A-Quiver with Anticipation. First time Archery!

Alright, Jarrod, I admit… I may have fibbed ever so slightly in the title of this blog. Avid readers who comb through past entries in great detail will remember that I’ve indeed tried archery before, on my visit to Kryal Castle last winter. Exhibit A, your honour….

Took to it like I was Jason Bourne.

But as you can see, that experience wasn’t exactly what you’d call proper archery. (Unless of course I’ve missed crucial changes to the rules of Olympic competition and they now DO actually shoot to a maximum range of 3 metres and it’s officiated by men in period dress?)

I still maintain that if I’d lived in medieval times and had to go to battle, the bow and arrow would have been my weapon of choice. It’s so inherently elegant (think Legolas from Lord Of The Rings), you get to use the word ‘quiver’ (a personal fave) and most importantly, you get to fight from a great distance. For a non confrontational person such as myself, who’d rather send a slightly tetchy email to someone two desks away than have a difficult conversation–this really appeals. I don’t want to confirm the kill and see the light go out of someone’s eyes.

As with many of my blog activities,I had no idea there was such a thing as ‘come along and try archery’ till I spotted it on Groupon for the bargain price of $10. It all takes place at the Moorabbin Archery Club, about 15km south east of Melbourne City Centre. They have Come and Try sessions every Saturday morning at 8:45, and Sunday at 9:45am. Fiscal self saboteur that I am, I thought about it and thought about it and thought about it, just long enough for all the discounted passes to sell out; so we paid the full price of $20pp. Still excellent value.

I put out the call for an accomplice on Facebook and one of the first people to put her hand up is my good friend Sam, a physiotherapist with a wicked competitive streak. Mutual friends speculate that this could very well spell the end of a twelve year friendship and I’m informed that an informal betting ring has been established. Her odds are shorter, for the record.

Potentially fatal, yet so festive!

We both arrive at the archery club on a morning so hot and humid morning that I’ve already needed a good lie down from the sheer effort of bringing some sheets in off the line. It’s agreed that if things turn a bit Hunger Games Fight To The Death, Sam and I will work together as a team. First to arrive, we check out some of the other tributes participants as they wander up, mentally clocking whether they’re easy prey or genuine threat. That pasty pair of boys playing some sort of sci-fi card game? Unlikely to even make it to the Cornucopia to grab weaponry without use of their inhalers. The lithe teenage duo stretching over yonder? Could prove problematic. Our strategy meeting is interrupted, the gang’s all here and we’re ushered into the clubrooms for a briefing.

Which colour? Hardest decision of the day.

We’re introduced to our three lovely instructors for the day, Fergus, Frank and Craig, and Fergus launches into some archery Q&A. Sam and I are a little disappointed tbh, had we known there was going to be a test we would have studied so as to thrash everyone else early in the piece, thus establishing ourselves as women not to be trifled with. Now we have these little ten year olds showing us up. Bloody humiliating. We’re introduced to the Long Bow: “you’ve probably seen Legolas using something like this in Lord of the Rings…” Yes, Fergus, we’re with you…it’s one of our favourite scenes when he skates down the stairs yanking arrow after arrow from his quiver. Pew, pew, pew, pew!

Prince of Thieves in High Vis

“….and some of you might have seen Robin Hood shoot an arrow that splits another arrow using one of these. Well I hate to disappoint you but you’d be very unlikely to do that with a longbow.” Delivered in a tone that suggests he’s actually quite happy to disappoint us.

Needle off the record. What?! Listen, buddy, we came here to learn archery, not to have our preconceptions shattered! And Kevin Costner isn’t even here to defend himself. Next up is the crossbow, you can see it lurking evilly on the left edge of the table there. The less said about the crossbow the better, because as we all know, it’s the weaponry of choice for psychopaths like Joffrey in Game of Thrones. (Fortunately they don’t shoot with these at Moorabbin). Then we’re shown some compound bows that look about more complicated than any game of Mousetrap I’ve ever seen rigged up. These have a rear sight, a bow sight, and elaborate pulley systems that mean no matter how far you pull the string back the tension doesn’t increase. You don’t even use your fingers to pull them back. No! You buy a special Grip Release Device. Seriously, I’m half expecting him to say they also come with a minion who operates the grip release for you, while you recline supine on the ground being fed peeled grapes.

Sleek, minimalist design.

Luckily we are firing the relatively simpler bow, one where you use your actual fingers on the string. We’re each issued with a foxy forearm guard for our bow arm. (And as physios with extensive experience donning zimmer knee splints, Sam and I totally win the race to put these on. Take that, clumsy ten year olds needing help from your mums and dads! Knew that four year degree would come into its own one day!)

