History

I am looking for any historical information about the old shipping route up to Milnthorpe, how, when and why we have our pier, was it ever used as a working pier?

Would someone like to contact the Arnside Historical Society and see what information they have about all things nautocal in he estuary?

I think the sailing club and this site could be a place to preserve all of Arnsides nautical heritage

Our own club house is one of the oldest buildings in the village, what's its history, when did we buy it, when did we acquire the dingy park?

Do we have any history about Crossfields the boat builder and about our native boat the Nobby. Names, dates, photographs.

Existing Nobbys still sailing today?

Correspondence with Howard Stagg.

Dear Carol,

I did not expect my ramblings to be of interest to the ASC website, but feel free to use them as you wish!  I have slightly amended them below – feel free to apply your editorial pen.  I have also attached three more photos; these are not relevant to the ASC website, but should you get any responses from people who used to know us (some may not be pushing up the daisies yet), feel free to pass them on.

‘garage ... jpg’  is Frank working on his model of the Endeavour in his garage, with ‘supervision’ by myself.  Photo dates from the early 90s, so Frank would have been about 70.

‘scan0054 ... jpg’  Chrysanthenums grown by my mother after we moved into the country.  She worked extremely hard to make a few dollars – but she loved it.

‘scan0060 ... jpg’  Western end of Frank & Dick’s ‘country garden’, probably in the early 90s.  By this time, the chrysanthenums had been replaced by a 9 hole pitch-and-putt golf course that became a bit of an obsession with them!

“Many thanks for your email and the attached images.  Needless to say, the images certainly stirred a few memories and possibly rewired a few brain synapses!  In 1964, I notice that Frank was not allocated any OOD duties.  I seem to recall that when he made it known that 1964 would be our last season the club decided to let him sail out the season without any admin duties – very decent of them.

 It’s interesting to hear that Robin Whitham did not stray as far from home as we did over the years.  Should you hear from him I would be interested in getting a contact email address if he should have one and he is prepared to pass it on.  I remember his family well – delightful people, I once stayed with them for a couple of days when my parents were away from Kendal.

 One small question that I would ask: where is the boat ‘park’ these days?  When we were sailing, the boat park was a short distance down-estuary from the SW end of the promenade.  From memory, we could only get boats there by walking the trailers along the beach at low tide from the ramp at the end of the promenade.  I have looked at Google Earth images of Arnside, and there is no obvious sign of the boat park where it used to be.

The following is just a brief summary of our life post-Arnside.  Please ignore, if it is of no interest!

My parents decided that they had had enough of the English climate after Frank spent several months in the particularly miserable English winter of 63-64 working for Gilkes (of Kendal) in Malaya.  We became Australian ‘assisted migrants’ – known here as ‘Ten Pound Poms’, as the only cost for migration was 10 pounds per adult.  I sometimes forget how adventurous my parents were – they took their family of three children (aged 16, 12 and 7) to the other end of the world without having a definite job to go to.

After sailing from Southampton in December 1964, we arrived in Sydney in early January 1965.  Fortunately, 30 days at sea (mediterranean – Suez – Indian Ocean) on the Fairstar gave us ample time to acclimatise from the depths of an Kendal winter to the heights of an Australian summer.  Trust me, the difference was considerable!  We moved immediately to a migrant hostel in Brisbane and Frank travelled around Queensland for a couple of weeks looking for a job.  By the end of January, we had relocated to Toowoomba, a city now of about 80000 people about 120 km west of Brisbane, and my father started work designing pumps at a major local engineering works (Southern Cross Pty Ltd).  He stayed with the company until he retired in 1986 at the age of 62.  Three years after moving to Toowoomba, my parents bought a couple of acres of land about 15km out of town and we built a simple timber house.  My parents lived on the property until they died – my mother in 1998 and my father in 2006.  They loved their life in the country air, despite regular droughts and summers that were best described as stinking hot.  During this time, my mother (who despite her christian name of ‘Gundry’ was known to everybody as ‘Dick’, a legacy of her nursing days) because a professional nurserywoman, and had about an acre of the land under flowers which she sold to a florist in Toowoomba who then shipped them up and down the east coast of Australia.

Opportunities for sailing were not as easy to come by out here, with the nearest lakes or dams being about 40km away.  This did not deter my parents and they eventually decided to build themselves a new dinghy anyway.  This they did in the mid 1970s (it was a 125 class dinghy) and they decided that the best place to build the boat was in their own lounge.  Put this down to their slightly eccentric English blood.  As we children had by then left home, they reckoned that nobody was going to object to the obstruction.  They spent the next year or so watching evening television over the hull of an upturned stitch-and-glue boat.  When it was completed, they removed the large lounge windows and slid the boat out through the hole in the wall.  Very pragmatic people, they were.

