Deb Killick was sorting through her late father's things when she came across a mounted photograph she had never seen before. Printed across the top, in the careful hand-lettering of the era: Wellington Point Cricket Club, Q.C.A. Premiers, 2nd Grade, June 1930-31. Ninety-five years after the last ball of that season, it has come home.
This is now the oldest photograph in the club's collection, and very likely the oldest image of a Wellington Point side that exists anywhere. It is stained, foxed and worn at the edges. Some of the faces have been eaten away by damp. None of that matters. Sixteen men sat down for a photographer after a winning season, and here they still are.
The photograph
Original in the collection of the Killick family. Gelatin silver print on a card mount, roughly quarter-plate. Digitised and lightly restored for the club archive, 2026. The original has not been altered.
What the mount tells us
The lettering on the card is the only documentation that came with the photo. Part of it has flaked away, but what survives is enough to date and place the side exactly.
Q.C.A. is the Queensland Cricket Association, the body that ran competitive cricket in and around Brisbane at the time. A Second Grade premiership in that competition was no small thing for a village side. Wellington Point in 1930 was farmland and jetty, a long way from town, and the men in this photograph would have travelled to their away games by rail.
The word after “2nd Grade” is June, damaged but readable. That is the month the photograph was taken, not the month they won anything. Queensland cricket is a summer game, so the 1930-31 season would have finished around March. The premiership was won, the winter came, and some months later the side put on their whites again and sat for a photographer to have it recorded properly.
- Wellington Point Cricket Club, premiers of the Q.C.A. Second Grade competition, season 1930-31.
- Photographed in June, some months after the season itself would have finished.
- Sixteen players and officials in the group, plus two men shown separately in circular insets at the top corners, almost certainly club office bearers.
- The two seated men in suits are the club officials of the day. Everyone else is in whites, with pads and bats laid out at the front in the style of the period.
- Taken indoors against a studio backdrop, not at the ground, which was standard practice for a premiership portrait.
- Not one name. The mount carries no player list and none was written on the back.
- Which two men are the insets, and whether they are the president and secretary.
- The photographer, and whether other copies survive in Redlands families.
- Whether the June on the mount is 1931, at the close of the premiership season, or a later sitting.
Two names to start with
Deb has given us the one thread we can pull on. Her grandfather, Duncan George Martin, and his brother-in-law, whose surname was Apps, both farmed at Wellington Point in this era. She believes one or both of them are in the photograph. Which faces they are, nobody in the family now knows.
“I thought that you may be interested in this photo which I found whilst going through some of my Dad's things. I have no names, but it is likely that my grandfather, Duncan George Martin, or his brother-in-law, surname Apps, were in the team. They had farms in Wellington Point at the time.”
Deb Killick, in her letter to the clubMartin and Apps are the sort of names that turn up right through the early history of the Point. Farming families, a few hundred metres of dirt road between them, and a cricket side on Saturday. If those two are in this photograph, then somewhere out there are descendants who can pick them out at a glance.
Help us put names to these faces
If you recognise anyone in this photograph, hold another copy of it, or have family who played for Wellington Point in the 1930s, please get in touch. We will credit every identification and update this page as names come in. Old photographs, scorebooks, caps, blazers and newspaper clippings are all welcome too, we will digitise them and return the originals.
Thirty-five years after the first meeting
Wellington Point Cricket Club was formed in January 1895 at the Wellington Point Hotel. The earliest record we have of it is a short newspaper report of the first annual general meeting, six matches played, three won. This photograph was taken thirty-five years later, and by then the club was good enough to take a Q.C.A. premiership.
Another ninety-five years on, the Wildcats are still turning out on a Saturday. Different ground, same club. Read the 1895 article that started it all.
Our thanks to Deb Killick for thinking of the club, and for making sure this photograph did not end up in a skip. It is exactly the sort of thing that would otherwise be lost.
