Australian boxing troupe keeps on swinging
BIRDSVILLE, Australia — When Fred Brophy bangs a drum on the floodlit stage outside his boxing tent, the large crowd gathered in front of him falls silent in rapt attention.
Sporting a cowboy hat and a silky bright-red shirt, the tall and weathered 67-year-old looks every bit the showman.
Brophy runs a boxing troupe — the last in Australia and one of the few left worldwide — traveling to outback towns where someone’s always up for a fight.
“I’ve been doing it since I’ve been five years of age. I was born into it,” Brophy says in a broad Australian accent in Birdsville, a remote town in the vast continent’s dry, dusty interior, around 1,500 kilometers west of Brisbane.
Having his own troupe is something of a family tradition, he explains.
“Me father had one. Me grandfather had one. Me great-grandfather had one. So I’ve got one.”
Brophy and his touring pugilists are on their annual pilgrimage to the Queensland outback spot where more than 6,000 people travel for days and weeks across Australia to attend the centuriesold two-day Birdsville Races.
Racegoers, clutching beer cans while buffeted by dust and flies during the day, flock to Brophy’s big tent at night, eager for more action.
Back in the 1930s to 1950s, such tents were a fixture at country fairs and agricultural shows in the major cities, says Australian boxing author Grantlee Kieza.
It gave aspiring boxers, particularly those from poor backgrounds, a chance to hone their skills in front of intimate yet boisterous crowds, pocket some money, and become the hometown hero.
The troupes provided a foundation for some top Aboriginal boxers including Jack Hassen, George Bracken and Tony Mundine.
One of the best-known tents was Jimmy Sharman’s troupe, which attracted young indigenous boys keen to earn some cash.
But other forms of entertainment have since seduced spectators away from the ring.
“The great traditions of being outdoors on the frontiers of Australia changed to a more bohemian way I guess, and those sorts of manly rough sports began to decline in popularity,” Kieza says.
Health and safety concerns led most states and territories to ban the traveling show, apart from Queensland and the Northern Territory.
Brophy has refused to throw in the towel, and his endangered status has meant his show attracts many fans and brawler wannabes when he visits the Queensland countryside, drum in hand.
Boxing’s ‘Wild West’
“It’s sort of like a carry-over from the Wild Wild West days, isn’t it, the idea of tent boxing. It suits the Wild West image of rural Queensland,” Kieza says.
Brophy for one is happy to play up the image of the knockabout Australian outback maverick, immortalized in the Crocodile
Dundee Hollywood films.
He says he’s been wounded by a shotgun, had his fingers cut off and his teeth knocked out, but keeps going.
“It’s 100 percent Australian. This is what Australians do. This is our entertainment,” he says.
“If you’ve got a sheila who’s watching you, you fight better,” he adds, using a slang term for a woman. “You win the fight, you win the sheila.”