A-Day Bowls celebrates 20 years in Bourke

. A-Day winners David O’Sullivan, Willie Orcher and Michael Brown with Slapper Bye’s niece Donna Willoughby and great niece Brooklyn Willoughby. Photo TWH

On Saturday, the A-Day Bowls rolled along for its 20th year in Bourke and is as popular as ever.

Bourke’s Victor Bartley was instrumental in the formation of the annual bowls day, which aims to unite people through a love of sport.

“The day was started 20 years ago by me, Rodney Edwards and Rolly Frail,” Victor said.

“As members of the Bourke Bowling Club we were thinking about what our contribution could be to NAIDOC Week, so we came up with the Aboriginal or A-Day bowling tournament.”

“There was a lot going on about reconciliation and we wanted to include black fellas and white fellas but rather than play against each other, we wanted to play with each other. So that’s how it started, the teams had to have three people and each team must have one Aboriginal and two non-Aboriginals, or vice versa.”

Victor said support of the Bourke Council and local businesses really got things off the ground. […]

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