By Callum Ludwig
The Warburton Tennis Club is celebrating its 120th anniversary with past and current members celebrating what the historic courts, clubroom and sport have meant to them over the years.
It comes at one of the most pivotal points in the club’s history as it may potentially be relocated to the Warburton Recreation Reserve area as mooted in the Warburton Urban Design Framework,
Warburton Tennis Club President John Champion said he and his wife have been members of the club ever since they moved to the township full-time in 1990.
“We had a holiday house up here in the late 80s and we were located right near the tennis courts, we had our first daughter there and I used to walk over the swing bridge with her in her pram, past the tennis courts,” he said.
“We were both tennis players, we joined up at the club at that time and came to love playing tennis, the location of the courts by the river and we have three girls and play tennis with all of them.”
Mr Champion joined the club committee in the 2000s when its existence was threatened by a lack of members and a deteriorating playing surface. Luckily by the time he’d started, the restoration of the courts was locked in with the support of the local Bendigo Bank.
Mr Champion was junior vice president for about 15 years and has now held the presidency for three or four years.
“We started running an annual tournament called the Warburton Cup and we engaged the services of different coaches. For the last 10 years, though he’s now moved on, Anthony Glynn was our coach and we slowly built our program around the Warburton Cup,” he said.
“Anthony would be doing junior coaching on Wednesday and Friday and we were then running an outreach program where Anthony would go to the Millwarra Primary School’s East Warburton and Millgrove campus and the Warburton Primary School, working on basic skills with the kids, building up to playing games.”
These efforts worked, with a strong team of junior boys joining up who’ve grown to become the senior men’s team at the club, having played together for over a decade, while a junior girls team has also formed in recent years.
Mr Champion said one of the main things about the club and the courts that stands out to him is in being a visual landmark as you enter the town.
“It’s the first thing you see as you come into town, people playing, one of my strongest memories is Anthony’s coaching nights on Wednesday and Friday and there’d be four or five kids on each court, two coaches and there’d be 20 or 30 adults sitting out the front of the pavilion, chatting away, watching their kids,” he said.
“It’s just a real community place for people to meet up with each other, members rent out the courts and have their birthday parties there and a lot of other community groups use our space as the place where they meet, so that’s really pleasing as well,”
“It is a place of local significance for the people that live here, it represents their history, growing up, and they can remember times when they came together and had great days here.”
The Warburton Tennis Courts and Club House, as well as the nearby Swing Bridge and Rotunda, are on the Yarra Ranges Heritage Database.
The Club was established by Elijah and Clementia Story in 1904, with Clementia later leaving gifting the club 25 pounds in her will, as part of various donations to community groups. This money was put towards the building of the clubhouse.
According to the Reserve Bank of Australia’s Pre-Decimal Inflation Calculator, 25 Australian pounds in 1926 would be worth about $2249.05 in today’s dollars.
The Yarra Ranges Council decision on the Warburton Urban Design Framework was deferred until the 26 March 2024 meeting following backlash at the potential relocation of the tennis courts to the Warburton Recreation Reserve, away from the historic clubrooms on the river’s edge.
Mr Champion said the club have been really surprised and pleased by the support of the wider community to retain their current location.
“They’ve gotten in contact to say that they don’t want the courts moved and love them where they are, they’ve said they think they are a beautiful sight and are happy to support us in any way they can, which has also come through loud and clear through a couple of community meetings,” he said.
“You would expect the members to not want the club to be moved but it’s also been very pleasing that the community have come on board.”
A celebration of the club with past and present members will be held later in the year.
