Don Bradman continues to be the biggest draw in Australia
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“If Australia were to become a republic, who do you think could be its face?” asks Douglas Hocking, my guide from the New South Wales tourism office as we drive along the scenic Grand Pacific Road from Sydney to Bowral.
It’s a vexing question given my inadequate knowledge of the country which Douglas narrows down to sports icons: not to make it easy, but because sports personalities dominate life so much here.
After a brief pow-wow I volunteer Sir Donald Bradman’s name (with due apologies to Rod Laver, Evonne Goolagong, Cathy Freeman, Ian Thorpe and a host of others who make Australia such a great sporting nation) and she agrees immediately. “There is nobody in any walk of life who still evokes the same kind of awe or admiration,” says Douglas.
Bradman still haunts the nation and the Australian psyche. In Adelaide, the promenade leading into the city from the airport is called Bradman Drive. The Oval here has a Bradman Stand (naturally) and a Bradman museum (most pertinently), but the Don also follows you to the departure lounge before you take off for Sydney (or anywhere), with some aspects of his stupendous career highlighted on one of the walls.
Nevertheless, the museum at Bowral (not his birthplace, which is Cootamundra, a fair distance from here, rather the place where he grew up) is in many ways the real pilgrimage destination for Bradman’s countless admirers from all over the world, and I can feel excitement building up as we approach the place though this is my third visit here.
In 1991, when I first came Down Under, there was very little to suggest that this was the place where the world’s most renowned cricketer had come from except the name. In 2001, shortly after Bradman died, I came to Bowral again and saw a museum, supported by the Bradman Foundation.
It had come up in 1996, with a quaint little ground adjoining it where the Don had played as a child before his precociousness took him to Sydney and from there to eternal fame. This time, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the place had expanded from merely housing Bradman memorabilia into a more comprehensive cricket museum.
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