Lynne Farry from Rockhampton talks about the club’s experiences during Cyclone Marcia.

On Friday 20^th February, 2015 Cyclone Marcia hit the coastal strip near Shoalwater Bay, just north of Byfield and Yeppoon. Shoalwater Bay is where the army exercise Talisman Sabre happens every second year with the American Marines, Army and Air Force.  The warship USS George Washington is heading there now.

We lost power where I live at about 11.30am  on the Friday morning, with pretty strong winds blowing and the rain coming down. Our club is situated in the Botanical Gardens so there are many big old trees around us. Unfortunately many of them did not survive the big blow.

We ended up with two hoop pines on top of our equipment shed, also our shade sail between the clubhouse and our large under cover awning was ripped to shreds.  When we went to have a look after cyclone had passed we could not get into premises as a large tree had been blown down across our entrance gate, and power lines were down.

We could only access our premises through the tennis courts above us. Our lawns were covered with debris of trees, shrubs and anything else that was flying around in the air. We were not able to access as it was deemed too dangerous, as some trees were still leaning. We finally gained access on the 17^th March.

The lawns were cleared but had not received any water on them in this time. They were full of weed.  Thank goodness we were insured, as I know some clubs aren’t. We now have a new equipment shed, new shade sail, and most of repairs are done. At our gateball competition visitors mentioned how good our lawns looked, thanks to our male members. Of course the ladies did their bit as well!

When we were starting up our new club for Ipswich Gateball, our secretary, Karen Stokes, was searching the internet for a suitable logo. She came across a drawing of Snoopy dressed as a gateball player. We all found this quite appropriate and decided to adopt him to identify ourselves.

We were however concerned that there may have been a copyright on the drawing, so after much research, Karen located the email address of the designer. She then wrote to Julio requesting his permission to use his Snoopy. Julio was thrilled to find someone interested in his Snoopy and gave us his permission on the proviso that we send him a photo of our team in our new uniforms. Imagine our surprise when we discovered Julio and his wife are Gateball players in Peru and Julio has his own blog. We sent Julio a photo after the first competition we played in wearing our uniforms. We were surprised and thrilled when Julio sent us back a copy of Snoopy now dressed in our new Ipswich Gateball Club colours!

We thank Julio for all is help.

Here is Julio’s story on how Snoopy was originally created –

I knew that Cindy (my wife) had always loved Snoopy. At the end of 2013 I started to play gateball and I loved this game! One day I was searching for a Snoopy picture playing gateball to surprise Cindy. After several attempts I gave up and decided to create it, and then I posted the picture on the web. She really loved it.

Some months later I received an email from Karen Stokes (from Australia! Wow!) asking permission to use the Snoopy picture as their logo (it was amazing!). Maybe you didn’t notice, but I was very proud and happy. I am an industrial engineer, not a designer but I always liked to draw since childhood. It was like winning an Oscar.

I wish Ipswich Gateball Club the best of wishes also a lot of Tacchis(touches), Tsukas (gates) and Agaris (goal poles).

Finally, thank you for letting me be part of your history.

Your friend in Peru.
Julio