page_title: Shire of Sherwood
section_title: Sporting Clubs
hierarchical_section_title: Shire of Sherwood / Sporting Clubs
caption_attribution_description: English: Interclub race with twelve footer skiffs on the Oxley course, 1930.
context_page_description: The Shire of Sherwood is a former local government area of Queensland, Australia, located in south-western Brisbane in and around the suburb of Sherwood.
context_section_description: The Brisbane Golf Club, the first sporting club in the Sherwood Shire was organized in a meeting of city businessmen held in the A.M.P. chambers in 1896. The club built a 9 hole course at Chelmer between the railway line and river. The Brisbane Golf Club became the first golf club in Queensland. To enlarge the playing area to 18 holes, the club moved from the shire to Yeerongpilly, where it is presently situated. The original clubhouse still stands on Honour Avenue opposite the Chelmer Railway Station.
  The Oxley Electorate Sailing Club when formed in 1902, chose the reach of the Brisbane River at Chelmer east as its sailing area. The club catered for all classes of craft until the 1920s, when it limited competition to 14 foot sharpies. By 1921, senior office-bearers included Augustus Cecil Elphinstone of Corinda, representing the Oxley Electorate in the Legislative Assembly, and solicitors John Cannan junior and Arthur Baynes, both of Chelmer.
  Horse racing was introduced in the 1860s, on a course in the grounds of the Oxley hotel. Racing was intermittent, drawing entries from Ipswich and the Nerang and Logan River areas. A 1910 picnic race programme consisted of foot races, swimming events in Oxley Creek. During World War 1, horse races were staged at Oxley in aid of the Red Cross.
  In the mid-1890s, a cricket club the Sherwood Forest Cricket Club, drew local support. The Corinda Cricket Club functioned briefly in the early 1900s and by 1920 another cricket club, the Sherwood Cricket Club, attracted players from the shire community. During 1921, the Western Suburbs Electorate Cricket Club entered the Queensland Cricket Associations fixtures with its territory embracing both the Taringa and Sherwood Shires. Local players were Sherwood cinema owner Barney Cook, and Corinda resident and city auctioneer, Roger Hartigan.
  Thomas Hall introduced athletics to the area in the early 1900s with neighbour, John Beal, an accountant in the Lands Department. Hall led a committee supporting the Oxley Electorate Amateur Athletic Club. The Chelmer Lacrosse Club after World War 1 entered two teams in the Brisbane competition.
  In 1919, two sporting clubs, the Graceville Croquet Club and the Graceville Bowls Club were formed. The women who founded the croquet club, initially played on the lawns of several ladies in the district but in 1920, the shire council granted the croquet players a lease on a portion of Graceville Memorial Park. The formation of the Graceville Bowls Club attracted an initial membership of seventy. Sherwood resident, Chief Justice Sir Pope Cooper, served as foundation Patron.
  Since the 1890s there was an increased interest in tennis. This led to the rapid increase of tennis courts in the large allotments to the west of the railway, where social games were played among the middle class and their invited guests. Hardcourts on smaller residential allotments to the east of the railway were constructed. Between the two world wars, over 120 tennis courts were situated in the suburbs from Chelmer to Oxley. Sherwood had 37 courts, Graceville 31, Corinda 27, Chelmer 20, and Oxley, 9. Following World War 1, tennis enthusiasts formed and administered the Western Suburbs Tennis Association which from the 1920s, organized graded competitions between clubs situated in the Chelmer- Oxley area. It was customary for women to provide the afternoon tea and the men to pay for the balls used in the match.
  The Sherwood Boy Scouts, established in 1910 by James Knox-Dunn initially comprised a dozen boys aged between 12 and 17 being formed into patrols located between Chelmer and Oxley. The scout movement contained a moral code outlined by British Boer War hero, Robert Stephenson Smythe Baden-Powell, in his book ‘Scouting for Boys’.  This code expected boy scouts to do their duty to God, and to the King along with motivating regular church attendance. A re-organization of the Sherwood scouts occurred after World War 1 where they met as a troop rather than in separate patrols. The adult supporters committee comprised the three local protestant cl
caption: StateLibQld 1 291383 Interclub race with twelve footer skiffs on the Oxley course, 1930
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