Hi Guys,
Thought I might as well throw in my two cents worth (or maybe tuppence since we are talking pre '66) and at the same time suggest a possible sponsor in the name of ETA Foods since they have been promoting their 'Tenpin' BBQ sauce bottle for almost 50 years.
The following is a copy of a letter I sent to Bob Cook at 'Tenpin STRIKEOUT' in about 1996 telling of the story of Olympic Bowling Centres (OBC) and ETA's involvement.
Dear Bob,
Because of an article on page 6 of the September STRIKEOUT, I felt it necessary to write and set the record straight regarding the significant role undertaken by ETA Foods P/L and it's parent company Marrickville Holdings in the early development of Tenpins in Australia.
A full size three lane Brunswick equipped establishment was built at the company's Edinburgh Road Marrickville factory around 1961. It was used as a training set up and a building forerunner for the Sydney centres of Leichhardt and St. Leonards. Olympic Bowling Centres was set up as the controlling company with a David Blacklock in charge whilst Richard Crebbin was the Managing Director of Marrickville Holdings. I recall that the old Bowl in the middle of Canberra was also an OBC centre.
The Marrickville "Centre" was used by the employees (approx 1000) of an evening and weekends and we were allowed to bowl as much and as often as we liked for 2/- (20c) a session (all night). We were frequently given the hurry up of an evening by the night watchman. Yours truly won the first MARG-ETA Bowling Championship and received a red Columbia Crown Jewel (plastic) for my efforts.
When the two Sydney centres were up and running, I was heavily involved with the forming of the Company's Tenpin Social Club. At St.Leonards we had about twelve company, five person mixed teams in the Monday 6.30pm League and similar numbers at Leichhardt later in the week. Some of the teams I recall were..'The Nuts From Eta", "The Mixed Nuts", The Marville All Stars", "The Super Spreads" and "The ETA Kings". All of the teams wore multi coloured lavishly embroided shirts, unlike today's screen prints.
I particularly remember how the arrival of Tenpins brought about a very strong camaraderie to the organisation. We had factory personnel, engineering staff, sales, advertising, financial controllers and the very top executive staff all mixing it on a one to one basis and taking part in the leagues.
Over at St.Leonards, Jean Soderlund was behind the control and a little red haired fellow in short pants, named Mackie, was making a name for himself in the juniors. His two close mates, Bruce Peel and John Everson saw to it that he earned every pin.
I remember one day at the factory we were playing pool in the room next to the lanes and in walked Eric Jang, fresh from his victory in the first "Brunswick National All Star". John Burgess was at the time thumping out the music as a DJ and member of Radio 2UW'S Good Guys.
The red ETA BBQ sauce bottle referred to in the last STRIKEOUT, was originally designed to look like a bowling pin because of the Company's heavy involvement with the sport. At the time of this product release (about 1963/64 ?) I was assistant to the ETA Advertising Manager.
The initial design and release was a rigid plastic bottle with a white moulded base to waste high, then red from waste to top, about 50/50 in colour. However, because of breakages and the resultant poor product presentation, this soon gave way to the current all red pliable plastic bottle.
As I recall, we did run a similar promotion using neck tags and gave away the old red and white sauce bottles as bowling pins. It's good to see the ETA involvement with the sport once again (1996) and I hope these few comments stir up some memories for those of the old brigade....letter ends.
Around this time '63/64 I did some coaching at Rushcutter and remember a lot of the old crew. I think this is long enough without going off another tangent....hope someone finds this info useful..almost forgot..ETA and Marrickville were owned by Meadow- lea Foods back in about '96.
