by LES EVERETT
The scoreboards at the recent Eastern Goldfields Cricket Association grand finals didn’t have expansive stories to tell. But they did the job.
Communication between the official scorer and the board was not a problem with the same person doing both jobs.
The A-grade grand final was a 100-over per side affair and Hannans were off to a neat start when we got there. They went on to score an imposing 334 in hot conditions with Colin Stewart making a brisk 83.
Great Boulder had a task ahead of them but as it turned out they didn’t get the chance. The second day of play was washed out and Hannans, after finishing the qualifying rounds miles ahead, won the premiership.
For Great Boulder the washout meant 11 unsuccessful grand final appearances in the past 26 seasons.
The Cruickshank Sports Arena is a soulless place but it has seen its share of excitement over the years. It’s the home of the Kalgoorlie Trotting Club and it was at Cruickshank that the mighty Mount Eden won his first race in 1969.
World champion tri-athlete Gaylene Clews ran many laps of the Cruickshank Sports Arena when she was a member of the snappily titled Eastern Goldfields Amateur Athletics Association. Another EGAAA star was Olympic hockey great Terry Walsh who would have run around with a stick at Cruickshank many times.
In a special edition of Rockwiz at the West Coast Blues & Roots Festival at Fremantle Park in 2010 Oz rock veteran Tim Rogers said the first concert he ever attended was Rolf Harris at the Cruickshank Sports Arena.
Rolf isn’t the only big name to have appeared at Cruickshank. The Queen was presented to the people of the Goldfields at the sports arena in 1988 and Dennis Lillee bowled there during one of his comebacks.
The Cruickshank Sports Arena is the home of the consistently under-performing Lake View Cricket Club. Every March all eyes turn to Cruickshank for the annual Kalgoorlie-Boulder Community Fair.
Scoreboard pressure 
Outstanding job Les Everett! The memories swept back like a cloud of white, powdery dust from the slag heaps on the outskirts of town during a Kal windstorm. I forgot how every celeb that visited was paraded around and put on exhibition. We must have seemed like such hicks to some of the folk that visited town.
Do I remember a Gemini spaceship being set up and exhibited on a trailer at Cruikshank?
This, I do remember: the Fair was on, but just setting up. I ducked out of school at lunchtime to have a peep. I was eating either a Twist Cup or a Screwball: icecream in a plastic cup with a swirl of flavoured syrup thru it, I think the difference was that a Screwball had a bubblegum gobstopper in the bottom.
I was eating it with a plastic spoon and a chimp in a cage reached thru the bars toward me like he wanted a taste. No one was around so I scooped out a mouthful and put the spoon up to his mouth. The chimp bit off the whole plastic spoon, swallowed it and began to choke. I panicked and took off back to school.
I never knew what happened to that poor, dairy confectionery-craving ape. There was no headline in the ‘Kalgoorlie Miner’ declaring: “Mystery Monkey Death At Fairground. Ice-Cream Killer Still At Large!”, so I presumed he was OK… and didn’t wind up in an O’Donnells pie! (kidding, still the finest pies known to man or monkey. Washed do with an icy MexiCola – bliss!)
Brett Woodward (Resident of Egan Street, Kalgoorlie, 1970-1979)