Skatey...The life of Les Skate

Skatey
The Life of Les Skate
We had done a lot of work at the other ground getting it ready. We had basically just been
left with a great big cut in the ground with yellow clay. We had to put topsoil on that and
hope we’d get good grass. But when you put topsoil on top of clay, the top soil gets full of
water and the clay just takes over. Our boots just sank in the clay. So, we started to drain
it, we put all sorts of drains through, but it was very difficult to drain.
We put up the posts. We did have some old lights that had been given to us. We’d put
them up at the old ground, but unless you were right under the lights you couldn’t see
what you were doing. But we put them up on higher poles over the new ground for a little
while and it did help.
In the long run though, in these later years, the Coldstream Football Club has one of the
best grounds and facilities in the whole competition. I’m proud to know that. That our hard
work paid off. A lot of things went into it, sowing the right grass, the drainage … it just all
got better as we went on and it has turned out very well. As a cricket ground and as a
football ground.
It just all got better as we
went on and it has turned out
very well.
At that stage I was still putting up steel buildings. So, I
was able to get one through the firm I dealt with. It
was like a big tin shed. We whacked that up, divided it
up, and that was our change rooms for quite a while.
Then we realised that we needed something better. So, on the north end of it we built the
big clubroom. Pretty much all clubrooms were just a room at each end and a division in the
middle. We wanted to upgrade ours. Put in showers, a proper runway where they ran out
on to the ground, and stuff like that. So, then we went a bit further.
The steel building was pulled down. (That went up to my brother Neil’s place. Neil at that
stage was getting quite involved with the football team.) We built the next section. All this
was done in brick. We did our foundations and bricked them up. All this was done to carry
another storey on top which was done out of steel. This accommodated the rooms for the
timekeepers, and a balcony for viewing. Then they needed facilities for making money, and
for having meetings and parties and such. So, we built another big section. Each addition
was done much in alignment, with a little curve, to match the fence. That was quite a big
job.
That was quite a big job.
We needed a lot of concrete to pour the footings.
We ran the brick work up a little bit. Then we had to
do the concrete floors before the brickwork went up any higher. So, the concrete trucks
could pour the concrete directly from the trucks. Otherwise we would have had the cost of
the pumps and hoses that would have been needed. As well as the cost of the blokes
dragging them in.
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