Olympic Torch Relay

Four members of the original 1956 Torch Relay Team which ran through Miriam Vale re-enacted the event this week. Assisted by students from Miriam Vale State School, the torch was carried around the town, ending at Miriam Vale’s Lions Park where a plaque was unveiled by Mrs Pauline Dahl one of the original team members.

At the re-enactment of the 1956 Olympic Torch Relay through Miriam Vale, Mr Herb Oliver recalled the event.

“We should pay tribute to those runners who took part in 1956 and, sadly have passed away,” he said.

“It was quite an exciting event at the time and attracted the biggest crowed to Miriam Vale in its history. The relay reached here at 11.30pm on the 13th of November 1956. That relay required runners to continue day and night. The Bruce Highway from Miriam Vale to Gin Gin was unsealed in 1956 and the runners were faced with fairly hazardous conditions running in the pitch dark of night.”

“At the time I was the Shire Clerk here and as the organiser of the 1956 relay through Miriam Vale – just so happened that I had the leg through the town!”

“I started near the sale yards and sped of onto the main street. My job was to hand the torch to Cr Percy V Walker, then Chairman of the Shire, he welcomed the torch and the runners to the shire, handed the torch back to me and I sped of towards Melbourne. Having seen the torch safely through the shire, we returned to Miriam Vale and I commenced work for the day.”

A large crowd enjoyed reliving the 1956 Torch Relay, the day that the torch came to Miriam Vale.

In the dead of night on November 13th 1956 the Olympic torch made is way into Miriam Vale on its epic journey to light the Olympic Cauldron in Melbourne for the start of the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games.

50 years on to the day, on Monday 13th of November 2006, Miriam Vale Shire residents remembered the event with the re-enactment of the relay. Despite inclines and unsealed roads and a significant lack of street lighting at the time, the Miriam Vale runners made up time as the torch passed through the Shire putting it back on schedule.

“The 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games was a very special event for Australia. Not only was it the first time the Olympic Games had been held in Australia, but it was also the first Olympic Games to be held in the southern hemisphere.” Said Mayor Tom Jeffery in his welcoming speech to the Shire’s gathering on Monday.

Being a Olympic Games Torchbearer was a great honour and each one had to meet a strict criteria to be able to participate. Ladies did not in the relay in 1956 and those men who did had to prove their ability prior to the relay by running a mile in under 7 minutes,” he said.

Long time resident, Collin Bates (the youngest torchbearer for Miriam Vale Shire), Selwyn Dahl and Gilbert Martin were present at the re-enactment. Herb Oliver, now a resident of Maryborough, who was the Miriam Vale Shire Clerk in 1956 when to torch came through and played a key part in organising the event as well as running a section of the relay, was also present,

Pauline Dahl represented her late husband Ellis Dahl. Elis was 19 years old when he ran as a torchbearer and his section included the biggest hill between Miriam Vale and Gin Gin.