In this week’s article celebrating the 60th Year of the Boorowa Touch and Netball Carnival, St Joseph’s students have interviewed more locals who have had many years of experiencing the joys of the carnival.

A group of our Year 6 students sat down with Mrs Sharon McGrath, Mr Paul Crowe and Mr Gary Dwyer to find out more about the Boorowa Touch and Netball Carnival history.

By Jacob - Mr Paul Crowe and Mrs Sharon McGrath have had many years of history in the carnival and have played many roles over the years.

Mr Crowe has marked both the touch and netball fields, and he would also proudly mow the grass up on the fields each year.

Mrs Sharon McGrath has a long history as she used to play in the St Joey’s netball teams as a student, she helped her dad set up the fields on Saturday morning before they played and, as the Office Manager at St Joseph’s, she would help figure out the nomination of the teams and help organise the running of the carnival.

Mrs McGrath has seen lots of changes to the carnival over the 60 years it has been running.

In 2002 the organisation all went electronic making a huge impact on the organisation of the gala day as, in her early days of helping to organise it, nominations and the draw was all done by mail and manually.

Now, computers make it easier to do these jobs.

Mrs McGrath remembered when they had to wear Dunlop Volley’s, which are shoes, but now there are different ones like Adidas, Asics, Under Armour, Nikes, and Sketchers.

By George - Mr Crowe remembers that the canteen was very different; there were mostly soft drinks and no water or Red Bull to give you wings.

The only food available was sausage and steak sandwiches and pies from the local bakery.

Today we are still able to get sausages and steak sandwiches, but now we are able to buy chocolate, Poppers, Powerade, chips, lollies and Zooper Doopers.

Mr Crowe remembers getting up very early on the Saturday morning of the carnival to get to the showground to finish setting up and getting ready for the day.

He remembers that there were enough games for the kids to play so they would keep out of trouble, leading to a very long day that finished at about 4pm in the afternoon.

By Tom - Mr Crowe has many favourite memories of how much the kids enjoy the day and the bonfire they all used to sit around with their blankets.

The reason the bonfire was made is because of the big frost on the mornings of the carnivals.

With Mrs McGrath remembering drying her old-fashioned runners between games because they were wet from the frost.

Mr Crowe also remembered marking the touch football fields and netball court with lime powder.

The Touch Football Netball Carnivals used to be between the junior football clubs, with teams coming from Yass, Young, Cowra, Coota, Harden, Boorowa and Junee.

The days used to be for Primary and Secondary students, with the Yr 11s and Yr 12s doing a lot of the refereeing.

By Finn - I interviewed Gary Dwyer as he was on the Boorowa Football and Netball committee for 30 years and enjoyed it very much over his 30 years.

Gary became the president of the committee and remembers going up 3 days early to mark the lines and put up the posts that were made out of stringy bark.

Gary was a part of the group of people that got a grant to build more toilets, and they are still standing today.

Gary recalled that the bricks used in the building came from a factory just out of Boorowa, near Rugby.

Gary also remembers how the carnival changed and that it was originally tackle footy but it then had netball involved because there were lots of girls running around doing nothing.

This changed when the schools took over organising the carnival.

The day had to become touch and netball because of insurance.

There were a few people who weren’t happy with it. But now it is a great day and there are lots of teams running around keeping active.