William Light fires up enthusiasm for archery in South Australia in 1830s; continues in his Adelaide park lands
Adelaide Archery Club members in about 1870 at the Old Adelaide Racecourse (later Victoria Park). Inset: Adelaide Archery Club's 21st Century members at its shooting range and rooms at Park 10 (Warnpangga), corner of War Memorial Drive and Bundeys Road, North Adelaide.
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia and Adelaide Archery Club
Archery was recorded as having begun in South Australia with Adelaide’s founding planner, colonel William Light, when he arrived in 1836.
Light brought with him from England two longbows and many sets of arrows (formerly held in the City of Adelaide collection and later in South Australian Museum storage). The original plans of Adelaide had land set aside for archery. Light’s enthusiasm for archery as a miliary pursuit would have influenced others but the first record of activity by an Adelaide archers club appeared about 1850.
In 1887, the South Australian Register reported on the fifth match between Adelaide archery club and the Mauritius Archery Society at the Old Adelaide Racecourse (later Victoria Park) in the city park lands. These matches were conducted by Mauritius sending its scores by ship (in this instance, M.M.S. Caledonien) in a sealed envelope that was opened at the end of the Adelaide archers’ 10 rounds, equalling the Mauritius flights of 60 arrows. The scores of the best 10 Adelaide archers were then matched against the revealed best 10 in Mauritius. This long-distance archery context spread to include Canterbury in New Zealand in 1889.
Formal archery in South Australia lapsed until 1939 when it was revived by captain Colin Duncan and the first meeting of the Archery Club of South Australia in 1940. In 1944, Alex Barter with a small group from the northern Adelaide region and Bill Bowden from a Salisbury munitions factory, gathered to shoot at Deer Park under the name of the Adelaide Archery Club.
The Archery Club of South Australia reformed after World War II and the two clubs held regular competitions until, in August 1946, they united as the Archery Society of South Australia from 1948. The Archery Society of South Australia (Archery SA) became the body of all the state’s affiliated archery and the original club's name reverted to Adelaide Archery Club.
Park 10 (Warnpangga), on the corner of War Memorial Drive and Bundeys Road, North Adelaide, in the Adelaide city park lands became the home for the club’s shooting grounds and rooms. Adelaide Archery Club produced produced champions (such as Simon Fairweather and David Barnes) in Australian, Olympics and world championships team members Adelaide Archery Club’s inclusive programme people living with a disability, as well as army, police and emergency service veterans.
