With the River Festival fast approaching, the Register will honour the Shoalhaven River with a series of historical stories about one of the region’s most beautiful natural assets.
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The regatta was an established event on the Shoalhaven’s sporting and social calendar.
In 1856 a large regatta was held on the Shoalhaven River, with the main event won by the local combination of Zaccheus Bice, James Kennedy, William Kennedy and Angus Munro.
At the time there was a small vessel working on the river and the crew challenged the winning team to a race upstream to Wogamia and back for the prize of five pound a man.
The challenge was accepted and the race was scheduled for the following Monday. The foursome won the race by half a mile in an untried boat they built only two days prior to the race from cedar growing in the nearby scrub.
Originally, regattas were held on Empire Day (which marked Queen Victoria’s birthday) and Easter, but by the 1870s Anniversary Day, known today as Australia Day, became the preferred date for the event.
Shoalhaven Regatta Club hosted the events at Terara and Numbaa, which normally drew a crowd of 700 to 1000 people to the banks of the river. In between races attendees were kept entertained by a brass band.
The annual regatta at Numbaa in 1879 attracted a 1400 strong crowd. Eight events on the program carried as much prize money as 12 pounds for the first team past the line and two pounds for second place.
The feature event, the Shoalhaven Cup for boats 22 feet overall, saw D. Pollock’s ‘Chester’ take home the prize of seven pounds and a cup valued at five pound.
The following year, the club added a sailing race to the program, unfortunately it didn’t run as smoothly as was hoped.
Two skippers capsized their boats and the skipper of the ‘Claudine’, Robert Hinder, who was also the first principal of Terara School, had to be rescued by Captain Alexander Buchanan.
To add to all the excitement Captain Buchanan, then capsized his boat ‘Bleezy’, despite possessing an unmatched knowledge of the Shoalhaven River, while rounding the moored punt.
Next week we will begin a series of articles which will take you back in time from the old Nowra Bridge to Paringa Park.
