Tales of an outback tennis club turning 125 years old

For 125 years, townies, cockies, and passers-through have gathered at the Longreach Tennis Club in western Queensland for a hit.

Outback tennis is like a kingdom, with royal bloodlines and far-flung challengers, but it’s the born-and-bred local families who hold court.

Brian Savage, 72, belongs to one of these families.

He pointed at the club championship plaque mounted on the wall, where the Savage name appears as early as 1950.

“You can’t describe how serious and competitive tennis was out here when we were young,” Mr Savage said.

Mr Savage grew up on the dusty red tennis courts — “there was no television in them days” — with his parents well-known as a tough act to beat on the court.

He became the Longreach Tennis Club president in the 1980s but it wasn’t until 2000 that he started playing professionally, competing in seniors’ tournaments around Australia.

To this day, no-one at the club can beat Mr Savage in a singles match, not even players half a century younger than him.

Mr Savage said he still feels 32 when he’s playing.

More than a century of aces

The Longreach Tennis Club was officially launched in August 1900, commemorated with an inauguration ball at the local pub that lasted until 2am.

It cost one shilling per set to play, the equivalent of 10 cents today.

For the first 60 years of the club, the tennis courts were made from ant beds — or termite mounds that were carted in from nearby cattle properties.

Elaine Britton remembers the mounds would be “trucked in, spread, watered, rolled, watered again”.

“Nothing else would set hard enough,” she explained.

The 85-year-old is the keeper of knowledge when it comes to the club’s long history.

Ms Britton said tennis brought isolated outback communities together, particularly in a time before mobile phones and big four-wheel drives.

“It was a social thing as well as a game, very competitive [between the towns] but it never got nasty.”

From singles to mixed

Women and men played together from the club’s inception, but Ms Britton said integration was not allowed off the court for a long time, well into the 1960s.

“Men would sit on one end [of the clubhouse] and the ladies would sit at the other end,” she said.

“It was just ridiculous, married couples had to sit separately until someone crossed the line and they got a bit of sense about it.”

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Men were permitted to wear shorts on the court in 1932, but women were to wear long skirts and petticoats while playing.

“One female had the audacity to tuck her skirt into her belt, thus enabling her knees to be seen … this was the talk of the club for many weeks,” Ms Britton wrote in A Century of Tennis.

At the Longreach club today, men and woman play as equals.

However, chivalry still runs strong in country tennis, particularly among the older male players.

Mr Savage said many of the men would always let the women cross the court first.

“You let the ladies serve first in a social game of mixed doubles,” he said.

“But maybe if you’re fair dinkum you might do it the other way round.”

Beat the heat

Western Queensland often cops the brunt of the state’s summer heatwaves.

In January, Longreach endured above-40-degree playing temperatures for days in a row.

The wet season presents a different problem entirely. Mr Savage remembers one day in the 60s when the top court was drenched before an exhibition match.

A grazier had the bright idea to douse the court in diesel and set it on fire to try to dry it out.

Mr Savage said it didn’t work, but it made for a great photo.

While the outback has seen more days above average temperatures in recent years, the blistering heat is certainly not a new phenomenon.

In an article on the Longreach-versus-Barcaldine tournament in 1901, the Western Champion wrote: “The heat all day was terrible, and it was bad enough to have to quietly sit down and watch the play, and one of the Longreach men was so much affected that at the end of one set he fainted right off.

“He recovered sufficiently to play another set.”

Love for country tennis continues

The world has changed in the 125 years the Longreach Tennis Club has operated, but the passion for the game has not.

Today, there’s a renewed push to teach the younger generation the love of the game.

Maxwell Flaherty has started up the Central West Tennis Academy at Longreach this year with the backing of Tennis Queensland.

“Word spreads quickly around here,” he said.

“Everyone just loves hitting that little fluffy ball over the net and enjoying the social aspect.”

dan