The 2009 Australian Open Archery Competition.
As you drive through the outer suburbs of Melbourne and edge closer to Yarrambat, some things become readily apparent. The roads are good, there's lots of greenery and the houses, when you can see them, are built much further back from the road than they were a few minutes ago. You can look at it on Google maps, or Google Earth, but it's still not the same.
A few kilometers before Diamond Valley Archers, there was a small herd of miniature Shetland Ponies behind a minimal fence on the side of the road. One of them looked up and watched the car as I drove past.
What the hell do you do with miniature Shetlands? Who says "I want a horse smaller than my dog"? I guess it makes life easier for horse thieves. Now all they need instead of the expense of a horsefloat is a medium sized pillowcase and a carrot.
Quite simply, DVA is an awesome facility.
Lyndon May had told me to bring my
fly rod as there was a fly fishing club right next to it. And when he said
"right next to" I envisioned a reasonable distance.
No. With a good arm, you can skip stones from the shooting line. The fly fishing
club had just stocked it recently for their "Come and try fly-fishing" day and
the locals were evident in force trying to relieve the freshly stocked fish from
the boredom of living in a pond.
I could think of my fly rod, safely at home.
Clubrooms are interesting things. There's always bits and pieces of history on the walls. After a quick survey of the clubroom and indoor facility, I noted some things which took my interest. There's a picture of my bow up on their wall! And it's a picture that I took! How cool is that?
My bow is right behind that guy in the red shirt.
In the main room on the pinboard is this extract of a magazine article on Sten Nigol.
Sten is now my hero.
After satisfying myself that this is an excellent facility, I went outside. In previous photos of the grounds, I was a little perturbed by the apparent proximity to the clubrooms to the target butts. I needn't have been too concerned.
I didn't feel unsafe walking along the path and wouldn't have felt any concern shooting at the closest butt to it. That established, I concentrated on how awesome my access to the targets was going to be, as this had never been the case before.
Wandering out to the line, I could see a familiar face. Jon Campbell was out getting some arrows downrange. I went and talked to him about DVA, life, the Universe and Matchplay. We kinda skipped life and the Universe though. Jon's philosophy on Matchplay was a good one. He loves it. He said that he knows he can hold it together well enough to give him a chance against beating the big guns. With this in mind I was sure that Jon was going to have a good weekend.
If you look at the DVA target butts, the first thing that may strike you is the wheels. Solid rollers. While this instantly reminded me of the Flintstones chariot, consider that they're mostly on level ground, will never go flat, are reasonably cheap to produce and won't suffer arrow damage. The Target butts are of more conventional design and are quite sturdy. I was reliably informed that they're packed with pallet wrap, so they won't be light. There were no hernias or slipped disks reported over the weekend either, so they seem to work well. Nobody seemed to have any trouble with getting their arrows out. Some archers did have little bits of plastic on their arrows, but give me that over the gradual sanding of strammit any day.
Another feature of DVA is that their shooting line surface is covered in that playground safety stuff which has become popular in the last few years. I'm sure it has reduced the dental bills of toddlers coming off the slippery slide at Mach 2 in the playground, but it's use on a shooting line initially caught me by surprise. John assured me that it was great to stand on for hours.
Have a look around outside. Your mouse can drag, stop and steer left and right:
Cordell, the club President, told me that there are good sunsets over the fishing pond. He was right.
Those ducks started to look rather menacing as the light dropped. So I went back inside.
DVA's indoor facility has it all. Lights, a cooling system in the roof and carpet. On the far wall you can see the dinosaur.
I did wonder what the dinosaur was for, but then I figured it out. When the dinosaurs attack Melbourne, the DVA archers will be the only ones who have done this all before. Any DVA archer worth his salt of course, will be hoping that Godzilla, Mothra or the Cloverfield monster turns up. The ten rings on those suckers are going to be huge and virtually unmissable.
Friday morning saw me at Melbourne Airport to pick Lexie Feeney up and get her to Moorabbin Archery Club for practice. Despite the information left for us on the Archery Forum, Turner road couldn't be found on the GPS. We decided to drive in the general direction of Highett and hope to get lucky. Eventually, I pulled over hoping to ring one of the club members to ask for more information and while I conferred with Lexie, happened to notice a street sign that looked suspiciously like it said Turner St.
Luckily, nobody will ever find out about this embarrassment.
We drove along that and eventually in a comedy of errors managed to find the target butts from the carpark on the other side of the club field and then proceed to do an entire lap before Lexie spotted the miniscule Archery club sign by the driveway.
This will teach me not to do some google maps research in future.
The Club President, Bill Williams met us and left us in the hands of some other members. While there were toilets and a coke fridge around, it was going to be a good thing. Moorabbin Archery Club's building had thrown me a bit because of the big HF beam forming antenna on top. I expected it to belong to an amateur radio club which it does. MAC shares their building with an Amateur radio club and also, surprisingly a fly fishing club. So every Victorian Archery club that I've ever been to also houses a fly fishing club.
Inside the club house area proper, there are big comfy chairs and I had a slight impression of the kinds of London sporting clubs with men sitting around smoking pipes with mounted animal trophy heads on the walls. That only lasted a split second though. The walls are adorned with history. Photos of the club membership in large group portraits are dated and hung. Bows and arrows of different cultures and historical times are on display.
It was all very interesting and like an idiot, I spent much time just observing and didn't think to take any pictures. Sorry.
Outside was where the action was happening and people were rolling up.
Ron McCusker and the Carson Family, Les Woods, Brendan Wallace, Mitch Lawrence and Yiftach Swery made their way onto the field and then Bertrand "Burt" Bourgeois and his girlfriend Caro appeared in a Camper van. Marcel Verstegen, Pat Coghlan, Lyndon "The Rev" May sporting his new haircut, Steve Clifton, Ryan "Bitchmove" Bickerton and Clint Freeman turned up shortly afterwards. Eventually the WA contingent arrive with the Nicholsons. Deb Nicholson was wearing a black shirt which had lots of metallic swirly patterns on it. I assumed that it was a Harley-Davidson shirt as that's the kind of thing that I'm familiar with. Then I looked more closely and started to laugh. It was actually a Hoyt Archery shirt, but the unfortunate positioning of Deb's handbag strap diagonally across her chest made it say something else. You'll have to use your imagination...
The target butts at Moorabbin are static and made of strammit. They're seriously solid.
So I got down to business and took photos. Here we have Sky, tying his secret voodoo mojo thing to his bow.
Burt and Caro
My dramatic shot of Burt. Check out that sun flare bearing down upon him!
This should let you have a look around the Moorabbin field. Due to a technical issue on my part, they're not true 360 degree pano's with up and down. There are holes....
Marcel did tell me the interesting story of the factory windows behind the target butts.
Just when we thought that the ground was starting to get a bit of a population, a plethora of school kids turned up for a "come and try" shoot.
Eventually the day drew to a close as people were happy with their sight settings and went off to their various accommodation.
When I get the next pages finished in the next few days, the links will be below
First day of Competition- Fita
Second Day of Competition- Matchplay (Part 1)
Second Day of Competition- Matchplay (Part 2)