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Barrie Beehag
Barrie served as Director, President & Treasurer of the Moama Water Sports Club from 1974 until he resigned as a Director in 1993, to make way for the next generation of ski racers to assist. The club bestowed him with Life Membership for his years of dedicated service to the club on his retirement. The Beehag family started ski racing in 1973. The Southern 50 being the home town event, it was the obvious place to start. Barrie driving their boat Ezoff, elder son Tony as observer and elder daughter Kay doing the skiing. Mum, Fran the trailer driver and youngest Bridgette the cheer squad. The Beehag family from that day on were bitten by the ski racing bug. They traipse the country fare and wide in the pursuit of the adrenalin rush of a ski race. The family ski boat was upgraded about 8 or 9 times with name changes in the early days, Ezoff, Ding a ling, HiJack, Smokey and finally (thanks to Ron Bakers commentary) Big Barrie Beehag came to be. Because of Barrie's love of the sport he willingly towed any age group from the little tadpole to the Old Blokes in Veterans. After the 1974 event the VWSA were going to drip the Southern 50 as an event on their point score calendar due to poor entry numbers, the unpredictability of the river height, (the event was held in may) and the distance from Melbourne for organisers to run the event. On the banks of the river one Sunday afternoon of social skiing, an enthusiastic groups of locals including Barrie, Clarrie Worsnop, Geoff Lynch, Bill Vickers, Leigh Johnson and other, decided to form the Moama Water Sports Club their main objective to keep the Southern 50 alive, by running it in conjunction with the VWSA, changing to a more suitable month (February) and to run social events during the year. In 1979, during Barrie's 4 year reign s President ('77 - '80), we was MWSC take on the sole running of the Southern 80 sanctioned by VWSA with a total number of entries totalling 83. It was an especially good year as Barrie saw son Craig win the event outright skiing behind Reg Cowie's The Tack with Rich Christian and elder son Tony observing. His boat driving days came to a halt after bowel cancer in 1992. Baz then threw himself wholeheartedly in the judging side of ski racing. You knew if Baz called you up to the judges tower - you were in trouble, and you had to have a bloody good story to get off. Son Craig took over the drivers seat of BBB and Barrie only got to observe in the classic river races. He thoroughly enjoyed these races, where he to hang s..t on "His blokes" that they weren't ready to go when he was - he'd been too busy chatting to all and sundry, to help them get ready. He was extremely proud in 1993, when eldest granddaughter Alicia teamed up with Scott Brown behind Charlie Brown's Vanilla Ice and won Sub Juniors at Echuca, Robinvale & Mildura river races. The next generation were up and coming. In 1988 Barrie became a director of the VWSA and continued to promote water skiing as a sport the whole family can enjoy. He became President of the VWSA in 1994 until he resigned due to illness late in 2004. Even though he had retied as a director, Barrie was still there, every year, to assist in the organisation of the Southern 80 any way he could. Barrie succumbed to the rigours of cancer on June 4th 2006. Kay Turner - 2006
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