In 1981 Bert Armstrong completed building a squash court next to the kitchen in his Melbourne home. This coincided with the first graphite rackets appearing, and so friends left wooden ones behind when he played them – prompting him to hang them round the court.
Then he started adding club badges, banners, flags, balls; anything that had a Squash / Racket sports connection. An obsession with collecting was beginning.
As he put it, ‘From then on I visited every Charity shop, Municipal Tip, Antique Fair from Hobart Tasmania to Cairns in far North Queensland, and similarly the UK, and even scoured a market in Kirkenes Norway.’
So about 35 years later he has 1000+ rackets from 120 manufacturers in 23 countries plus many badges, books, flags, trophies, documents etc.
Squash Player Magazine interviewed him in 2021, an article you can see below.
Since then Bert has turned much of his collection into a display at Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club, complete with notes so that anybody can come along and see them (Bert and some cabinets are pictured here). He is even offering personal tours!
