Because some members are on holiday, and the spate of wet weather, there has been a reduction in members playing in recent times. Despite this our Club Captain, Murray Tinker, has persevered with his weekly lessons on Tuesday mornings, weather permitting. Murray uses his experience to pass on tips and demonstrate practice skills that would be useful to improve your GC game. Murray also provided notes to members on what was discussed at each lesson. His efforts are appreciated by the members and visiting players.

Murray has designed and built a 3D Croquet Visualiser to be used as the ultimate off-court resource for coaches, referees, and players to develop and share advanced skills, strategies, and rules. Key features include:

- Instructional Versatility: Perfectly suited for creating high-quality images and video clips for both in-person classroom sessions and online instruction. - Accessibility: This is a browser-based tool, ensuring easy access across different devices without complex installations. - Community Impact: Murray's goal is to make this tool freely available to everyone globally, provided a suitable sponsor can be identified. - This tool will significantly enhance how we visualize and teach the game. Enquiries to Murray (2tinkers@gmail.com).

Six of our Gateball players travelled to Rockhampton to participate in their carnival on the weekend of 2 and 3 May. Unfortunately, due to the fuel situation at that time, there was a reduced participation from clubs and the carnival was reduced to two days. In the doubles event Kath Hayes and Robyn Lyon (Rockhampton), did very well coming second Kele. However, Robyn Brown and Sue Dixon, were the only pair to win against Steve and Chris. There were only four teams in the teams' event. The Caloundra team managed to experience success against Rockhampton who won the event. Next event, Southport!

As there are only a small number of members playing AC in each of the Sunshine Coast clubs, Murray and Sarah Widin hatched the idea that all players come to Caloundra on a Saturday afternoon for play and fellowship. This was a huge success with 24 AC players attending. We are now having a second get-together on Saturday 13 June. It has been recommended that the SCRCC subsidies this event to promote AC in our region.

The CMSC sincerely thanks the SCR Council for its valuable grant of $5000 to assist in the purchase of five sets of quadway hoops. President, Howard, drove down to Stephens Croquet Club on Wednesday 20 May to collect these hoops from Lindsay David. We already had one set of quadway hoops which our Past President, Susan Bertram, brought back from NZ some years ago. On the Sunday morning, 24 May, we had seven men down on the courts resetting our new hoops in preparation for the Queensland Open GC event.

Happy hoop setters: Don, Murray, Mike and Warren.

We hosted the Queensland Open GC event over these past three days, 29–31 May. Fortunately, the rain event finished on Thursday so the courts, although damp, were suitable for play on Friday. Thanks to all the members who assisted for once again making this a successful event. Special thanks to our Tournament Manager, Robyn Brown, for her time-consuming efforts.

There were 21 entries in this GC event in three pools of seven. The pool games were completed on the Friday. The top four in each pool advanced to the Championship while the remaining nine players competed in the Plate. The Championship was a round robin event of 1-hour games. The Plate players competed in a 19 point round robin event.

It was a Southport quinella in the Championship with Charles Ernst winning and Mary McMahon runner up. Both had nine wins however Charles won by two net hoops. Mike Mabbutt (Eildon) won the Plate with Colin Beckett (Headland Buderim) runner up.

Left to right: Colin, Mary, Charles and Mike.

Howard Williams

By Howard Williams. From the Croquet Newsletter, May/June 2026, pages 14-17.