The Australian Marblehead. (A record second to none).

Most things have a start point. R/C Marbleheads started in Australia in 1974 circa. Before that year National Marblehead events were contested with vane steered type boats. The vane steered boats continued on till 1976.

In the era of this changeover period, the boats didn’t change to a marked degree in style. Basically the Marbleheads with radio were basic vane boats that had radio fitted to them. The skeg bound rudders was removed gradually (in parts) and the balanced rudder, that we know today, added.

It was some years till the pure radio designs become more prevalent in the fleet. I won a NSW State Championship in 1976 with a Doug Billing ‘Turi” vane design as a R/C boat. Alan Fish came second with a Chris Dicks ‘247’ R/C design that could be vane steered if desired.

The R/C Marblehead registration started about KA 96 (or about 1974). For the next lot of registrations till approx KA600, there were only 4 English designed boats registered in Australia. And in one short era in 1984 in the space of 2 months there were 10 Australian designers represented in the new Marblehead registration numbers and they were in that order; Mitchell, Adams, Porter, Jenkins, Brewer, Pascoe, Sorenson and Robinson. I just show this as an example of what was happening in Australia in that era. Some people would say that the most prolific designers/builders in Australia was between Adrian Brewer with ‘Alphabet Soup’ and Rod Adams ‘Huff and Puff” of Tasmania. Both these boats represented the start of the modern era R/C of Marbleheads. This era was followed up with Alan Fish’s ‘Scorpion’ and the later ‘Spider’ series. I see some other designers of that era were from Ken Williams and Col Cameron of Queensland, Mike Bielby in Western Australia, to name just a few of the many.

Also in about this time Frank Russell came along with his popular designs of the ‘Zero’ and ‘Woodpeckers’. Ron Attard started with his  MKs of ‘Maltese Falcons’. This particular MK designs had over 175 boats built to them. Ron told me recently that he only made 3 MKs, Maltese Falcons. He went on to say, that you could tell these MKs apart from the amount of cutaway in the first 10” under the waterline in the front of the hulls. To the MK 3 that had none.

 There were other designers from the USA like Chuck Black, Tom Potheroe of Santa Barbara with ‘Epic’ and the Terry Allen’s designed ‘Spot’ that was very popular in Australia as well. Jon Amalek with ‘Archer’ design. There is a fair collection of all these boats still racing, today.

In 1990 circa, about this time the floodgates started to really open in a renewed era for Marbleheads in Australia. Designers such as Alan Robinson from Western Australia started to be noticed and a partnership between Robinson and Waliki developed the M1 to M7 range of boats. These were really good in comparison with the Waliki type of boat. However this partnership didn’t last that long unfortunately. The beauty of these Robinson M series was that they were compatible with the top boats. At the same time Frank Russell was going into another era in his designs, doing the ever popular Abacus 1 and some time later with the MK11, that has sold all over Australia. These two MKs have lasted well even to this present day (2006), where there are quite a few still racing.

 So one can see that there have been a lot of Australian boats/ designs since R/C Marbleheads started in 1976 to be used in Australia. Our Marblehead history (designs) is second to none in the world. And seriously, we should be proud of the fine designs this country has produced over the last 30 odd years.

 Stephen Crewes. ARYA Historian.2006