HISTORY OF THE AUSTRALIA DAY REGATTA

173 years of celebrating Australia Day afloat

Australia Day, 26 January 2009 will mark 173 years of Australians celebrating our National Day in a unique and most appropriate way – by competing in or watching the grand spectacle of the Australia Day Regatta on Sydney Harbour.

The 173rd Australia Day Regatta is the world’s oldest continuous annual sailing regatta, a celebration afloat of the day when a small group of sailors, marines and convicts from the First Fleet hoisted the Union Jack on the shores of Farm Cove. 

In doing so, they founded the colony of New South Wales that was to become our great nation, the Commonwealth of Australia, and the port town that grew into the huge City of Sydney.

Only 49 years after the arrival of the First Fleet, a group of citizens of Sydney decided to celebrate the anniversary of that historic day by staging a regatta, originally called the Anniversary Regatta, now the Australia Day Regatta. 

The Australia Day Regatta has been held every year since 1837 – in peace and war – an extraordinary achievement.

The inaugural Anniversary Regatta was held on 26 January 1837 and was duly reported in the ‘Sydney Herald’ and in the ‘Monitor’ of the next day. The program comprised two yacht races, one race for whaleboats, another for gigs and a rowing race for waterman’s skiffs.   Rowing events continued to be part of the Regatta for more than a century but today there are only races for sailing craft.  

Each Australia Day Regatta has had a Flagship, the first being the barque Pyramus aboard which Captain Livesay entertained members of the organising committee to a long lunch as the competitors and spectators enjoyed a good sailing breeze and bright sunshine.

The ‘Sydney Herald’ report states:  “The event went off with great spirit. The day was remarkably fine and there were crowds of people on the points of land. The steam packet ‘Australian’ was crowded with people, who kept up dancing nearly the whole of the time. The Hobart Town packet ‘Francis Feeling’, with a large party of ladies and a band, intended to sail about during the Regatta, but she ran on a point near Milson’s early in the morning and stopped there all day.”

In the early days of the Regatta merchant ships, originally sail and then steam, and passenger liners were the Flagships, among them the liner Mongolia that was torpedoed during World War I.  During both World Wars the regatta continued to be held to maintain its continuity, but with small fleets and a Sydney ferry as the Flagship one year.

Since 1988, the Royal Australia Navy has provided a Flagship for most Australia Day Regattas, except when the fleet was away on operational duties.  Naval involvement goes back to the earliest regattas when sailors competed in whalers and other craft and in the 1970s through to the 1990s in the fleet of then RAN yachts.

The bark Endeavour, the replica of Captain Cook’s famous ship, was the Flagship for the 159^th Regatta in 1995 and for the 160^th Regatta the Flagship was the state-of-the-art warship HMAS Sydney.

Many famous yachts and yachtsmen have taken part in the Australia Day Regatta over the past 170 years.  One such yacht was James Milson Jr’s twelve-tonner Friendship, which won many Anniversary Day Regattas between 1840 and 1848. 

In 2006 the Australia Day Regatta Management Committee struck a new medallion featuring the Friendship, which is presented to the winners and placegetters in all Australia Day Regatta races on Sydney Harbour and other waterways.

In 1888, 100 years after the First Fleet arrived, the biggest yachts in Sydney raced for The One Hundred Years Challenge Cup, a long race that took the fleet offshore to Long Reef and Long Bay before returning to the Harbour.  A.G. Milson’s Era won the Cup and again the following year to take the trophy outright.

The 100^th Australia Day Regatta was not held on the 26 January, that being a Sunday, but on Monday, 27 January 1937, with the Orient Line steamer Ormonde as the Flagship.  The program of 29 races was described by ‘The Australian Boating Annual’ as “consisting of races for sailing men, rowing men and motor boat enthusiasts, all engaged in clean healthy sport, as befits the young Australian” continuing on to editorialise…”

Could there be a more appropriate manner of celebrating the event that took place on that bright day in January 1788 within a short distance of the Flagship’s anchorage?  Could there be a better way of celebrating the birthday of Australia?”

In recent years the traditional regatta on Sydney Harbour has been expanded to waters throughout New South Wales with many clubs conducting regattas on the Parramatta and Lane Cove Rivers, on Botany Bay, Pittwater, Lake Macquarie, Brisbane Waters, Lake Illawarra and Port Hacking as well as inland dams and lakes under the auspices of the Australia Day Regatta Inc.

With the ongoing voluntary contribution by members of the Advisory Council and the Management Committee, supported by many yacht clubs and yacht owners and a generous principal sponsor in the Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s Commonwealth Private Bank, the future of the Australia Day Regatta looks assured.