Courting tennis heritage in Queensland

Guest blogger: Dr Kate Kirby, 2025 Queensland Heritage Register Fellow.

Queensland’s hot summer of tennis is upon us, with the Brisbane International opening the 2026 competition year. Held annually at Tennyson, the Brisbane International finals are played on Queensland’s “premier centre court”, Pat Rafter Arena, at the Queensland Tennis Centre (QTC).(1) Built on the site of the decommissioned Tennyson Power Station in the late 2000s, the QTC is a relatively new sporting facility.(2)

Residential and backyard courts

Modern recreational practices prioritise backyard pools over backyard courts. However, driving around older Queensland suburbs can reveal some intact examples of residential courts. Digitised photographs in the State Library's John Oxley Library collection highlight social tennis parties held at historical residential and station courts. While the sporting fashions have changed substantially, the court markings and racquet shapes are familiar.

Community and club courts

As tennis grew in popularity across Queensland from the 1870s, communities also began building courts in local parks.(3) Such locations became hubs of activity for local tennis clubs and inter-town competition rivalry. The Queensland Lawn Tennis Association (QLTA) was formed in the late 1880s, with state tennis championships held across community courts in Brisbane from 1888.(4) Locations included Albert Park, Auchenflower, the Botanic Gardens, the Brisbane Exhibition Grounds and Toowong Sports Ground.(5) In regional and rural areas, tennis clubs built courts in parks, showgrounds, and next to local churches.

Before Tennyson, Milton was considered “home” to tennis in Queensland.(6) The QLTA moved there in the 1910s, and in subsequent decades, significant sporting and entertainment events were held there until the closure of the Milton Tennis Centre in the 1990s.(7)  A highlight included the 1969 Australian Open, won by Queenslander Rod Laver. (8)

School courts

The building of tennis courts as part of primary and secondary school facilities has also been typical across the state. As recorded in the Queensland Heritage Register, the grounds are an important part of Queensland school designs, including sporting facilities such as ovals and tennis courts. School tennis courts were often grass, though at times they were made of ant-bed, built by local families and schoolteachers.

Court history and heritage

History and heritage are related but different concepts. In Queensland, a place may be determined to have state cultural heritage significance “if its heritage values contribute to our understanding of the wider pattern and evolution of Queensland’s history and heritage”.(9) The Queensland Heritage Register lists places of cultural heritage significance to Queensland, as determined by eight criteria. 

In many Register entries, tennis is mentioned in the history, but not in relation to why a place is considered culturally significant to Queensland. Reasons for this vary. In some instances, the tennis court has been demolished and is no longer extant; in others, the court still exists but is not the reason the place is deemed to have state heritage significance. For example, the tennis courts at Graceville Uniting Church Complex and Sherwood State School in Brisbane or at McConnell Park in Toogoolawah.

Only about 20 entries on the Queensland Heritage Register describe courts or tennis as contributing to the heritage significance of a place. Such recognition often relates to places considered to be “important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of Queensland’s history” (criteria A), or “important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a particular class of cultural places” (criteria D). For example:

Pelota Mano Court: “Constructed with one wall at the front and one on the players left, the Pelota Mano Court is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of the 'ezker pareta', or left-wall type of traditional Basque handball court construction”. (10)

Tor, Toowoomba: “an elegant residence set on an elevation in a large garden with boundary plantings, tennis court and a sweeping carriage-drive, Tor has a high level of aesthetic significance”. (11)

Yeronga Memorial Park, Brisbane: “is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of its type: a public park since 1882 and a war memorial since 1917. Much of the 1917 layout of the park survives. Elements within the park that are important in demonstrating the use of the park for these purposes include: the tennis courts and surrounding cypress trees…”. (12)

What is missing? 

Although Queenslanders are currently leaning further into pickleball, now is a good time to reflect on what tennis or court heritage may be missing from the Queensland Heritage Register. Are there courts in your town that may be culturally significant to the people of Queensland?

As a sport historian, I frequently reflect on the history of Frew Park in Brisbane. Today, the park is vastly different from the tennis mecca it was throughout the twentieth century. While much has changed as part of redevelopment in the 2010s, the tennis memories many Queenslanders associate with the place persist. Although high-performance tennis is now played on the south bank of Maiwar at Tennyson, community tennis is still played on park courts connected to the new Roy Emerson Tennis Centre. Signage reminds visitors of some of the tennis history associated with the park, and movable heritage elements, like the big racquet, have returned and been re-integrated into the new development.

The Laver backyard court

Further north, there is a historical residential court that isn’t on the Queensland Heritage Register and should be assessed for inclusion: the 1940s Laver backyard court in Main Street, Park Avenue, Rockhampton.(13)

Rod Laver was raised in Rockhampton, and his home-grown sporting achievements have made a significant impression on both his hometown and Queenslanders more broadly. The ‘Rockhampton Rocket’ is one of Australia’s most recognised tennis players, having won all Grand Slam singles titles in 1962 as an amateur and again in 1969 as a professional athlete.(14) 

In his autobiography, Laver recalled, “when Dad was looking for a place for us to live, one of his requirements was that the yard must have sufficient room for us to lay another homemade tennis court. At the Main Street Park Avenue house we were able to clear the scrub and Dad, Bob, Trev and I carted the soil and silt in his truck.”(15) He reflected, “I am always amazed when I look back at my life, and my tennis career, and realise that it all started on Dad’s ant-bed court in our yard in Rockhampton.”(16)

