A sporting life: memories of momentary glory

The end of my Blackwood Marathon: I might not have come in first, but still had an astonishing victory over a world cycling champion.

Here’s an interesting thing. Well, interesting to me. Nearly every forester I worked with over the years was also an enthusiastic sportsman. In their youth they were footballers, cricketers, oarsmen, tennis players and athletes; in later years, cyclists, golfers, lawn bowlers, yachtsmen and bushwalkers. I even had two forestry mates who were white water canoe slalom racers. Because they raced a long way away in Tasmania they were known to us all as the “far canoe-ers”.  

Some of these foresters were champions … or could have been had they not opted for a life in the forest. Keith Chandler (a Kiwi) was a good enough rugby player to have been selected as an All Black, while Jack Keating, while still a schoolboy, exchanged volleys with Rod Laver and Roy Emerson. Ross Trevathon was the most beautiful all-round sportsman I ever knew, a champion in about five disciplines, and might have been an Olympian in any of them.

Ross Trevathon wins the 100 m at an athletics sports meet in Canberra in 1962, He was a champion sprinter, cricket, tennis and rugby player (that’s me, by the way, coming second, a long-way back). [Photo courtesy of John Pratt]

Other foresters I could name played A Grade cricket, League football, interstate rugby or championship golf. A generation before mine, the one-time Conservator of Forests Allan Harris won the WA State Chess championship, while his contemporary George Nunn was a League footballer with East Fremantle and the State High Board diving and State Heavyweight boxing champion.

By the way, it was said that when Nunn was a district forester in the 1930s, he always carried two pairs of boxing gloves in his car, and when there was an impasse over some issue with a colleague, employee, timber worker or forest neighbour, he would get out the gloves and insist that the thing be sorted out on the spot. Since he always won these contests, he was considered by most people to be an unlikable bully. And yet, and yet… there were times when I half-wished that George had been around in the 1990s to dish out a bit of this sort of retribution to one or two of our most unpleasant and uncompromising critics.

In my own life, sport figured largely. I rowed, ran, jumped, swam, sailed and played football, cricket, tennis and golf, all with the profound passion of the enthusiastic but mediocre amateur.

Of course, I’m well past this sort of thing these days, confining myself to a gentle weekly session at the gym, geriatric cycling, and reminiscing about matches and champions of the past with mates over a beer. Occasionally, however, I reflect upon my personal moments of sporting glory. There were only two such moments, but I have treasured their memory over the years.

Beating the world cycling champion

The high point of my sporting life, I suppose, was the time I beat Steele Bishop in a road cycling race.

I admit at the outset that luck played a small part in my victory, but then luck has always been an element of sporting success.

It was the mid-1970s and I was working as a forestry officer down in the karri country. I never cycled competitively, and didn’t even own a racing bike, but to keep fit after I stopped playing football I often used to nip out after work and pedal my old Raleigh 5-Speed out to Deanmill and back, or down the back road to Jardee.

Steele Bishop on the other hand was a professional cyclist, holder of a world cycling record, winner of countless velodrome and road racing events, unbeaten for years on the international and Australian circuit. As a result of his successes he had been Western Australian Sportsman of the Year on numerous occasions.

Steele Bishop, photographed at the time he was an Australian Track Cycling champion.

It was therefore a gross mismatch to find myself one afternoon lined up at the starting point in a road cycling race against the formidable Steele Bishop himself, resplendent in his multicoloured outfit, pawing the earth as he awaited starter’s orders. His racing bike gleamed, making mine look like Mulga Bill’s velocipede by comparison.

The event was the inaugural Blackwood River Marathon, which I and four other young foresters had entered for fun … or alternatively had been coerced into it by our inspiring manager Alan Lush. I was reluctant, but nobody could refuse Lushy anything, so I ended up riding the final, cycling leg of the relay.

