SPORTING LOVE WAS IN THE STARS
JOHN Womersley’s only real answer to why he fell in love with archery is in the stars.
A founding member of Geelong Archers, the sport has taken him around the world and to three Olympic Games since the club was founded 60 year ago this month.
Womersley was one of 17 members to sign up on May 5, 1960, but his connection to the bow and arrow goes back even further.
“The only explanation I have is I guess being born under the sign of Sagittarius, the archer,” he said.
“I have always been interested in archery and the historical aspects of archery.
“It goes way, way, way back to when I was just a teenager.”
Young Womersley and his mates in the Victorian town of Dimboola split their time between billy carts and their own form of archery.
“We got quite good at making bows out of pine saplings and used plaited string, and for the arrows, we used to pinch the old palings off people’s fences and round them off with a plane,” he said. “I came to Geelong as a 16-year-old way back in 1954 but it wasn’t until 1957 that I bought my first bow, which was a long bow made by Slazenger.
“I shot by myself down in the bush at the back of Anglesea into a cardboard box with a target drawn on it, then I heard about the archery club being formed and I went along and the rest is history.”
Technology has moved on since Womersley carved palings into arrows, with aluminium and carbon ingredients making modern bow and arrows leap into what he describes as the “space age”. Geelong Archers has steadily grown its numbers over the years and now has about 90 members.
Womersley has been a mainstay at the club and has travelled the world, officiating at 19 world championships, a Paralympic Games and three Olympics, Los Angeles in 1984, Seoul in 1988 and Sydney in 2000.
He is a member of the Archery Australia Hall of Fame and was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for services to the sport in 1978. It even helped him find love.
“I met my wife (Susanne) through archery in Austria and she migrated to Australia in January 1988,” he said.
Archery uses dangerous equipment but Womersley is adamant it is a safe sport and he hasn’t had any nasty runins with stray arrows.
“The safety aspect of archery is paramount and we enforce that to the nth degree,” he said.
A 60th birthday planned this month is on hold until coronavirus restrictions ease.