MOVING INTO HOCKEY
Q
How old were you when you got into hockey and what were the challenges you faced given you were working too?
A
I would have been 20 in 1952. We liked the look of the Valley hockey boys so we started a girls team. I was still running in athletics championships every second year and going away with the Queensland hockey team every year. You couldn’t do that now. We were pretty much staying fit for athletics by playing hockey. We’d fit in training where we could and I’d catch the train home at night and Mum would have dinner in the pot. It was stewed to nothing but it was still food. But that’s how it was.
Q
What were your aspirations during that time? Olympic Games or anything?
A
No, no one talked about that. I remember the night I made the Australian hockey team in 1955 and I called Dad and told him. He said ‘I’m proud of you’ and then hung up. We weren’t allowed to Skype. That’s something that stuck with me.
Q
You got married in 1958 and gave all that sport away. It was just the done thing, right?
A
With athletics it was getting too hard. I got third at the Australian championships in the 400m in 1956. Then I thought I’d concentrate on hockey. Then I got married and they don’t pick you once you get married. There were some powermongering women but that’s the way it was. I ended up getting into golf and masters athletics. I became president of Queensland Hockey and it wasn’t the done thing to play, it was seen to be below the office so I stopped in 1962.
Q
You mentioned your late husband Mick. How did you both end up on the Coast?
A
We were living in Brisbane and got married there in 1958. We went on our honeymoon in his FJ Holden and put a back on the utility and camped on there. When we came back we went straight to the Coast because Mick was building and we had our house half built at Burleigh and we never left.
You were pretty good at anything you turned your hand to. How’d the golf go?
A
I got the handicap down to single figures and I stayed there for a decade. I played at the Australian Amateur Championship for women and got through to the quarter-finals. But I was a hockey player playing golf. Then Mick and I decided to go back to masters athletics.
Q
Of all the sports you played was there a personal favourite and if so, why?
A
I think athletics. It’s the basis of all sports. If you can run fast you can play hockey, if you can jump high you can play Aussie rules. Even now if I smell freshly cut grass I want to start running.
Q
Was there a sport you didn’t try that perhaps you wished you had the chance to?
A
Not really. I don’t know if I would have liked rugby league. Aussie rules looks good, it’s just a pity they have those tussles on the ground.
Q
You must have had some amazing career highlights but is there a favourite in there?
A
I’m not a Marjorie Jackson; I was a jack of all trades. But the highlight, while it wasn’t on the sports field, would have to be in 2011 I went to the IOC headquarters in Lausanne and got the International Women and Sport trophy. I was the first Australian. That was good.