The Blackwood River Marathon is today a famous event on the Western Australian sporting calendar, attracting corporate sponsorship and a wide array of champions in the various relay disciplines. In my day it was a more modest and mostly amateur affair. Back then, the inclusion of a professional like Steele Bishop in a Blackwood relay team was an exception, akin to getting Don Bradman to play for Northcliffe in the Warren cricket comp. Mostly the teams comprised local farmers, footballers, foresters, schoolteachers, bank johnnies or High School students. But it was still an all-day event, starting at Boyup Brook and ending at Bridgetown, many kilometres distant. Nearly all of it took place over the semi-mountainous topography fringing the Blackwood River in this region. There were five legs: running, canoeing, swimming, horse-riding and cycling.

Given that we were all amateurs, our team was not too bad. Our runner was Greg Strelein, a lean, fit young forester, who specialised in cross-country running and trained daily in the precipitous pine-clad hills around Nannup. Owen Ritson, a renown ironman, was in the canoe. Owen had been born and bred on a farm on the banks of the Blackwood River near Boyup Brook and he knew it’s every twist, channel and short-cut. He had recently used his annual leave to canoe about in the ocean off the south coast of Tasmania in mid-winter, so we were confident that he was toughened for the event. The famous forest ecologist Dr Per Christensen was our swimmer. Per was no Ian Thorpe in the pool, but he was a steady distance swimmer and also had an important advantage over most of his opponents. Per used to train in winter in the unheated Manjimup Pool, and this conditioned him for the icy black waters of the Blackwood River.

Finally, our horseman was the stripling Warwick Bradshaw (son of the renowned silviculturalist Jack Bradshaw), mounted on a pretty little karri-forest bred brumby. Warwick and his horse had a palpable Man-from-Snowy-River flavour about them and produced similar results when called upon to race across the granitic uplands and plunging precipices of the upper Blackwood.

Warwick Bradshaw, astride Gina, preparing for his fantastic ride in the inaugural Blackwood Marathon [Photo by Jack Bradshaw]

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Given the quality of my fore-runners, I was not surprised when Warwick cantered in, well ahead of the pack, and I found myself taking off in the lead for the final leg to the Bridgetown Show Ground, about 20 kms away and over some very serious hill and dale.  I had a great start - the nearest cyclists from the other teams were at least five minutes behind me.

Looking good over the first km or so (photo from Warren-Blackwood Times)

I started well, my head low over the handlebars, and was holding a reckless pace along the bitumen, when I became aware of a dry whirring sound approaching from behind. It turned out to be Steele Bishop, and he was doing more than twice my speed. Worse, he was doing so with no apparent effort. He passed me without a sideways glance, similar to the way I had passed several jarrah trees standing on the road verge; his wheelspokes glittered in the afternoon sun. An observer would have been excused for thinking that I could not have beaten him to Bridgetown on a motorbike.

Yet, as history has shown, I hit the finishing line a full 20 minutes before Steele pulled in. 

I found out later that Steele had taken a wrong turning after he passed me. At the T junction on the Bridgetown-Boyup Brook Road, he had turned right (to Boyup) rather than left (to Bridgetown), and when he eventually reached Bridgetown, it was via Boyup Brook … but I won’t dwell on this; it is an aspect of the story I rarely mention when recounting it to my mates at the tennis club.

I was myself passed by several other riders on the last steep pinch up to the finish line at the Showgrounds, as by that time I could scarcely raise a trot. But I don’t dwell on that either. Suffice it to say that on that lovely spring day in the Blackwood Valley, I took on and defeated the world champ at his own game. It was a sporting triumph to treasure.

Playing tennis for Australia

A moment of almost equal glory was the occasion on which my brother and I almost made it into the Australian Davis Cup tennis team. This was of particular significance as it occurred back in the 1950s, at a time when Australians dominated the amateur tennis world and our Davis Cup teams consisted of players like Frank Sedgman, Ken McGregor, Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewall and Rod Laver. They were members of a dynasty of nearly unbeatable teams, controlled by the legendary Davis Cup captain, coach and national selector, Harry Hopman. In those days, tennis was Australia’s Number 1 sport (in terms of participation), and we were the world champions, year-in and year-out. The Davis Cup was the tennis equivalent to soccer’s World Cup and when the final was played, and Australia was nearly always in it, and mostly won, the whole nation came to a standstill.

