Ballarat (Begonia) 2005- An impression by Trevor Stanning. (Reproduced with permission of the author).

The trip to Ballarat for the Begonia Festival chess tournament is now a joy of high speed free-way all the way. This replaces that pain of a section that wound its way through the hills near Bacchus Marsh after the fight to clear Melbourne suburbs.

I arrived as a visitor for Day 2 of the tournament and found that the outskirts of Ballarat had traffic works that made getting to the Main Street very similar to a knight’s tour of all 64 squares. Ballarat itself is one of my favourite heritage spots in Australia, after Battery Point and Fremantle.

Games for round 3 were well underway as I entered the School Of Mines, the normal venue for the tourney. A lovely shaded courtyard had some Mum’s whiling away the time. Some of them are posters here….noidea, klyall,…while Mrs Wang (Shuyu’s) mum was proudly showing off a brand new bub.

The top 10 boards play in a part of the venue call the PIT; sort of like a half-basement with a viewing area for spectators above, on a mezzanine. It is remarkable how many better moves I can see for Solo and DJ when I peer over their shoulder from a distance of about 20 feet. Only players on the top 10 boards are allowed to walk around in the PIT; and they all seem to want to do that after nearly every move.
In round 3, Bas, (not Baz), is in the PIT, and immediately breaks off his game to have a gossip with me. They make you feel at home at Ballarat.

I wander to some other spots in the venue to see how the hoi polloi are proceeding. First person I run into is Fludy who tells me he has found a great ‘back-roads’ way to Ballarat, which avoids all the hills.
Fludy is one of 32 Box Hill members who make up the total field of 105 at this years Begonia tourney. Kevin Perrin tells me that overall this is a bit disappointing, down from 135 last year, but still allows the Club to break even.

Marieke van Dijk introduces me to folk who are just starting a new chess Club around the Olinda area. Will be called ‘The RANGES’, as in the Dandenong Ranges, and they hope to cover a wide catchment area. I give them Frosty’s contact details and hope there is some geographical synergy.

Time for lunch with a couple of mates, and it is here that Ballarat’s many high-quality pubs offer great meals. The only other place I know with such a high proportion of pubs is Bendigo, both obvious legacies of buoyant mining days.

The round 5 pairings pit Bourmistrov against Johansen on the first board, and not far away our own JGB versus Hacche. I wander over to the cross-table to see how JGB earned his appearance in the PIT (of course sheer skill is an obvious reason) and noticed a ratings curiosity; I will leave JGB to explain when he returns here…it is a legitimate story he related to me.

There’s that bloody Fludy harassing me again.
“Smoke”, he says.
“Eh”, I say………knowing full well neither of us smoke.
“I smell smoke”, says Fludy.
“Well, I don’t”, I say
“Smoke”, says another player (not known to me).
“Oops”, I think……..better investigate.

Very soon there is quite a crowd around the garden bed outside the PIT area. The brighter ones scatter to find bins, hoses and a tap. Looked like spontaneous combustion in the tan-bark, and it had quite a hold. Most impressive dousing work by Kevin Perrin, SOLO, JGB, Chris Potter and a few others.

The fire is out and I gossip with David Hacche and Leonid Sandler; both with interesting stories to tell.
Hacche’s game 2 went to midnight when his heart began to race; so it was off to hospital through emergency. Next morning, he took Sandler’s advice…offered Chris Wallis a quick draw and had some additional snooze time. On the other hand, Leonid gave me a vernacular description of why he was attending, helping juniors, but not playing.

And that is just two rounds of action.

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