by H. G. Nelson
Is this humble stretch of cement and sand the missing link in the Don’s development? At school, I can remember wandering over for a hit on the concrete every Wednesday. Scratch teams were selected but the Don’s eleven always won. They had a big advantage: a skipper who could bat.
Tiffy, I’m a Don tragic. I love Bowral. The Bradman Museum has the lot. The suitcase he took on the road to stardom and actually, I was the one who unearthed his first set of Bonds Y-front underpants. It was my gift to the collection and the nation. I found them in a back room of a shop that used to be a Mittagong laundry. The CSIRO ran the eye over the stained artifact. The boffins said, ‘Yes, Stumps, they’re the Don’s.’
The big one the Museum does not have is his first signature. Was it on a bat, a programme, a team list or an afternoon edition of a local newspaper? We just don’t know! In later years, after retiring, everyone knows the Don spent several hours a day signing gear. He was a machine with a Bic biro in one hand and a fountain pen in the other. He learnt to do his signature with both hands such was the demand for his autograph. Club secretaries maintain he could scribble 1259 signatures between tea and stumps. That is some strike rate!
But now that the final piece in the Don puzzle has been found and the strip has been unearthed, I am completely drenched. I don’t know why but it’s a dream come true. I put it down to being Australian and having a vivid recollection of Shane Warne’s first ball to Mike Gatting at Lord’s and all the details of Dennis and Rod punting on the Headingley test.
The brave crew who stumbled across these twenty-two yards of history deserve an Australia Day Award or one of those gongs Tony Abbott used to dish out to total strangers when he was PM.
This discovery really does put everything into perspective. It is about the passing of time and those great knocks by the Don that schoolkids and cricket buffs will never see. No vision of them exists. Nothing! They have simply vanished, disappeared into the slimy sinkhole of stump cam history. People forget there was no YouTube, no Twitter, no Facebook back when the Don roamed the streets of Bowral.
It was at this point that Australian Story pivoted to the Don’s impact away from the recent discovery of the pitch. The Cootamundra-born product was so good he had a song written about him.
‘Our Don Bradman’, the smash hit that still talks to kids, was written by songwriter Jack O’Hagan. The classic was recorded to promote the 1930 Ashes Test series in England. In the third Test, the Don knocked up a record 334 on a magnificent Leeds strip. He made it look easy, but that deck was a bugger to bat on.
The tune is a classic of its kind. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of ‘Don’ references in the verse and chorus. Rhymes of ‘Mickey Mouse’ with ‘house’ and ‘into bat’ with ‘record flat’. Honestly, the lyrics wrote themselves as the Don did the lyrical heavy lifting with the willow out in the middle.
Jack’s cracker is right up there, pushing for inclusion in the great Australian sporting songbook alongside the selected works of Banjo Paterson, Mike Brady and Paul Kelly. The bloke could write and hold a tune.
O’Hagan burst out of inner-city Melbourne with a swag of radio commercials and campfire songs that featured on very popular radio shows like Cabbage’s Campfire or Bob Dyer’s When a Girl Marries and The Long Paddock featuring ‘Backdoor’ Bob Boot. This style of popular old-school radio show featured a stroll down memory lane, a joke, a scone recipe, a cup of billy tea and a tune about an Aussie hero.
O’Hagan’s output was prodigious. He had a crack at 600 songs, of which 200 were published. Some critics argue Jack was the Don Bradman of song.
Jack sent a swag of his better tunes to Dean Martin, on the off-chance that the great crooner might have room in his act for a couple of hits from Down Under. There is no evidence that Dean got the packet of hits, and some music buffs wonder if Dean could read either lyrics or music. Others argue that the parcel simply went astray in the chaos of the overseas mail system.
But Dean may have been baffled by who the hell Don Bradman was and was scratching his head about why a dog would sit on a tucker box, and where the hell was Gundagai? That is, if Deano thought at all.
The Australian Story episode concluded with a provocative contribution from widely read cricket blogger ‘Fragile’ Frankie Grout, a distant relative of the great Australian wicketkeeper Wally Grout. Writing an editorial think-piece for ‘In or out, it’s worth a shout!’, Fragile put forward a powerful argument that one last Test should be played on the concrete in Bowral:
Cricket Australia officials should look at giving the recently unearthed wedge of wonder a full Test when establishing future Test schedules.
