Swimming Season Over

One Saturday evening in May 1935, the Blackalls Park Hall near the banks of Lake Macquarie was buzzing with excitement. It was the end of the swimming season, and the champions of the Stoney Creek Swimming Club were there to receive their trophies.

The unbeatable men’s champion, Bill Walker, knew the hall well. He had attended the club’s social dance held there in October the year before where they celebrated the opening of the swimming season in Spring. Following the presentation of the women’s awards, Bill was the first male swimmer to leave his seat and receive this ‘Messenger Cup’ trophy for the 1934-5 Senior Championship. It was just one more trophy to add to his rapidly expanding collection.

Born in Killingworth, West Wallsend, William ‘Bill’ Walker (1913-1975) was the son of Sarah Anne Punton, the great granddaughter of convict Robert Lock and Maria Lock, daughter of a Yarramundi, Chief of the Boorooberongal clan of the Darug people. When Bill was about six years old, his coal miner father returned from WWI with injuries, and moved the family to Bolton Point, on Lake Macquarie’s waterfront. There, Bill attended Toronto Public School.

As a young man, Bill Walker was a fisherman, timber getter, and carpenter, but was best known as a champion swimmer, competing at countless swimming carnivals and meets at Stoney Creek, Toronto, and around NSW – placing first, second or third in over fifty events. This 1934-5 Messenger Cup Senior Championship trophy was just one of seven trophies Bill was awarded in 1935 and one of dozens he won in his impressive twenty-year amateur swimming career.