After they got past the sailing age and Frank retired, they started to indulge their wide range of other interests, including travel.  This travel never included returning to England – I think that the thoughts of your climate gave them the horrors.  Frank became a builder of very high-quality timber ship models (I have his major effort, Captain Cook’s Endeavour sitting on my bookshelves), while Dick, who had left school at 15, became a serious expert in Middle Eastern history.

Their three children have ended up scattered around a good deal.  My younger brother Richard, spent some time in the army, and after leaving the army got a degree and employment in physics/electronics.  He now lives in Sydney with his partner and their late-teen children.  My sister, Jane, became a high school teacher along with her husband.  They taught in a wide variety of locations around Queensland  before Jane, who never really lost her English desire for cooler temperatures, persuaded her husband Jim that they needed to move to a cooler climate.  They settled at the most southerly end of New Zealand’s South Island and followed Frank and Dick’s example by buying some acres and living outside town and rearing their children there.  The town is Owaka, population about 400, I think.  They are very happy there and my wife (Lynne) and I go over to see them, and New Zealand, every few years.

After I left home in 1970, I spent 4 years at the University of Queensland in Brisbane getting an Applied Science (Geophysics) degree. I then moved to the national capital, Canberra, where I spent my working career ias a marine geoscienctist (including plenty of sea time).  I got married in Canberra and we have two adult children, who also have science degrees (I think it’s genetic, as Jane and Richard also have science degrees).  We sailed here for a few years, but the rest of the family never really took to it, so my boating is now mainly confined to the construction of models.

With the advent of the internet, it has become much easier to track down events and places from my childhood.  I first looked for the Arnside Sailing Club a few years ago, but with only very limited success.  I could find references to the club, but no useful details.  It therefore came as a very pleasant surprise to find a proper web site up and running; I will certainly keep a regular watch on it in the future.

I intended that this email would just be a brief message to say thank-you for your response, but I seem to have ended up rambling on rather endlessly.  I’m afraid this is a Stagg family trait, and I will have to plead inheritance!

My very best wishes to all club members for the future.  Should they or their friends and famlies ever be thinking of travelling to Australia, I would be happy to provide suggestions (and cautions!)  If they make it to Canberra, please contact me (hstagg@apex.net.au) – I would love to show them the sights of our beautiful ‘Bush Capital’.

Happy sailing.”

Also, Carol, you might like to make  a couple of minor changes to the original posting on the website – you might as well fix up the spelling of ‘Whitham’ and change the caption of ‘Rod Whittam’ to ‘Ron’ (just a typo on my part).

It has been a pleasure getting in contact with you.  Would it be possible for you to include me on any email mail-outs that you do to club members in the future?

Best regards,

Howard

This is an email received from a ex member of ASC back in the 1960's, who has since emigrated to Australia.

Does anyone remember the Staggs?

Greetings,

After several years of keeping an eye out for a website for the Arnside Sailing Club, I see that one has finally appeared.

My family joined the ASC early in the 1960s and, I suspect, only shortly after the club was formed. 

Previously we had sailed our Heron with the Royal Windermere Yacht Club.  We left the ASC after the sailing season of 1964 and migrated to Australia during the following winter.  As I was only 12 when we left the UK, my memories of the ASC and Arnside are rather limited. 

Regrettably both my parents, who would have had much clearer memories, have both died in the past 12 years.

I have a few photographs that I scanned from my parents’ 25^th wedding anniversary photo album.  The quality is not good, but I would be happy to pass them along to you if you would like them; they may be of some historical interest.

I have attached three images:

25th_0214 shows our Heron (No 371; ‘Largo’ – or ‘slow and sedate’); Heron 3110 belonged to close friends of ours, the Whittams (not sure of the spelling).

Our sail number (371) reflects the vintage of our dinghy which I think was purchased new in about 1954.

25th_0216 is a scanned slip of paper from the early 60s – I’m not sure what it was for.  You will see the address given as ‘The Old Customs House’ and the club burgee is prominent.  (I still have our original burgee in my personal belongings.)

25th_0217 is a photograph taken at a presentation night at the end of either the 1963 or 1964 season.  From left to right, the people are Gundry Stagg (my mother), Joyce Whittam, Rob Whittam, Frank Stagg (my father), Ron Whittam, and an unknown man who may have been the club commodore at the time ( Jack Bernfeld ?). 

The smiles and the trophy on the table suggest that this might have been the year that my father was the club champion (thank goodness for the lowly handicap of a Heron with cotton sails!)

My best wished to the club and I hope that you have as much enjoyment as we did.

Howard Stagg.

These are some more photo's supplied by Howard