Gure Txoko Basque Club Inc.

The Gure Txoko Basque Club in Sydney is the oldest official Basque organisation in Australia to have kept running without interruption. It was founded on 31 July 1966, the feast of Saint Ignatius, when twenty-six Basque families put in 200 dollars each, about six weeks' wages at the time, to buy a house in the Darlinghurst neighbourhood, near the city centre. Inside there is a dining room for about ninety people, a kitchen, a library and a fronton that is little used today, and it opens on Sundays with Basque food, mus and pelota, at lunches open to the public that are kept going by volunteer work. The first members were construction workers; today they are mostly young graduates who come for a spell to learn English, and the register lists 115 of them.