MY COUNTRY CHILDHOOD
STARS OF THE STADIUM, THE SWIMMING POOL AND MORE BESIDES SHARE UNFORGETTABLE MOMENTS FROM GROWING UP IN THE COUNTRY – AND THE IMPACT IT HAD ON THEIR BRILLIANT SPORTING CAREERS.
A collection of well-known athletic Australians talk about how growing up in the country set them on the path to sporting achievement.
Turia Pitt
Ultramarathon runner Turia suffered severe burns while competing in her beloved sport in 2011. Her love of the great outdoors was nurtured in Ulladulla, NSW.
“I was eight years old when we moved from Sydney to Ulladulla on the NSW South Coast. It was a place I vaguely knew – we’d spent a few holidays down there, filled with lazy, salt-crusted summer days swimming and surfing. Dad had fallen in love with the surf there, so we moved out of the city and down the coast.
“Our lives became all about the outdoors. We seemed to exist in a state of perpetual motion. Most mornings, summer, winter, rain, hail or shine, Dad would wake up my older brother, Genji, and me, and take us down to the beach for a run. After school, we would come home, grab our surfboards and find the best break on any of the numerous beaches within a five-minute drive of our home.”
Libby Trickett
A gold medallist in the pool at the 2004, 2008 and 2012 Olympics, swimmer Libby first took to the lanes in regional Queensland.
“We lived in Townsville, but would often visit the cane farm up north where my mother grew up. We’d spend the weekend riding quad bikes and climbing trees, exploring cane fields and swimming in the river. We had a pool in our backyard in Townsville – crucial in that tropical climate. We loved the heat, loved the outdoors and spent endless hours in the water. There was something magical about diving through the muggy air and into the crisp, cool water of a pool. That’s where my love of swimming started. My first-ever race was a 25-metre breaststroke. I hated breaststroke, but, boy, did I love competing! I just fell in love with it, even as a four year old. ‘Cool, I can see how fast I go!’ I thought. What could be more exciting than being fast? Usually parents would jump in the water to help the very little kids through the race, and my dad was next to me trying to help keep me afloat, but I wasn’t having it – I was annoyed that he was getting in the way. The four-year-old age group wasn’t exactly teeming with competitors, but
I wasn’t thinking about the other kids in the pool. From the beginning, I just wanted to speed through the water. I loved, loved, loved how it felt to kick as hard as I could and churn my arms until I touched the wall. I remember that thrill so well. I’ve been chasing it ever since.”
Karrie Webb
Karrie is a champion of the US Ladies Professional Golfing Association (LPGA) golfing circuit. Her career teed off in Ayr, Queensland.
“I was born in Ayr, and it was a great place to grow up. It’s a sugarcane town with great farming land on the Burdekin River, and business flourished because of that. It was the
same as any town based on farming – its prosperity, or otherwise, depends on the prices its products get at market. Ayr was a close-knit community, and, for a small town, we had access to great facilities.
“Golf still struggles, especially in the cities, with the stigma of being elitist, but in the country that couldn’t be further from the truth – it is very community-based, and lots of volunteers and working bees keep the courses in good shape. For me, it wasn’t until I started travelling down to Brisbane and interstate for the big tournaments in my teens that I realised this elitist stigma was attached to it. I don’t think I would be the player I am today, had
I grown up in Brisbane or Sydney.
“I walked to the golf course every afternoon and the place was mine
– I didn’t have to book a tee time and no one was upset to see kids on the golf course. My coach growing up was Kelvin Haller. He was one of my parents’ friends, a good player and head greenkeeper; we didn’t have a club pro.”
“After school, you would throw your bag in your bedroom, grab your bike and take off … You wouldn’t get home until dark.”
Billy Slater
A former NRL leading light, Billy developed a lifetime love of kicking a ball in Innisfail, Queensland. “Mum and Dad met in Mount Isa after Dad went there from Innisfail in 1979 to coach and play for the local rugby league team. Dad was an accomplished player, who had brief stints with clubs in Sydney and Brisbane. I was born on the Sunshine Coast, but was only three years old when we moved to Innisfail after Dad took the role of captain-coach of his old team, Innisfail Brothers. So Innisfail is home.
“Fortunately for me, Innisfail was an idyllic place for a boy who liked the outdoors more than the classroom. Most other kids were the same. After school, you would throw your bag in your bedroom, grab your bike and take off. Innisfail had creeks and beaches for swimming and fishing, and you wouldn’t get home until dark. If I wasn’t playing basketball with my best mate, Damien, you would find me in the backyard of another mate, Ben, playing footy, or down at the creek with a bunch of neighbourhood kids.”
Sally Fitzgibbons
Ranked world number one for women’s surfing in 2019, Sally first rode the waves in Gerroa, NSW.
“I grew up in Gerroa, which is a quaint coastal town of about 500 people. The town was sleepy through winter and came active and alive through summer. It was a neat spot to grow up, because I had all these open spaces and we were blessed to be able to wake up and check the surf from our window. We could see all the way along Seven Mile Beach, and on the other side of that was a national park.
“We lived on the headland and spent long days at the beach. I remember having a fluoro-green wetsuit and we’d go to the beach with our boogie boards. We’d run around, jump off the rocks and skim our boards along the shore. With a big blanket or beach towels and a box of biscuits, we were set for the day.”
Cadel Evans
Winner of the 2011 Tour de France, cyclist Cadel developed his passion for the peloton in Upper Corindi, NSW.
“I was born on Valentine’s Day, 1977, in a remote Northern Territory town called Katherine. My first cycling-related memory dates from when I was two. My dad, Paul, and I are in a bike shop and he asks me which one I want. There are two bikes, a red one and a yellow one. Inside me, I know that I want the red one, but the yellow one is closer, so I point to that. Now I have my own 16-inch BMX. I spent hours hurtling around the isolated Aboriginal town where we lived, Barunga, red dirt flying everywhere, with the dog, Woofie, following me protectively.
“When I was four, we moved to Upper Corindi, a collection of houses and farms 40km north of Coffs Harbour in NSW. My parents decided they wanted to live near the ocean, so they bought about 97 hectares of virgin bush 10km from the coast. My father made a horse float for the 3500km trip down, a steel-framed tin box that sat on the back of our blue Dodge Canter truck and housed our two horses and all our belongings.
“It was a very basic life in Upper Corindi. Initially, we slept in the float while my father cleared land for farming, then built a house from the trees he’d cut with his chainsaw. I wandered around and rode my BMX along the dirt tracks that connected one landmark with another.”
Shane Watson
International cricketer and occasional captain, Shane began a very active sporting life in Ipswich, Queensland.
“I was born in Ipswich and lived there until I left school and moved out. My parents still live in the same house today – it’s a two-storey, older-style house with a decent backyard. When I was a kid, there were huge paddocks out the back. One of our neighbours mowed one, and I’d hit golf balls and have a lot of fun.
“Life really revolved around school and sport. It wasn’t just cricket – it was rugby league during primary school, rugby union in high school, tennis, soccer, swimming … I did it all. Mum and Dad were busy driving me to and from sporting events.
“Ipswich is a very big sporting town, and there were always role models to look up to — people like rugby league players Allan Langer and Kevin Walters, and Craig Mcdermott, who was playing cricket for Australia at that time. There were photos of a young Allan Langer at the place where I used to do my coaching clinics on the weekends. I used to stare at those photos and dream of reaching the heights he achieved. I suppose I thought, ‘If those guys can do it, why can’t I?’”