Organisers at Cricket HQ must ask a simple question: Could this pitch take one more Test?
Sure, it looks buggered! The slab of cement is in an appalling state. It looks as though the Channel Nine key has been inserted into the cracks far too many times. But the strip and surrounds have character, history and the whole paddock complex exudes atmosphere.
Cricket needs novelty to keep it going. Look at the success of the new formats. The Big Bash has revolutionised interest, and the sandpaper incident in South Africa has brought hundreds of kids to the game.
Could this low-maintenance cement track host a celebratory five-day battle between England and Australia in 2028? What better way to commemorate the centenary since the Don’s first waddle through the picket gate, to take guard in a Test match against the old foe in November 1928?
What an experience this test would be? What an event! One venue, one strip, one Test could encompass a century of cricket’s rich history. To see this humble venue being used again at an international level would be a dream come true for all Australians!
Fragile finished his spray with the final button:
This Bowral pitch is the bridge that joins our heroic past to our sparkling present and our glittering future. A future that features so many players from a new generation who have not heard a thing about the Don and his final great innings of profound disappointment.
Imagine the roar that would sweep the nation, on a Mexican wave of enthusiasm, if Cricket Australia said, ‘YES!’
Obviously, a full array of punting options would be available on every ball.
GOLF: IF IT’S NOT UP IT’S NOT IN
It’s an eighteen-hole stick-and-ball caper that explains the universe and why humans seek nirvana!
THE 2020–21 COVID PANDEMIC has put golf front and centre in the national consciousness. With Greg Norman making his way back to Queensland and his trouser-off photo shoots grabbing recent social media attention, with ex-President Trump, D., still lurking around that great Florida links layout he owns, and with the man they call Tiger in trouble with cars again, is it any wonder that swingers around the world are shouting, ‘Golf, count me in!’?
Joe Hockey tells a lovely story about playing the game with President Trump. Joe, one of our great Stateside ambassadors, loves his golf. He knew which end of the club to hold and which end of a cigar to light. He fitted right in. He could talk to anyone about anything. Small talk was his go, the smaller the better. He could tackle trade talks, defence treaties and joint exercises between the Australian and US navies, as well as keeping up a steady stream of Facebook posts and social news, and skate along the fake facts trail. The ambassador’s work is never done. It meant our Joe had to have many rounds of slice and dice with President Trump. It was a real chore, an eighteen-hole grind.
Ambassador Joe knew Donald loved to cheat at golf. Whether teeing-off, puzzling over a difficult approach shot or putting for par, the President was a great head puller. He would tread on your ball, hide your putter, super-glue your clubs together. Donald T. was a whatever-it-takes golfer. He was the master of the foot wedge and hand wedge to improve a lie. Of course, he always played the executive course, which was several metres shorter than Joe’s tee-off point.
Trump sledged, whenever Joe’s back swing was in motion, with vicious put-downs. He dropped salacious dak-cacking
gossip about stars and politicians when he saw Joe’s confidence was shot. The Donald knew all the tricks. He wrote the book. He was very competitive, often putting a grand on a shot. If he wins, you pay; if you win, no one pays.
Whenever Joe played with Donald there were always twenty helicopters and forty golf buggies zooming about the course crammed to the brim with heavily armed, wired-up security personnel.
Once, halfway through a round with ‘Comb-over’ Don, Joe was a couple of strokes ahead when the President drove his buggy onto the green at the fifteenth. He always parked on the greens. His mobile pop-up food truck came to a halt dead centre on the green carpet, so the dual-cab V8 ute was between Joe’s ball and the hole.
Joe shouts, ‘Hey Don, can you move the bloody buggy? I have to play my shot!’ This is from 150 yards away. Trump bellows, ‘Come on, Joe, it’s OK, play on! Hit me! Just hit me!’ Joe responds, ‘OK, you are the President. If you want me to hit you, I am happy to have a crack.’