The backyard tennis court is still intact and remains in use as the only public clay court in town.(17) The court is not currently protected by any heritage registers at the local or state levels. Unfortunately, the old Laver family house was removed from the Main Street site in the early 2010s after the property’s owner decided to extend a school car park in its place.(18)

With historical and social significance to Queenslanders, the court would meet at least three criteria for entry on the Queensland Heritage Register, representing:

• An important place demonstrating a strong contribution to the pattern of development and popularity of tennis across regional Queensland in the twentieth century (criteria A).
• This distinctive and intact clay court, built in the 1940s, exemplifies the twentieth-century practice of regional Queensland residential houses including tennis courts in the backyard. The facility is now available for community use, enabling Queenslanders to play on an original backyard clay court, rarely available today (criteria B).
• Special association with Rod Laver (born 9 August 1938), one of Queensland’s best athletes across both the amateur and professional eras of tennis. This was the backyard tennis court built by the Laver family and where, as a child, Rod Laver honed his tennis skills from a regional Queensland base (criteria H).

Dr Kate Kirby

The Queensland Heritage Register Fellowship is generously supported by the Heritage Branch, Department of Environment, Science and Innovation. 

Other blogs by Dr Kate Kirby:

• Connecting sporting memory and record with state heritage
• “Here if you need”: netball, heritage and the Brisbane 2032 Olympic Games

References 

1. Queensland Government, Queensland’s Premier Centre Court Crowned “Rafter Arena” (2008), https://statements.qld.gov.au/statements/54105.
2. Transport and Public Works Committee, Inquiry into the Queensland Tennis Centre, no. 31 (Queensland Parliament, 2019), https://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/Work-of-the-Assembly/Tabled-Papers/docs/5619t2171/5619t2171.pdf.
3. Australian Tennis History, “Arriving in Queensland,” 2008, https://tacticalresponse.net.au/2008/07/arriving-in-queensland/
4. “Lawn Tennis,” The Brisbane Courier, May 2, 1887; “Lawn Tennis: Tournament Play,” The Week, August 12, 1892; “Tennis Popular in Queensland,” Winner, March 10, 1915; “Lawn Tennis: Opening of New Courts at Milton,” The Brisbane Courier, March 19, 1917; C. G. Austin, “One Hundred Years of Sport and Recreation in Queensland,” Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland 6, no. 1 (1959): 268–93.
5. “Brisbane Parks and Reserves,” Daily Observer, July 13, 1886; The Brisbane Courier, “Lawn Tennis”; The Week, “Lawn Tennis: Tournament Play”; “Classified Advertising,” The Brisbane Courier, July 21, 1894; “Toowong Sports Ground,” Saturday Observer, March 31, 1906.
6. Transport and Public Works Committee, Inquiry into the Queensland Tennis Centre.
7. The Brisbane Courier, “Lawn Tennis”; The Week, “Lawn Tennis: Tournament Play”; Winner, “Tennis Popular in Queensland”; The Brisbane Courier, “Lawn Tennis: Opening of New Courts at Milton”; Austin, “One Hundred Years of Sport and Recreation in Queensland”; Fiona Dixon, “Frew Park: Reflecting Queensland’s Tennis History,” State Library of Queensland, November 19, 2014, https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/frew-park-reflecting-queenslands-tennis-history.
8. Australian Open, “Great Champions: Rod Laver,” 2025, https://ausopen.com/history/great-champions/rod-laver.
9. Queensland Government, “Queensland Heritage Act 1992,” 1992, https://www.legislation.qld.gov.au/view/pdf/inforce/current/act-1992-009; Department of Environment and Heritage Protection, Assessing Cultural Heritage Significance: Using the Cultural Heritage Criteria (2013), 6, https://www.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0030/66693/using-the-criteria.pdf.
10. Queensland Government, “Pelota Mano Court,” Queensland Heritage Register, April 22, 2025, https://apps.des.qld.gov.au/heritage-register/detail/?id=601169#.
11. Queensland Government, “Tor,” Queensland Heritage Register, April 22, 2025, https://apps.des.qld.gov.au/heritage-register/detail/?id=601325.
12. Queensland Government, “Yeronga Memorial Park,” Queensland Heritage Register, April 22, 2025, https://apps.des.qld.gov.au/heritage-register/detail/?id=602462.
13. Rod Laver and Larry Writer, Rod Laver: An Autobiography (Allen & Unwin, 2013); Betty Laver, Rod Laver: The Red-Headed Rocket from Rockhampton (Gladstone, 2001).
14. Sport Australia Hall of Fame, “Rod Laver,” 2012, https://sahof.org.au/hall-of-fame-member/rod-laver/.
15. Laver and Writer, Rod Laver: An Autobiography, 8.
16. Ibid., 382.
17. Chris Schwarten, “Rocket Rod’s Fans Love Him: A Keen Band Keeps Historic Rockhampton Tennis Courts Tidy,” The Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton), January 28, 2012; Nathan Marino, “A Laver of Love,” Tennis Queensland, 2018, https://www.tennis.com.au/qld/news/2018/01/03/a-laver-of-love.
18. Adrian Taylor, “Laver Home Could Have Been Tourist Attraction,” The Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton), June 4, 2011.