Photos by Jesse Maskell
If it wasn’t for the picket fence and the sheep we may not have caught a glimpse of the Bookham cricket ground as we headed for Canberra last week, zooming past in the Scoreboard Pressure touring van. But driver and passengers all made a silent pact that Bookham would be our first stop on the return journey a few days later. No one had to say anything.
We could not find a scoreboard, but you can’t always get what you want. Maybe it was tucked away in the locked clubrooms. The clubrooms were originally a schoolhouse at a place called Shannon’s Flat. A lovely plaque tells you that.
We caught a glimpse of the Bookham Cricket Club honour board (last entry 2003 or thereabouts) and, in a more photogenic corner, a cricket bat, a poster of Merv Hughes, and a team photo.
Bookham (population about 100) is about an hour north of Canberra. The inter-wiki-web-thing tells us the area was once known as Cumbookambookinah, and Bogolong. Childhood memories of the races at Bogalong Racetrack apparently inspired Banjo Paterson to write his poem Old Pardon the Son of Reprieve.
We’re not sure if the old racetrack and the current cricket ground are one and the same thing, but we can tell you that we had a very pleasant 40 minutes at beautiful Bookham.
Scoreboard pressure 