of ice rinks you might agree. But what would you say if someone said the number of ice rinks is limited by the economic growth of Australian ice sports?
For eight remarkable years Kathy Berg coached Australia in women's ice hockey, from the founding of the first National Team in 1999. She left no stone unturned in her fabulous quest to expand the sport she loves.
The breakaway Eastern Australian Ice Hockey League could have been a vehicle for Dick Mann's incentive-driven league proposal. Well-suited to a country like Australia where ice hockey was less well established, it opened up the possibility of competing against higher ranked nations as it grew. Or it could have been an ultimatum like the local association thought.
After the curtain went down on Australian ice hockey in the Eighties, another went up on a new breed of team at the dawn of the new decade. The young athletes of Ryan Switzer's assault on the world stage, broke with old school ties and ad hocery, to blaze a path into the unchartered territory of the nation's international game.
From the Cariboo to the UBC Thunderbirds, from Canterbury United to the Warringah Bombers, he took the Australian ice hockey scene by storm. From the birth of the NSW Super League in the early-Eighties, Craig Hutchinson averaged almost 3 points a game, and a personal best of six.
What happened when Germany's Olympic ice hockey medalists strode the world in the Seventies, dropping in on Team Australia at Melbourne's suburban ice rinks? What happened was a great moment for ice hockey in Australia at the time, a much needed injection for a depressed sport, and an administrative breakdown of gigantic proportions.
Without the Canadian imports, ice hockey would never have undergone its commercial revolution in the 1980s, but it came at a price. What happened when Australian ice hockey burst out of the beer leagues of the 1970s and returned to its own sporting culture?
It lasted a sporting lifetime and left an indelible imprint on Australian ice hockey's pursuit of the Olympic dream. Coach Bud McEachern turned outside in for his team of post-war hockey outsiders on a mission to defeat their most fearsome opponent — the antipathy in their own backyard.
Ten skaters from Melbourne helped the developers open Sydney's glistening new rink in a text book lesson in collaboration. Over the thirty years that followed, the skaters of Sydney produced the State's first national men's champion, the first Australian woman to compete in a world figure skating championship, Australia's first international ice hockey player, and its first Winter Olympian.
From the Fifties boom years of Victorian ice hockey's Golden Era, to the Sixties Olympic ice hockey qualification teams and the world stage, Tony Martyr's adventures in paradise on Australia's Gold Coast extended his career like no other.
Behind the rivalry, there is a kind of brotherhood between Adelaide and Melbourne ice sports, a kinship linked by a common history. Bill Young's twenty-year association with St Moritz Adelaide was made possible by Melbourne developers, mirroring the making of the city's first rink in ways that were almost magical, right down to their common foundation on quad roller skating.
Eight permanent rinks in 3 states and countless touring and temporary ice floors. For a time, Burley's temples of hope ended an era of neglect, a time of despair when most of those in a position to help Australian ice sports had either gone out of business or turned a blind eye.
Taboos forbidding women in hockey only fueled a raging fire, in her case, a passion to belong in a sport in which her family was no stranger. After peewees the task of hammering out the first women's league for her state and nation was left to her father and a handful of like-minded people.
He rose through the new player development system — from the inaugural President's Trophy in '83 to his last Goodall Cup in '96 — and along the way he was in the vanguard of local players who moved overseas to further their hockey careers.
She learned to play hockey with boys, then learned to coach them. She was there at the dawn of the first local women's team, the first state women's team, the first national women's league, the first international women's team. She was a trailblazing champion who excelled all the way to a point of departure, then left the game without once looking back.
Thirty-seven years ago a new state-of-the art ice rink was the essential difference between coming first and coming last in a brand new new league. There were reasons for moving here and reasons for staying on. With time, friends became important to him.
Although it has been in his blood for a half a century, the part of David Turik's hockey career that unfolded in Australia has spanned 35 years, on and off, morphing from pro netminder to hockey entrepreneur with business partner, Rick Williams.
From a farm on the Manitoba Prairie, to grape-picking in the Barossa, he backpacked one of the longest roads ever taken by an Australian hockey coach. This career spanning over 30 years is already one of the most accomplished, certainly the most diverse, and it just keeps on truckin'.
He captained Czechoslavakia's U20 Championship team, then defected to Adelaide Australia where he was a scoring leader and a state and national representative player in not one, but two extreme sports.
We have added six new hockey biographies to the NEW Legends website — John Botterill, Pavel Bohacik, Glen Foll, Michael Harrow, Ross Noga, Ryan Switzer.
We have added five new hockey biographies — Vlad Mihal, Arto Malste, Jarrod Scott, Damian Holland and Tyler Lovering.
He captained Australia's World Championship team for so long he set the IIHF world record, then just disappeared from the world stage.
The first Australian ice floors were a by-product of ice works, born of necessity in a dry land, pioneered here, and before the International Ice Hockey Federation had even existed. They were world-class, multi-functional arenas, brilliantly conceived as publicly-listed companies.
We have updated the stats on the 2016 Div IIB World Champions in the Champions League. Follow the link and click '16' in the 'Worlds' sidebar.
The State that prided itself on developing its own players to Olympic level by the 1950s, won the Goodall Cup only once during the three decades from 1980 when the NIHL began.
It's the sixteenth year of Australia's participation in the Women's Hockey Worlds, but Glaciarium girls have been around a lot longer than that.
Waiting for Victoria to win back the Cup between the wars was like leaving the porch light on for Harold Holt, but when they did we got the first All-Australian ice hockey team.
Added the 2016 Mighty Roos who will be competing in the World Championships in Mexico City from April 9th 2016.
Once he blazed across the sky leaving trails of flame and when he fell to earth who helped him up again?