Clammy elbow crook? You’ve got it!

In an exciting development, we’re informed that we’ll be shooting for a bit, then breaking for a bite to eat before going out to shoot again. We can either put in an order for a hotdog ($2.50) or 3 steamed dim sims ($2). God bless you, sport club canteens with your low, low sport club canteen prices and your sport club canteen menu options. (“We’ve got boiled pseudo-meat in a bread roll, or boiled pseudo-meat in a hot, wet wrapping”).

We choose our bows (yellow, of course, to pop against the indigo top I’m wearing), choose our boiled meat options, put our Game Faces on, and proceed out to the shooting range.

We’re lined up side by side at the beginners shooting range, at the beginners shooting distance of 10 metres from the target. Each of us is assigned a witches hat to stash our arrows in, points down. Mildly disappointing. Was hoping for a quiver from which to whip out my arrows, but given our beginner status, and the proximity to archers on our left and right that would no doubt be a recipe for skewered eyeballs. (Which they could boil in the canteen and serve with soy sauce!)

We’re taken through, step by step what our stance should be, and how to hold out the bow and draw back the string. Despite the numbers there (around ?35-40) the instructors do an impressive job of making sure that everyone gets 1:1 inspection and correction. We’re told we need to pull the string back so that our index finger just touches the side of our mouth, and that ‘it sounds simple, but hardly anyone gets it right!’ I’m not sure who their coaching group to date has been. Stroke victims with no sensation down one side of their face? Sam’s competitive streak rears and she declares ‘challenge accepted!’ Sadly she actually does not get it right, Frank scolds her for bringing her head forward to the string like a turtle, as opposed to pulling the string back to her face.

Poor Frank actually becomes quite stressed by his section of the line, as he has a contingent of Japanese participants (my collective noun for them is ‘a liability’ of participants) who speak minimal English and don’t appear to be grasping the basic concept of PLEASE, WAIT until we tell you to do something. And look, fair enough, if I were standing between a target, and someone armed with zero clues plus a bow and arrow, I would probably be a little uneasy myself.

We’re told to wait till they come along and check our stance before each of us fires our first arrow, and Sam and I are surprised by how disproportionately nervous we are. Born perfectionists, neither of us can cope with the idea of NOT nailing it the first time. We watch everyone else shooting and hitting the target with a satisfying thunk and paranoia builds that we’ll be the first person of the day to have our arrow dribble pathetically off the bow, landing a metre in front of us in the dirt.

Fergus comes over to check my stance and I’m given the all clear to release the string.

Ready, aim…..

To my right one of the Japanese men has Frank barking “Now! Release now! Not next week. Shoot!” at him. I exhale, block it out, shoot, and it lands smack in the yellow circle in the middle! I make a noise that’s somewhere between a gasp/squeal, then immediately declare that my aim for the day is to hit the yellow circle again, and not make that irritatingly girly noise.

Sam’s turn. She hits the red. We fire off our remaining arrows and wait for the rest of the line to finish shooting. Once they’re certain everyone is done, a whistle blows twice and that’s the signal we’re clear to walk forward to pull our arrows out of the targets. After we take some photos of our best shots, of course.

Prodigy.

We shoot another three rounds before breaking for lunch. After the heady success of my first shot, I suffer the humiliation of being the only person to miss the target altogether, clear the fence and hit the wall of the factory next door. Small mercy that my arrow doesn’t hit a weak point in the wall, or it might have been the makings of the most weirdly specific Workcover ad ever.

A low point, but I regroup and hit the yellow and red a few more times. And Sam has the triumph of not only hitting the yellow, but hitting the very centre of the yellow circle, millimetres from the x.

A Natural.

After our boiled meat break (god, but I love a hotdog), we head back out to shoot another 6 rounds or so and honestly, that’s probably as much as I can manage as a first timer, because the bow is surprisingly heavy for your little non-dominant arm. It’s really fatiguing. So much so the act of holding my mobile phone in my left hand to type a text as I walk back to the car makes my arm tremble.

So, in summary: we had a ball at Come And Try Archery and I would genuinely recommend it to anyone. Yes you might have tried ‘archery’ on your Wii at home, but you can’t really extend yourself to make things challenging in your lounge room. Not without knocking down walls to put more distance between yourself and the TV.

It’s an arena that I never knew existed here in Melbourne and it’s sooooo much fun. But as always, Jarrod, I’m throwing it over to you. Archery in Moorabbin, Jarrod, would you go there?

The Gang