The Port Macquarie Croquet Club will be celebrating its 60th anniversary on Sunday, December 4, with a special event at the club’s facilities on Buller Street, overlooking the beautiful Hastings River and Westport Park.
All club members are invited to participate on the day, as are members of the three affiliated clubs from the mid-north coast region. Interested members of the general public, and especially friends and relatives of past members, are welcome to come and watch proceedings which will feature club members in 1950s period dress playing a number of shortened croquet matches and some novelty croquet games.
The PMCC is extremely proud of its sixty year longevity and it has grown to be one of the largest clubs in NSW. The club fulfills a very valuable social function by providing facilities that allow men and women of all ages from the local community to participate in gentle exercise, in a healthy, safe and friendly environment.
The club also attracts a considerable numbers of visitors, especially to the annual carnivals, one of which is in its fifty-fifth year.
The idea of a croquet club for the Hastings was first mooted when a group of farsighted ladies convened a public meeting at the Municipal Council Chambers in September, 1951. Subsequently, on December 4, 1951, a meeting was held in the local offices of the Bank of New South Wales (now Westpac) in Horton Street and a motion to form a club was passed and an inaugural committee elected. Early lessons and practices in the art of the game were held in the grounds of the bank which had a private lawn area at the rear of the building.
It took a further year before negotiations with the council’s Parks and Gardens Committee resulted in a formal agreement to provide a site and construct lawns for the West Port Croquet Club (as it was formerly known). The Buller Street site was chosen and work got underway in mid-1952.
The venture relied largely on fundraising through private house parties and streetstalls and an annual subscription of two guineas also contributed. Very significantly however, two ladies, Mrs I Brownlow and Mrs L Campbell, provided personal loans of two hundred and three hundred pounds respectively to supplement the funds.
The initial membership comprised thirty-two ladies that adhered to a strict dress code of a white frock, coloured stockings and white shoes. The first male members were not admitted until after February 1960, when the appropriate rule changes were implemented.
Several of the founding members served the club for many years, none more so than the above-mentioned Mrs Lena Campbell who was secretary for the first six years and then president for the following nine years. She was an absolute stalwart of the club for two decades.
The club subsequently became the Port Macquarie Croquet Club when the name was changed in October 1973.
To commemorate the sixty years of its existence, and the beautiful legacy left by these thirty-two ladies, the club will be holding celebrations at the Buller Street croquet courts beginning at 10am on December, 4.