The victorious 1956 Davis Cup team: Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewall and Captain Harry Hopman

My brother and I played a lot of tennis together in those days. We were lucky because the family house was on a corner block, and the backyard was a broad swathe of grass, which our father liked to refer to as “the tennis court”. This grass was also, at other times to my brother and me, the WACA, the MCG, the Olympic Stadium and Subiaco Oval. A lot of sport occurred on that hallowed turf.

But tennis was what we liked best, especially my brother, who became very good at it. We spent hours practicing our shots, rallying back and forth, drilling volleys or putting overheads away into the broad beans which my father grew along the picket fence. Each point was accompanied by a running commentary, in which we would mimic the fruity tones of Adrian Quist, the former champion player and great radio commentator of the time (“Underwood is serving deep, heavy balls to the Trabert backhand...etc etc”). These were also, of course, the days before television, and the broadcast of a Davis Cup tie, especially when Australia was likely to win) would have the nation glued to their wireless sets.

For actual games, we had to find a proper court somewhere, and on the occasion I am now recalling, we had the use of a grass court which was located behind Dymock’s Grocery on the corner of Waratah Avenue and Adelma Road (today, sadly, the site is occupied by a liquor store). Unlike the backyard at home, this court had lines marked with chalk, and a net instead of a length of clothesline. It was one of those summer days of one’s youth: heat and bright sunshine, a faint easterly bringing the aroma of bushfire smoke from the hills to mingle with that of the freshly mown lawn.

The brothers Underwood, Peter (on the right) nearly always won

From somewhere, we had even been able to get hold of some decent tennis balls, and the game was a humdinger.

A point was reached during the first set when I was serving from the northern (or “Phillips Road”) end. I faced the first court, solemnly bounced the ball two or three times in the manner of the champions, drew breath, coiled back, and went for a big one. The serve cracked off my racket, straight down the centre, bringing chalk … but my brother was there! His beautifully stroked backhand came back at me low and hard, as I advanced to the net for the volley. Bending the knees, and steeling the wrist, I made the volley of my life, picking it up off the laces of my sandshoes, and sending it into the forehand corner, deep, skidding and going away. But again my brother was there! At full tilt he slid into the shot, and with weight on front foot in textbook style, and racket coming around in a sweeping arc, he wacked a stinging flat forehand down the line. Somehow, I found myself waiting for it, perfectly positioned and with time to spare, and I put it away with a backhand volley into the open court for a clean winner. “Another crisp volley from Hoad” I observed in my Adrian Quist persona, trying to look as if I always played tennis like that, and not realising that the feel of that shot would stay in my mind and my arm for the rest of my life.

Just at that moment, my brother and I noticed a hawk-faced and bow-legged little man standing on the footpath outside the wire netting of the court. It was Harry Hopman! The Australian Davis Cup Captain and National Selector! And he had just observed as fine a grass court tennis point as ever seen on the centre court at Wimbledon.

My brother and I looked at each other - did this mean a call-up to the national squad? Would he make the first move? Surely it must be evident to Mr. Hopman that here, on this obscure suburban strip of grass, were the logical successors to Sedgman and McGregor, Hoad and Rosewall. Perhaps he was here at this very moment as a result of a tip-off from some neighbourhood talent-scout concerned about the long-term future of Australian tennis if the top boys turned pro.

As it turned out, it wasn’t Harry Hopman.

Seeing us looking at him expectantly, the little man turned away and walked off across the road, where a few minutes later he caught the bus to Claremont. We never saw him again.

 Afterword

Having defeated Steele Bishop at cycling, and almost making it into the Australian Davis Cup tennis team, I suppose the rest of my sporting life could be viewed as an anticlimax. On the other hand, life needs to taken as a whole and the richer the range and the mix of experiences, the better it is.

And as for glory, Shakespeare reminds us that:

Glory is like a circle in the water,

Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,

Til by broad spreading it disperse to naught.

Like most of the foresters I have known, my sporting life and my forestry life went hand in hand. The rewards from both were illusory, or at best intangible or indirect. Even the most glorious moments eventually dispersed to naught.

But as one of my favourite characters in literature, Walter Mitty, might have reflected as he faced the firing squad, snapping the final cigarette from his lips and rejecting the blindfold, illusory glory is better than no glory at all.