Sport is a huge part of community life and sporting club records can provide another dimension to your family history. They can help to locate a person in a place, at a particular time and give a richer sense of a life through their interests, activities and connections with their community. The Library’s broad collection includes club magazines, histories and photographs. Here are a few examples of what you can find in our collection.

Tennis courts are a feature of many towns and localities and club histories record the growth of the club and the many people involved over the years.

Rifle clubs were another source of sporting and social engagement and here we see the unlikely combination of the Rifles and the Wangaratta Ladies Hockey Club after a happy day in the field.

Staying in the north east, the mountains were also a source of club activities as ski clubs were established and structures built. The Ski Club of Victoria was founded in 1924, and the Wangaratta Ski Club in 1930.

The Melbourne Amateur Touring and Walking Club was formed in 1894, and the Library holds their journal, The Melbourne walker along with guides and maps. The Melbourne Women’s Walking Club is also represented in our collections, and a collection of images and maps from the Federation of Victorian Walking Clubs.

Lawn bowls was and is a widely practised sport. We hold histories of a range of Victorian clubs including the Creswick Bowling Club, Auburn Bowling Club and the Queenscliff Bowling and Tennis Club.

Intercolonial bowling matches were a regular fixture across many sports – the first bowls match was played in 1880, the writer noting that with over 50,000 bowlers in the Commonwealth, per capita bowling had one of the highest levels of participation in the world.

This photograph of the Eaglehawk Croquet Club has some members of the McWilliam family identified in it. Part of the Tatnall family collection of photographs, it includes sporting teams, portraits and aspects of Victorian life in the early 20th century.

Cycling clubs ran large events and races as well as social gatherings – a key component of many of the sports we have covered here. Australian cyclist is available online (1893-1905) and club histories provide a local context.

Golf clubs contributed to the social fabric through courses private and public. Their histories include the contributions made by their members.

Rowing is well covered in the Library collections – through club histories – and of the sport more generally. An early activity in Victoria, the Oarsman includes a register of names from 1857, and there are histories of rowing in Ballarat on Lake Wendouree.

Or, maybe you had a gymnast in the family? The Ebenzer Gymnastics Club, based in Collingwood travelled around the state, displaying their physical skills and prowess, spectacularly illustrated by this formation.

Trove’s digitised newspaper website is another invaluable source of sporting information, as club results were published in regional and local papers and achievements celebrated.

If you don’t know if your relative played a sport you can try searching Trove by their name and where they lived, and adding in ‘sport’ or ‘results’ to pick up sports pages or sections. Or, you can search by the sport, and the locality, then narrow your results using the filters on the right of the screen.

Once you know the name of your ancestor’s sport or sporting club, try searching our catalogue to see what you can find. This could lead to you writing the history of a sporting club too!

More to explore

Researching your Victorian ancestors – research guide to a wide range of sources helpful for family history research.
Discover your sporting ancestors : it was not all work and no play! – tips on sporting resources for looking for sports in your family history.
Australian rules football – research guide.
How many games did you play again? – blog post – tips on tracking a football players career.
How to find items in newspapers
Australian sport history clearinghouse – guide to sports history – information and archives.
Sporting ancestors : tracing your family’s athletic past – for some research tips from further afield – and an article based on the book – Some Yorkshire sporting heroes.