History of Dragon Boat Northern Territory

Wiki on Dragon Boat Racing in general

On 9 May 1998, Dragon Boat NT advertised in the NT News seeking members of the public (men and women) to represent the Northern Territory at the 13th Sabah International Dragon Boat Festival to be held on the 7th June 1998 in Malaysia.

Alan Culbertson had recently left Victoria to settle here in Darwin and had expressed an interest in helping our association to start the sport of dragon boat racing in the Northern Territory.

We had less than four weeks to train for the Sabah event and to make matters worse we didn’t even have a ‘dragon’ boat to train in, so we trained by placing plastic chairs in the sea on the beach in front of the Surf Life Saving Club in Casuarina.

The team were all novices in the sport of dragon boat racing. Most were from the local Surf Life Saving Club and the Canoe Club and several people had no experience at all.

A week later we managed to borrow a dragon boat from a club in South Australia. The team trained every day after work down at Cullen Bay.

Alan’s coaching, organisational and leadership skills were exceptional. Alan had to impart as much of his knowledge and skills as possible. Dragon Boat Racing involves twenty two people working as a team. Every person in the team found a great deal of respect for Alan and they did everything that he asked of them. He trained them every night until it was getting too dark to be out on the water. With only two weeks before the race they had to make every day count.

It was because of Alan’s innovation, leadership, accreditation and professionalism that the NT Dragon Boat Team won the “Sabah Dragon Trophy” which was the ‘International Mixed’ event. The Territory team was so popular with the locals that a special race was arranged against the local champion team and Alan’s team matched them stroke for stroke but were beaten in the final stages to the cheers of the local crowds.