Last week, the “Buloke Times” received a letter from Julian Lucas, of Brighton East.
The following are excerpts from Julian’s letter.
“Yesterday my wife and I watched the ABC ‘Landline’ program about the ‘Buloke Times’. We enjoyed the program very much and admired the very industrious and interesting people who keep the paper going.
“The program brought to my mind a matter raised in the paper some years ago.
“When I lived in Birchip sixty years ago I can recall acting as solicitor for the purchasers of the ‘Birchip Guardian’ newspaper and if my memory serves me well they were named Janet and Hazel.
“I have written a number of books since my retirement from legal practice and I am sending you here a copy of my latest book entitled ‘Our Australia Day’ – It is also available on Amazon.
“Best wishes for the future of your great paper!”
Julian’s letter continues:
Table Tennis
“On August 6, 2013, the newspaper for the township of Donald and surrounding areas, called ‘The Buloke Times’, published an extract from the ‘Birchip Guardian’ by courtesy of the Birchip Historical Society which had appeared fifty years earlier. The ‘Birchip Guardian’ had been the newspaper of Birchip but had apparently been long gone. The article was a report on the grand final in the Birchip table tennis competition for the year 1963.
“You will see that at the end of the night each team had won twelve matches. Each team had also won twenty-eight sets as all matches were best of three sets. In those days all sets went to 21 points or more if the scores were then tied as the winning margin in each set had to be two points. This meant that the individual points had to be counted to determine the winner of the premiership for the year. Assuming a reasonable average tally would have been somewhere around 21-15 for each set, the number of points won in winning and losing sets on each side would have been close to 1000.
“You will see that at the end of the night the Presbyterian 1 team won by twenty-one points or a figure of about 1% of the total number of points played. When I first counted the points I thought that we had won and I thought at the time I must have been among the best adders-up there. Sadly, we had graciously to concede defeat. As I had been appointed the president of the association it was my painful duty to present the shield to the winning team.
“This was the nearest I ever came in any sport to winning a premiership or championship with the exception of the Birchip men’s singles tennis championship, about which I shall tell you later.
At school I would willingly have sacrificed a couple of high places in the class awards at schoolwork in exchange for a sporting trophy at any sport, but it never happened, although I played a lot of sport.”