2 April 2019 | Tennis Queensland

Queensland tennis history has been celebrated in Biloela to mark the Callide Valley Tennis Association’s 90^th birthday.

A meeting of eight clubs in the Digger’s Café in March 1929 led to the formation of the CVTA to oversee fixtures and tournaments in the region.

More than 180 past and present members took part in a weekend of activities including a gala dinner, family fun day and a book launch. The 200 page book, written and published by life and committee members of the Biloela Tennis Club, details the entire history of the Association and the characters which contributed to its long, rich and successful history.

One of the book’s authors and life member, Clarice White met her husband Noel (also a life member) playing tennis. She only hung up her racquet when she turned 70 years old.

“I came in 1965 as a first year teacher and got immediately roped into playing in a school’s teacher team. I’ve been Vice President, I’ve been treasurer, been secretary, tournament committee. Basically, if there has been a gap I have filled it. I have always been very happy to help at the club,” Clarice said.

90^th celebrations organiser and a driving force behind the book, Sharon Swift spent countless hours researching nine decades of newspaper articles.

“There is a lot of history in here. We are so pleased we have done this book because we would have lost the history without Noel and Clarice and Barbara (Sharon’s mother), there’s a lot of people we have lost over the years and the history has gone with them. So we are pleased we have salvaged this history now. There is a lot of photos in the book.  Photos have been hard to obtain because people don’t keep them. We are very pleased to say that we have accomplished a 90^th book,” Sharon said.

The solid and successful history of the CVTA has laid the foundations of a strong and vibrant Biloela Tennis club.

 The current club President, Tim Nelson reports impressive membership numbers and ambitions for improvements.

“The club is travelling really really well. We finished last year with 194 members and we are hoping to have the same this year. We have quite a few new people turn up, we’ve got new juniors this year so hopefully we are going to be around the 200 member mark if not over,” Tim said.

“We are going to be upgrading the hardcourts, at the moment they are in a pretty shocking state with cracks all through them and they are becoming a safety hazard so with grant money we are going to be replacing courts one and two. Knocking them back to base and re-base them with reinforced concrete and hopefully that will alleviate the cracking problem and constant shifting of the ground depending on the weather. Then we will be concentrating on the next two hard courts so we can get two brand new courts”