As Joe lined up the shot, a quiet voice behind him mumbled in that White House drawl accompanied by the menacing click of a Glock being cocked, ‘Hey Aussie Joe, hit it high! Hit it wide! If you hit the President, it will go very badly for you!’ The secret service agent then handed Joe a five iron.
Joe’s anecdote highlights the importance of golf to international diplomacy through the long decades of the ANZUS alliance. For years, golf has been the sport of international politics. Since World War Two, most American senior politicians have had a respectable game. Dwight D. Eisenhower played 859 rounds while President. That record was only broken when the forty-fifth President stepped up to the tee after putting his hand on the Bible and swearing. With Don, a new era of bag-dragging was underway and records were there to be broken.
Trumpy spent so much time on the dance floor with the putter that historians are waiting eagerly, for his golfing record to be released by the Ivanka Trump Library, to see if any presidential records have been broken. It will make fascinating reading for both golfers and op ed writers.
But with Don moving on, it will take time for international relations and the golfing landscape to settle down. It is reeling and punchy from the bunker-busting whacks that the Trump presidency unleashed from the driver’s seat of the ‘bigly’ golf buggy. Don was a very disruptive influence.
But with Don moving on, it will take time for international relations and the golfing landscape to settle down.
The Trumpian golfing legacy will be a hot PhD topic in coming years, attracting the gaze of many sporting governance graduate students with an interest in golfing politics and Hot Dot ball technology, on-course water sustainability and greenkeeping.
Images of the President on the links during his time in office were not the best advertisement for the game. Course photographers were often on hand pointing the Nikon and the Apple iPhone at the sizeable presidential rear end camped under the bright red MAGA hat, bent over a difficult lie on the green, hoping to put away a nine-metre putt for par. These snaps often zeroed in on the presidential gusset, once seen never forgotten. Not sure if it was intentional or just art, but an unsettling amount of seepage and stainage featured on the wide expanse of rear end trouser pin snaps. The presidential trousers made headlines again in more recent times when it was suggested that Don had them on backwards at one of his post-presidential ‘2024 Here I Come’ handshake tours.
After sinking the Hot Dot and inking the scorecard, Don clambered into a V8 buggy with four on the floor, room for the clubs, hot box groaning with barbecued chicken, French fries and an esky crammed to the brim with chocolate cream cake and Coke. That’s the soft drink, not the nostril whizz, and never mind what Don Junior is having. That cake and Coke diet sustained Don in peak physical and mental fitness for four trying years in the top job. The bloke was super fit. He could put in a hard day’s work spending ten hours out on the course before coming back to the clubhouse, watching all his shows and still able to tweet up a storm until 4 am on that balanced, uncomplicated diet. It’s the sort of life-sustaining fuel intake that gave him the strength and stamina to consider the long march to the White House.
His doctor maintained the President had no need of the golf buggy because of his incredible levels of fitness. Trump’s doctor was ‘Unstoppable’ Chuck Jackson, who was a very keen golfer and played off a handicap of four when he last played, back in 1967. Unstoppable snared an online degree in Medicine from Trump University in Macon, Georgia, and enrolled and graduated in a wellness PhD on the same day. He ran the stethoscope over Don on the seventh at the Turnberry, one spring afternoon in 2016, and declared that Don was the fittest President he had ever examined. It was a headline-grabbing diagnosis, even though no one is sure how many presidents Unstoppable had run the medical slide rule over.
His doctor maintained the President had no need of the golf buggy because of his incredible levels of fitness.
For his White House years the Mar-a-Lago layout was Don’s second home. He had mastered the layout and played many rounds yip free. His score card (often self-corrected in the rough behind the roses) showed he hammered every hole until he carded that elusive and difficult-to-grab one under par.
President Don, the Commander-in-Chief, played many courses but spent the bulk of his career pondering club selection at Mar-a-Lago. It is an exciting members-only layout in Palm Beach that caters for music and Hollywood celebrities, billionaires, the hardcore MAGA mob, the QAnon crew and four-star generals on the outer with the Washington military establishment.
