The Australian National Netball Championships are an annual Australian interstate youth competition, pitting the best of the six states and two territories against each other. They were most known for the open category, which saw the very best of each state compete each year, and featured most of the Australian national team. The national championships, first founded in 1923, were for many years one of the most important competitions on the national calendar, but gradually begun to lose audiences and public interest after the founding of an elite national league, the Commonwealth Bank Trophy, in 1997. This resulted in the 2005 decision to terminate the open division after the 2005 competition after 79 years, leaving only the under-21, under-19 and under-17 divisions.
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“Beyond the horizon, or even the knowledge, of the cities along the coast, a great, creative impulse is at work—the only thing, after all, that gives this continent meaning and a guarantee of the future. Every Australian ought to climb up here, once in a way, and glimpse the various, manifold life of which he is a part.”
—Vance Palmer (1885–1959)
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