Glenorie Probus Club turned the middle of the year into Christmas for an afternoon, gathering at the Dural Club for its traditional Christmas in July lunch.
True to form, the tables groaned under a full festive spread, reindeer ornaments and pine trees stood in for tinsel and holly, and coffee and tea came paired with chocolates marking Probus’s 50th anniversary — a sweet touch members clearly appreciated. By all accounts, plates were piled high enough that more than a few members skipped dinner that evening, happily full from lunch alone.
It’s the kind of gathering Probus does well: good food, familiar faces, and this month, a guest speaker who turned out to be the highlight of the day. Noel Phelan, from the Naval Historical Society of Australia, spoke on the history of Halvorsen Boats, and by the sound of it, he had the room hooked.
The story goes back to 1887, when Norwegian farmer Halvor Andersen built his first wooden boat near Arendal. His son Lars took up the trade properly, built a solid business, then lost it all when the post-World War I recession hit and his ship Nidelv sank on the one voyage he hadn’t bothered insuring.
Lars didn’t stay down for long — he moved to Cape Town in 1922 and started a new boatbuilding and repair business there. It went well, but with five sons to think about, Lars decided South Africa wasn’t big enough for what he had in mind, so in late 1924 he and his eldest son Harold set sail for Sydney instead.
That move changed the course of Australian boatbuilding. Between 1925 and 1976, the Halvorsen family built 1,299 boats, starting with one called Sirius from a slipway in Drummoyne, then moving through Neutral Bay before settling into bigger premises on the Parramatta River at Ryde.
During the Second World War, plenty of Halvorsen pleasure cruisers found themselves doing very different work with the Volunteer Coastal Patrol and, later, the Naval Auxiliary Patrol. Harold became managing director of the family firm, Lars Halvorsen Sons Pty Ltd, and kept designing boats through it all, while his four brothers looked after other sides of the business.
The name really made its mark in the 1960s — building the yacht Gretel for Frank Packer’s America’s Cup tilt in 1962, then watching brothers Trygve and Magnus steer their own boat, Freya, to three Sydney to Hobart wins on handicap in 1963, 1964 and 1965. Nobody has pulled off that hat-trick since.
Members walked away from Phelan’s talk with a real sense of pride in what one Norwegian family managed to build from scratch, twice over, on the other side of the world from where they started.
More community spirit showed later in the month, when the club headed to Galston High School for the students’ production of the musical Mary Poppins. It was, by every account, a performance well worth the trip — the kind of show that only comes together after months of rehearsal, and a proud moment for the students and staff who put it together.
The Club meets at 11.00 am on the 4 th Wednesday of the month at Glenorie RSL and new members are welcome
Contact Wendy Black by email at [email protected]