‘Mar-a-Lago’, loosely translated, means ‘sea to lake’ as the property spans the gap between the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Intercoastal waterway on the other. This fabulous Florida course was laid out between 1924 and 1927 by cereal company heiress and socialite Marjorie Post. In the heady twenties, that is, the nineteen twenties, the socialite concept and golf were a Tender is the Night tight fit. Back then, Mar-a-Lago was a byword for Florida pre-Depression glamour. It pulled the big names like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Clara Bow, Mary Pickford, Rudolph Valentino, Stan Laurel and Norma Shearer. It celebrated a past age when players had a drink in one hand, a club in the other, time on both hands and their eye on someone else.
It celebrated a past age when players had a drink in one hand, a club in the other, time on both hands and their eye on someone else.
Players always dressed for a round. On the first hole, canapés were dished up by handsome tuxedo-wearing, non-playing staff. A martini with olive was available on the third as nothing improves eighteen holes like regular alcoholic refreshment. The fourteenth was the party hole where Bing Crosby would often serenade golfers with the hits of yesteryear, like ‘Don’t Fence Me In’, ‘Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?’ and ‘You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby’. Bing often sang duets with contemporary stars like Grace Kelly and Joan Caulfield.
It is well known that Donald loves music. When he hoons back to the clubhouse after a round, he fires up the B and O sound system on the buggy to eleven and a half. He scares the bin chickens and homing pigeons with Twisted Sister’s ‘We’re Not Going to Take It’ blaring from the speakers, letting everyone and the birds know the big bloke is on his way.
Mar-a-Lago has always been associated with swingers and the romance of golf. Golf is a swinger’s game and in Florida socialising is a big part of any round. Playing with friends, meeting new friends, hooking up with old friends and thinking about absent friends who may not be on Tinder yet is the best reason to take a bag of clubs out of the boot.
Australia was light years ahead of the States. The oldest Australian course is the Ratho Golf Links at Bothwell, seventy kilometres north of Hobart. This magnificent complex was established soon after the arrival of Europeans in 1821. It’s the oldest course in the world outside Scotland.
This Tasmanian layout pre-dates the Mar-a-Lago set-up by a century. The Bothwell area of the Apple Isle boasted great Scottish connections. It was natural that the tartan kilt-wearers, once they tired of tossing the caber an
d eating haggis, began looking for a stretch of scrub where they could punch in eighteen holes and a few sand traps. The greens were square and surrounded by fences, to protect the grass from the sabre-toothed sheep that roamed the area. These peckish woollen jumpers on four legs with razor-sharp teeth had a go at anything featuring a tinge of green.
The first records of Australians swinging were left by Alexander ‘Sparkie’ Spark eighteen years later. The Spark diary records him playing a Grose Farm layout in 1839. These original eighteen holes are now buried under the suburbs of inner Sydney, but the course sowed seeds. Sparkie and fellow bag-draggers formed the New South Wales Golf Club in June 1839. Putting that achievement in historical perspective, a major NSW golfing organisation was up and running three years after the founding fleets turned up in Holdfast Bay and pegged out the streets of Adelaide.
Putting that achievement in historical perspective, a major NSW golfing organisation was up and running three years after the founding fleets turned up in Holdfast Bay and pegged out the streets of Adelaide.
Not sure what early controversial agenda items clogged the club’s AGM. But the minutes of the first meeting indicate significant time was spent tackling the course dress code, as in appropriate footwear on the greens, sock length and decorations. There was the on-going scandal of horse dumps near the clubhouse front door. These were not a good look, and the tidy-up roster was not working effectively. Then there was that golfing evergreen, bad language, after a shocker on the fifteenth where children were often present. The issues then are much the same today on any golf club AGM agenda across Australia.
Back to Mar-a-Lago, and as the Trump presidency headed to the compost bin of history, an almighty stench emerged from the swamp near the par-four eleventh. The bubbles erupting from the open sewer were a concern, but even more alarming was the startling news that the ex-President could camp at Mar-a-Lago permanently, using the joint as his major residence. This would break the spirit of a letter of agreement signed by the Donald all those years ago. The three-page memo, on White House letterhead, signed by 136 concerned citizens, banned a permanent Trump settlement in the apartment above the pro shop with 24/7 access to the clubhouse buffet.
