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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-02-06 Daily Xml
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Brighton and Seacliff Yacht Club

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Minister for Environment and Water) (15:47): It is great to be able to make a contribution today about the Brighton and Seacliff Yacht Club, a great community organisation which I am very fortunate to represent because it is found within the boundaries of my electorate. It is a club that has a reach much further than the local community in which it is located, and a club with a diverse and exceptionally interesting history.

It was great to head down to the club on the weekend, on Sunday afternoon, to be part of the launch of their anthology, which looks at the last 100 years of the club. The club has just turned 100 years old. It is amazing for a club to last 10 years in this day and age, never mind a whole century. The club published Gold on Black, a great book that covers their 100 years and goes through the stories and the many characters who have made up the club's phenomenal history.

I was joined at the event by the Mayor of the City of Holdfast Bay, Amanda Wilson, and federal member Nicolle Flint. The Minister for Innovation and Skills was there as well because his father-in-law, Jim Blake, had contributed towards writing Gold on Black. It was great to catch up with him. The club has a really rich history. This is knowledge that is shared by my parliamentary colleague Corey Wingard, who, in his role as Minister for Sport and also as someone with a neighbouring electorate, knows this club inside out.

As I mentioned, the club has just turned 100, and what better way to celebrate that 100th birthday than to have the first female commodore in its 100 years of history. It was great last year, in 2019, to be able to go along to the season opening. I was accompanied by the Premier on the day when Lisa Brock became the first female commodore to take on that position. She is bringing great leadership and enthusiasm to that position.

The club really has been an anchor point within our community for the last century. It is a club that has had rich characters make up its membership. I think of the Hardy family, the Higgins family, the Greenhalghs, and a whole range of significant people within our community. I also think of Pip Pearson, a legend in the sailing world in South Australia, with an international reputation as well, and Bruce Noble, a local Seacliff resident who was the previous commodore and who has quietly served that club with diligence and respect for many years.

They were all there on Sunday afternoon. It was great to catch up with people like Nancy Higgins and other members of the Higgins family and also to see Margaret Greenhalgh and Barbara Hardy AO, that great environmentalist and another Seacliff resident. They are a couple of people who are in their 90s and who are still significant members of the club.

The book itself, Gold on Black, which is so named because of the iconic colours of the Brighton and Seacliff Yacht Club, goes through 100 years of great history. Interestingly, it is a book of two parts. The updated edition builds on part 1, which was written by George Doughty and published in 1984, covering the first 70 or so years of the club's history. It was actually published in the year I was born.

It has now been updated to include a whole range of stories from the eighties, the nineties and the noughties to the present day, covering some of the more recent trials, tribulations, challenges and many positive things that have happened to the club. It does not shy away from the challenges that the club has faced, both in financial terms and in membership terms. As we get to the end of the book, it positively celebrates the growth in membership, particularly among the juniors.

The book has been put together by Peter Gold, Jim Blake, Phil Scapens and John Gratton, who are longstanding members, and by more recent member, Rex Hunter. I look forward to presenting a copy of this book to the parliamentary library later this afternoon.

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