History
Basketball first arrived in Melbourne in 1905. The first major international women’s tournament was the 1953 FIBA World Championships held in Chile. Although the Opals did not qualify for the first tournament, they did, however, qualify for the 1957 Championships held in Brazil. Captained by Lorraine Eiler, the Opals defeated Cuba and Peru. However, the inexperienced team ultimately finished in 10th place. Since then, the Opals have helped increase the popularity of the sport in Australia. Australia would not get the opportunity to participate in the 1959 World Championship held in Moscow because at the time, the Australian Government would not allow the team to travel to the USSR. The Opals would not qualify for a World Championship again until the 1967 contest in Czechoslovakia. With an entirely new team and a single victory over Italy, Australia finished in 10th position for the second time.
Read more about this topic: Australia Women's National Basketball Team
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“It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgement.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
“It is my conviction that women are the natural orators of the race.”
—Eliza Archard Connor, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 9, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)