Life on the West Island - Well seasoned

In the Festival State of the West Island where we grew up, we did not have spring, summer, autumn and winter. There were just two seasons each year – Cricket Season and Footy Season. These two seminal periods each went for about five and a half months, with a respectful sport-free fortnight at the end of each, when we could get done a few jobs around the house which had languished during the revered sporting festivals of the warmer season and the cooler one.

In that dead interregnum, when we craved for first class sports on the ABC wireless, we also began our training in earnest for the approaching footy or cricket season. This also involved putting up the footy goalposts and removing the cricket sightscreens, a process that would be reversed six months later. After the final practice before the start of the season, the teams would be selected by a panel of senior players and all of the hopefuls would crowd around the noticeboard on the wall of The Snack Bar in the main street – home of the world’s best milkshakes and hot pies – to discover who had been picked for the A Grade and who would perform well enough to gain promotion from the depths of the B Grade team.

Each Saturday, the shopkeeper would post on that noticeboard the latest scores from the interstate and international games in progress. Remember, this was before the days of the internet or sports streaming channels, so when we finished playing, we clustered, milkshakes in hand, to see how our heroes were performing on the big stages.

Our match programmes – and those of the national and international competitions – had to be fitted in around public holidays and annual events. Most difficult was the moveable feast of Easter. Some years, it fell between seasons so we could enjoy our Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at leisure without missing a game. Other years, Easter would fall within one of our two famous seasons, and adjustments had to be made. There would usually be one blockbuster game each on Easter Saturday and Easter Monday, but naturally no play on Easter Sunday – or any Sunday for that matter.

Then there was Anzac Day, which always fell near the start of the Footy Season. On that day, there would be a well-attended rematch of the previous year’s Grand Finalists. Most people who attended the Anzac march would make their way the few hundred metres down King Wiliam Road from the march to the beautiful Adelaide Oval. Old diggers in uniform were always admitted free of charge, while the rest of us stood – rain or shine - on the mounds in the outer near the huge iconic scoreboard or under the spreading Moreton Bay Fig trees. There we cheered on our teams in what was usually a fiercely contested and close match.

Queen’s Birthday usually attracted little celebration, although the Monday holiday gave the football league the chance to conduct a split round, with the marquee game between two top teams usually contested on the public holiday.

The Footy Season then progressed through a battle to be in the Final Five, with preliminary finals producing two teams to take the ground for the Grand Final on the last Saturday in September. Our country footy usually finished a week before that, so that with 65,000 others, we crammed into the ground to barrack for our favourites in the ultimate contest.

Facilities in those days were meagre. There would always be a pie cart dispensing the fabled pie floaters and stands selling Farmer’s Union Iced Coffee in between the beer stalls. At quarter and half-time breaks, there would be a rush to the primitive smelly toilets. In the men’s we would be crowded five deep at the urinal trough (or was it a drain?), desperately trying to stay out of range of other users. The women’s toilets were no better – basically just tin sheds with huge lines of cross-legged females waiting forlornly for one of the few vacancies.

After that spectacle, we were grateful for a two week break to recover from the food poisoning and diarrhoea and have a day off work for Labour Day. Then, it was on with the creams and off to the wicket for the start of the cricket season. We donned our gloves and pads and took on the surrounding towns in tumultuous two-day battles. Meanwhile, the real season was underway, as six states struggled for supremacy – and possible Test places – in the four-day Sheffield Shield contests, all of which were broadcast live on ABC wireless and followed with near religious fervour by most of the country.

After the first couple of rounds, there would always be a visiting international side playing against state teams in a warm-up for the Cricket Season’s holy of holies – the five match Test Cricket Series. We were visited by South Africa, the West Indies, India and New Zealand, but the pinnacle was always The Ashes against the old foe – England. The first couple of Tests would take place before Christmas, often in Perth or Brisbane. Each was over five days, with a rest day on the Sunday, when the teams would often venture to a beach or wine region for the day.

Then on Christmas Day, we hurried through opening presents, attending church, consuming a monstrous roast lunch and pudding, to gather around the wireless for the real highlight of the day – the traditional Sheffield Shield clash between Queensland and South Australia. Next day would be the start of the Boxing Day Test at the MCG with a monster crowd. That was no sooner won and lost before the New Year’s Test in Sydney. Our Sheld and local games went on until the hallowed weekend when the Australia Day Test came to Adelaide and our games were suspended to let us get to the ground.

Tests completed, we settled back into our local finals and presentation nights. But then, after a blessed short break, we were back into it – the West Island’s second season was upon us. Oh, those were the days…