By Ross Hartley
Established in 1905 this site is so much more than just a footy ground. Yes it was home to the Penguin Football Club from the get-go. Whereas footy heritage can be transferable, as the club relocates so does its history, not so the site’s heritage, which can never move.
Those voices from the past, well over 100 years of them, cry out for recognition, commemoration and honouring. The question is how will the Penguin community answer this call, especially given that nowadays so much of the population knows little of the history?
Craig Dunham’s research into the ground’s history offers much insight. Fundraising paid for the 1920s grandstand; the site widely used by community groups for the annual agricultural show, regular athletic and sports carnivals, women’s hockey, gymkhanas, sheep dog trials, and more. The ground was also the site for patriotic celebrations during the war like the bonfire at the end of WW2, and earlier ANZAC Day celebrations. The Penguin Light Horse Troop had used the site in earlier decades. And then there were various community events. Celebrating King George V’s 25th year on the throne, and Queen Elizabeth’s 1954 visit to Penguin.
More recent decades have seen wood chopping, marching girls, Penguin’s first ever soccer game and various music performances added to the list.
Local Terry Owens recalls the time when three games of football were played on Saturday; when Acker Bilk’s rendition of the 1960s song ‘Stranger on the Shore’ was the Penguin Football Ground signature tune.
So while some simply see a large bare ground in the town’s centre just metres from the foreshore, others see the very soul of Penguin, those voices in the wind relegated to the library of lost achievements and community-building. A footy ground that symbolises local pride, a space where people have come together for decades, often transcending social, economic, and generational divides.
In towns like Penguin where opportunities for socialising or cultural expression were limited in bygone days, the footy ground often became the lifeblood of the community spirit. It embodied a sense of home, history, and hope, maintaining a vital connection between its people and the place we all call home.
And now we bid farewell. The abandoned site was always going to be housing, of whatever ilk. A clear choice remains, however. The library of abandoned achievements on the one hand. Or, on the other, an exemplary showcasing of the ground’s cultural past through interpretive signage and artwork.