There has been pressure to commercialize the sport here each generation, every twenty or thirty years. That can be a good thing, but the intelligent way is to do it sustainably, by thinking global and acting local.
It's a battered old suitcase to a hotel someplace, and a world competitiveness we must master. Our junior and youth squads matter for as long as we want our national team to be populated by Australian-born players.
Induction of the 2015 AIHL Champions to the Champions League.
Australia's first ice hockey games were an international exchange of goodwill because for the first time hockey was able to be played against visiting teams from North America on a world-class rink in Melbourne, designed for "their" game.
She went to Sydney uni, she hung out in slummy Newtown, and she "played boys' games in skirts that were shortened to six inches above the ground.
The man who scored the first ever Goodall Cup goal was an Anzac and a well-to-do "gentleman" who didn't need to work.
Seven-times captain of the New South Wales ladies ice hockey team, she had pursued a sporting career in her youth that was nothing short of spectacular.
The biography of Philip John Rupert Steele has been added to page 6 of 'Builders'.
The biography of Peter Ross Sutherland has been added to page 6 of 'Builders'.
There was probably no man alive in the early-1940s whose father had fought with Wellington against Napoleon in 1815. Except, of course, this former president of the Victorian Ice Hockey Association and Chairman of Directors of Glaciarium Ltd.
The biography of Kurt Defris has been added to page 6 of 'Builders'.
There was one place to which a Jewish refugee did not want to flee, until eventually even that looked like heaven. Such was the experience of Kurt Defris.
From war-torn Prague, to the moors of York, this young Czech national stepped over the German border into a new life in the free world and helped Australian ice hockey to its first Olympics.
To Victorians, this former Goodall Cup champion, coach and administrator was once a Hungarian socialite, doctor of laws, lawyer, member of parliament and millionaire. The world knows him as one of the best Hungarian players of all time.
Few know that Australian and New Zealand hockey players were curtain-raisers for the Chicago Blackhawks and the Toronto Red Wings [sic] at Victoria Arena in Calgary Alberta during the 1940s.
The results of the 2015 Div IIA Worlds are in the Champions League. Click the link and choose 2015 from right-hand sidebar.
We have updated this article on the first ice rink in Queensland.
"A throne is only a bench covered with velvet," Bonaparte once said, and that was exactly how we watched Australia's very first ice sports.
In the 1960s, Franciscus van Rijswijk finished his career down under with the St Moritz Pirates then coached the Ringwood Junior Flyers.
The story of the Steele family and the second president of the Victorian Ice Hockey Association (VIHA).
The last of the site's pages have been converted to HTML 5 optimised for iOS, and we will be adding to them down the track.
Now converted to HTML 5, optimised for iOS.
Now converted to HTML 5, optimised for iOS.
Written in 2007, we have converted the first of five remaining Ice Academy articles to HTML 5, optimised for iOS. It displays better on phones and tablets.
The story of H H Kleiner and the seriously delirious St Moritz.
Commercialisation of ice hockey in Australia first occurred in Sydney in 1938. It was razor sharp and positively icy.
The enchanted legacy of the Australians who danced on ice with hockey's elite at the VIII Winter Olympics
So it's a backbeach in the summer, the chalet for the snow, from Portsea pier to the roulette wheels of Juan-les-Pins, Nan Irving played them all, and played to win.
The story of Australian ice hockey's elimination from the 1964 Olympics.
In 1938, Ken Lewis, the visiting Canadian Bears manager remarked, "We are supposed to be invincible in hockey. Of course, you must admit that the old guy from Toronto Canada, who played for New South Wales had a big part in your smart moves..."
Added 3 more new images to the NSW-ACT timeline for the years 1948, 1963, 1968.
Added 3 new images to the NSW-ACT timeline for the years 1954, 1961 and 1970.
A concise theory of game development and the noble sport of boomerangs.
What happened to Australia after a winless debut at the 1960 Olympics? The story of Australia's 2nd World Championship.
The biography of Robbie Stevenson has been added to CHAMPIONS on a new page Champions / Hockey-Men / 3
Where was Australian hockey when Britain's captain and top point scorer emigrated to Australia in 1970?
New biography added to Hockey Champions for the former Swedish goalie who represented Australia at the 1974 Worlds at Grenoble in France.
New biography added to Builders for the former IHA president who managed the 1974 Australian Worlds team at Grenoble in France with coach Elgin Luke.
The story of Cyril Lane.
Concept uniform for Brisbane Brumbies added to our article from last year on "Reducing the Bull".
The ACT and New South Wales now have their own timeline page and we will be further localising it... every senior competition team, every rink, every trophy. Click "2" next to TIMELINE on the main menus.
The third installment on the history of New South's most successful club profiles the foundation captain, Dick Groenteman (Mann).
The second installment on the history of New South's most successful club profiles the foundation player-coach, Emil Butchatsky, who played more hockey here than in his homeland or anywhere elsewhere in Europe.
Chalwin's Business Model and the Barnstorming Bombers. Viv Chalwin made an important contribution to Australian sport, not least of which was his patronage and commercialisation of the post-war ice hockey league in New South Wales.
Added new biographical details on Miklos by the Swedish historian Patrick Houda, courtesy of Birger Nordmark, along with new Wikipedia and YouTube links that have appeared since his entry was first posted.
A small collection of our most recent work on national sports team identity, both uniforms and street wear.
Sweden's own hockey historian, Birger Nordmark, recently reminded us of this Kerwin Macgrain caricature from the Sydney Morning Herald. Team captains and officials depicted are those of the return Goodall (F C Brown Shield) held in Sydney in September 1946.

The Goodall Cup had been contested in Melbourne early-August. Added to the Champions League, Timeline and Russ Carson biography.
New South Wales Ladies made a clean sweep of the 1925 Gower Cup. We have added their team photo to the page on Women's Ice Hockey.