Tennis & Timber With Greg Holcombe—25-Year Air-Dried Blakely’s Red Gum Slabs
May 2021
A popular tennis coach of many years in Canberra, Greg Holcombe says he always had a love of timber.
“I’ve always had a love for wood, but my purchases of a wood lathe in the 1990’s, joining the ACT woodcraft guild, and a continuing friendship with an extraordinarily gifted and internationally renowned woodturner, Richard Raffan, transformed an interest into a passion.”
As Greg’s work took him all around Canberra, he was exposed to seeing a large number of extraordinary trees on development sites designated to be felled and wood-chipped - he knew something had to be done to save them.
The drying shed that kept the timber slabs drying for 25 years.
Greg worked with fellow tennis club member Gerhardt, to hire trucks and transport the trees to Greg’s brothers shearing shed, located outside Hall in the ACT. Together, they would then hire the services of local timber miller Gordon Smith to slab the trees. “These we then stickered and stacked in the shed allowing them to air-dry for 25 years, awaiting Thor’s appreciation of just how marvellous the slabs had become.”
The final product was 110 Blakely's red gum slabs of lengths of up to 4 metres and of fantastic quality (11-12% moisture content) and 30 elm slabs up to 2300 mm long.
Pictured above is Thor, Francis and Greg, loading the timber slabs for travel to our workshop in Griffith.
The benefit of timber that has been drying slowly for so many years is the stability of the timber. For Australian hardwood, it is recommended to allow 2 to 5 years of drying time per inch of thickness. If Australian hardwood is dried too quickly, it will sometimes case harden on the outside and never dry inside.
Greg worked mostly with Blakely’s Red Gum burls as a turner, as well as other species. “I actually have a large Blakely's archway in my family home which is a timeless pleasure.”
I asked Greg to give us a bit of background about his tennis career too.
“My interest in tennis started in the 1950’s as a 5 year old in Gosford. I watched my parents and older brothers play night tennis and wanted to beat them.”
Greg was enrolled with a coach called Charlie Hollis who had taught Rod Laver and many others. Greg describes Charlie as a ‘genius.’ “He guided my progress to a Sydney A-grade standard by the late 60’s,” says Greg, who at the time was also studying Arts Law at the Sydney University.
“By the completion of my studies I had met and married an accomplished touring professional turned student and school teacher, Helen.” After a tennis playing honeymoon and at the completion of Greg’s studies, he continued to tour Europe with Helen, and never went back to Arts Law.
“We toured Europe and Africa for 3 continuous years, living in our Ford Transit camping car with some financial success bolstered by a one-year coaching stint in Denmark. It has been a pleasure to see some of them progress as far as the semis of the US open doubles and to Davis cup standard and to later, visit us in Australia.”
Greg and Helen returned to Australia in 1979 and established their own tennis centre in the ACT. “After 6 years of negotiations with the government we bought a block of land in Fadden ACT and built our own 12 court Tuggeranong Tennis Coaching centre and club.” Built in a pine forest, the coaching centre turned into a thriving 24-employee business with Greg and Helen as the head coaches. The business was sold in 2004.
Since then, Greg has coached at his private home court in Pearce, he says “mostly for the children in the neighbourhood and Sacred Heart Primary School.”
I asked Greg to share some final thoughts with us; “I have only an amateur’s appreciation of environmental and plantation work but decry the Bjelke Petersen Russ Hinze bulldozer style approach of flattening large sectors of woodland.” Greg continues to say that “the community’s involvement in planting forest trees is fantastic and essential to large scale reforestation. How else will the next generation get the chance to appreciate the same things we’ve been able to take for granted and enjoy?”
Various Blakely’s Red Gum Slabs are available for purchase at Thor’s Hammer, as well as a range of other timber slabs and one-off timbers.
Story edited by Irina Agaronyan
Photo credits: Rohan Thomson