Eastern Hills Little Athletics Centre was founded in 1973 as Mundaring Little Athletics with some of the original committee members being Mr L Roper, Mr H Garfield, Mr K Maxfield, Mrs Old and Mr Robinson.  

Over the years the centre has competed at various locations. Competition first started in Midland in 1973 and then moved to Parkerville Oval until 1983. After much negotiation between the centre and Mundaring Shire, competition was moved to Mundaring Show Grounds now known as Mundaring Recreation Grounds. This is where we have primarily competed since the 1983/1984 season.

The clubs affiliated with EHLAC have changed over the years as have the number of athletes. Back in 1979 there were 404 athletes, and the clubs were Darlington, Glen Forrest, Greenmount, Mount Helena, Midland, Mundaring, Swan View, Wooroloo and also Kalbarri. Swan Little Athletic Club was another affiliated club back in 1980.  In 2019/2020 the last remaining clubs Mount Helena and Mundaring voted for amalgamation thereby grandfathering the clubs’ specific records and honouring their specific perpetual trophies from 2020/2021 season.

EHLAC have had and continue to have many talented athletes win state medals.  Many of our athletes have represented WA at the Australian Nationals and in International competition. Athletes who win a medal at the Athletics West State Track and Field Championships in U14 and U15 may represent WA in either Singapore or Malaysia.  In 1986 the first U14 & U15 WA team competed in Singapore. Kelton Guy and Andrew Wilkins (both still record holders) were our first team representatives, and both came home with gold and silver medals.  Our best performance at this event was in 2019 when five athletes qualified (U14 Caitlin Bezuidenhout, Oceana D’Abbs, Jack Whiteside & U15 Riley Digney & Ashleigh English) winning 12 medals between them. Caitlin, Jack and Riley won Best Athlete of the competition for their age group and Oceana broke the U14 High Jump record!   

One of our most successful athletes would have to be Sarah Jamieson who still holds the U11 Girls 800m record. She went on to represent Australia in various World Junior Championships, World Championships, World Cross Country Championships and Commonwealth Games as well as the 2000, 2004 and 2008 Olympics. She is arguably Australia’s best ever female 1500m runner and is the current Australian record holder over 1500m (4:00.93).  

Our records date back to 1975 and some of our Perpetual Trophies were originally donated by life members. Our first Life Member was Mr Len Roper in 1979 with his daughter Pauline, still holding ten centre records. Mr Robinson, a former centre Chairman with EHLAC, went on to become Chairman of WALA in 1978 and his daughter still holds centre records in the 800m and 1500m.

As the years have passed so too has the need to implement new technology into our Centre. For many years our centre used a timing stand where at least eight people sat with stop watches to time athletes. In 2010, Steve Eaton kindly sponsored us and we were able to purchase electronic timing gates. In recent years new events have been implemented into various age groups such as the Turbo Javelin for our younger athletes and the 300m hurdles for our older athletes. During the 2019/2020 season the centre bought another electronic timing gate system that links to Results HQ for the recording of events. 

Eastern Hills Little Athletic Centre has a rich history thanks to our founding committee members, current committee members, families, volunteers and sponsors. 

We look forward to the next 50 years of little athletics in the hills.