Sporting Life: Sport In Old Australia

Collection of sepia-toned photos to commemorate the centenary of Federation. Everything from croquet, tennis, cricket, horse racing, fishing, archery, whatever sports the public played or enjoyed.To know Australia today, we must understand its past – the people, the pastimes, the pioneering spirit and the intense feeling of national pride. In times of change and a new future, The Centenary Collection looks back on 100 years of Old Australia. The well-known sporting prowess of Australians had its beginnings in the earliest days of European settlement, and this intriguing collection of photographs takes us back to the sporting fads and fashions of the past. Many of the popular early sports reflect the essentials of daily life, such as transport (horse-racing, running, boating and the bicycle craze), food (shooting, fishing, dog-racing) and work (shearing, ploughing, wood-chopping and load carrying). With increased leisure came the possibility of organizing teams and adopting sports form England, the founding nation of most modern sports. There were variations on the football field, but we followed the lead of the Old Country in such sports as tennis, golf, cricket and even hunting with hounds.