Playing Hookey !!! A very serious game.

‘Playing Hooky’, many of you, myself included, may think this means by definition:-
To be absent from school with out permission or excuse. However if you were a drinker in the 1930’s in Kalgoorlie Boulder you probably would remember a quite different game.

I first heard of this game when an ‘Outback Family History’ reader, Carol Mazalevskis, recently contacted me to say she had found a silver engraved cup with this inscription, H Byfield is her husbands grandfather:-

Bill Browns Hookey Tournament,
7th December 1937
R Daws
J Miles
T Miles
J Tierney
H Byfield
D Miller

You can see a video on the cup at:- http://on.fb.me/1IIr8NM

The two Miles mentioned are almost certainly are Jim and Tom Miles, sons of old man Miles who actually lived next door to Olga and “Digger” Daws in Johnston Street. Jim was an engineering graduate of the School of Mines and became the mine engineer at the Sons of Gwalia, working there until it shut. The H. Byfield is probably the original Hughie Byfield and they lived in Wittenoom Street Boulder opposite the Boulder (now “Digger” Daws) oval. “Thanks to Doug Daws for this info!!

Hookey was a game played in pubs and consisted of a ring hanging on a rope from the ceiling. The aim was to swing the ring at the ‘right’ speed to cause it to neatly click onto a protrusion on the wall. Too fast, too slow or off aim and the ring didn’t engage with the protrusion.

There was a quite famous game out at the Westralia Block Hotel in 1932, down behind the Chaffers mine where the winner of the game received (I have been told) a special prize!!

Hookey Fixtures

The Golden Eagle pub was very popular with a lot of these young Boulder blokes in the lead up to WW2 and there used to be a lot of memorabilia on the walls recording their enlistments. There was a  group that used to sing this song, would anyone know the rest of the words??

“The Boulder Boys are we, the Boulder Boys are free”

I am sure that lots of readers will have seen this children’s game which was a spin off from the adults version:-

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Moya Sharp

Owner at Outback Family History

My name is Moya Sharp, I live in Kalgoorlie Western Australia and have worked most of my adult life in the history/museum industry. I have been passionate about history for as long as I can remember and in particular the history of my adopted home the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia. Through my website I am committed to providing as many records and photographs free to any one who is interested in the family and local history of the region.

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