England Hockey Tour to Australia, 1927

Collection of 78 b/w photographs showing the England hockey team enroute to their tour in Australia on board the RMS Mooltan, sightseeing and of hockey matches in Sri Lanka and Australia. Scenes include leaving the Port of Tilbury in [April] 1927, life on board ship, views of Algiers, Port Said, Port Sudan, Aden and Colombo and of hockey teams and matches. Some photographs are annotated on the reverse with place names but few other details are provided. Also includes manuscript tour song written enroute to Australia detailing home towns and counties of the team and a description of their playing kit as "dressed in red and a single rose", and original paper photograph wallet.

In mid-1925 an invitation was issued for an England hockey team to participate in the 1927 Australia Interstate Tournament (a tournament first held in 1910). This would be the second visit to Australia by an England team, the first being in 1914 to participate in a previous Australia Interstate Tournament and the first time an England women's hockey team left the British Isles for an international tour.

The England team travelled to Australia on the RMS Moolton, leaving the Port of Tilbury, Kent in [April] 1927 and arriving in Fremantle, Western Australia on 27 May for a nine-week tour. Enroute to Australia, the ship stopped at Algiers, Port Said, Port Sudan, Aden and Colombo.

The touring team travelled around Australia by train or boat, visiting Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne (for the Interstate Tournament), Launceston, Hobart, Sydney, Tenterfield and Brisbane. In addition to playing seven matches in the Interstate Tournament, the England team played three tests against Australia (in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney) and a further nine matches against state teams. They won all of their matches. Aside from hockey, there was a significant entertainment programme which included receptions, dinners, dances, theatre outings, lectures on hockey and motor trips. The latter included trips to Tasmania, and the Jenolan Caves and Ilparran sheep station in New South Wales.

At the conclusion of the tour in Sydney, most of the team departed for England on 27 July but four team members remained in Australia for several weeks to coach hockey in schools in different states. They were Marjorie Cussons (Queensland), G. Haskett-Smith (South Australia), M. Burman (Western Australia) and Phyllis Bryant (New South Wales).