Football in the Hills

May 4

2 min read

As we are in the throes of football season we thought we would find some early photographs of local football teams here in the Hills.

In the early 1900s football was always very popular and often attracted trainloads of spectators from as far away as Perth, whenever a match was played. The teams in the Hills Football Association were from Mundaring, Mundaring Weir, Parkerville, Sawyers Valley, Lion Mill, Chidlow, Wooroloo and Baker’s Hill.

Ben Seabrook wrote about this in ”Life was meant to be Here“ by Ken Spillman (available in Mundaring Libraries) as per below:

"The Hills Football Association was founded in 1946 by men of vision, both for the game and the community. From what I’ve been told it was one of the first organisations to get up and running after the war, with organised competition that raised the various communities’ spirits. To use a term common today, it gave them some 'self-esteem'. When we consider the great difficulties of the time, it’s amazing that the association was able to embark on a trip to Geraldton in 1947. They had to pool petrol coupons, travel in trucks and utes and roads were poor. To get a team and management up there - and the money to do so - speaks highly of the executive, football community and supporters.

Most of the men were employed locally - timber cutters, railway workers, and men working on orchards or the Water Supply. While the communities were not exactly isolated, transport was a problem. Most people didn’t have cars and anyone who did was king. In the early days, wood trucks would take a big group like buses do today. I think it was this lack of individual transport that made to communities something special."

The earliest photograph we have in our collection is of Smiths Mill Football team in 1903.

Click on image to read caption.