Glenn McGrath Line and Strength Read online

  Bev’s family, the Watts, were ‘good breeders’. Glenn’s great-grandfather James fathered 17 children. His grandmother Marjorie Hawke was one of 16. Bev’s father was christened Baden Powell Watts, but later changed his name to Albert Donald Watts – incorporating the name of his idol, Donald Bradman – after copping too much stick from his army buddies for being named after the bloke who founded the Boy Scout movement. Don volunteered for active service during World War Two and endured horrific conditions in Papua New Guinea, transporting supplies and ammunition as a member of the 3 Australian Pack (Horse) Transport Company. After suffering repeated bouts of dengue fever and malaria, which was reputed to have killed more diggers in the tropics than the enemy’s bombs and bullets, he gained an honourable discharge in 1944.

  ‘He’d suffer from bouts of malaria when we were kids, because it comes back,’ Bev remembers. ‘We really didn’t know how bad it was for him until after he died. One thing about Dad was he didn’t complain much.’

  One of Bev’s lasting memories of her father is of his passion for gardening. His tomato plants grew close to 20 feet high. ‘You’d have to climb up on a ladder to get them and one slice was big enough to fill a dinner plate. I’ve never seen anything like them,’ says Bev proudly. (She thinks her father’s secret to growing the best tomatoes in the Western Districts might have been the thick trail of sugar he’d pile in the furrow as he planted the seeds.)

  When Glenn was ten, his grandmother Marjorie suffered a stroke. He vividly recalls how this event dramatically altered the family structure in the course of a single school day: ‘I was in Year 5 and I remember walking out of the classroom and getting picked up. My grandmother had suffered a stroke and I remember how upset everyone was. She lived for another 23 years and it wasn’t easy for her. That kind of thing makes an impression on you, especially when you’re only a kid.’

  Back at Dubbo Hospital that hot February day in 1970, Kevin looked on proudly as Bev cradled her newborn son in her arms. The only promises they could make Glenn on that first, special day were simple: he’d be loved and he’d be well cared for. These were promises they kept, but McGrath knows it wasn’t always easy for them. He was a farmer’s son, and that meant struggle and hardship were as certain as drought and flood.

  3

  Narromine Boy

  We don’t respect the clouds up there, they fill us with disgust,

  They mostly bring a Bogan shower – three raindrops and some dust.

  ‘The City of the Dreadful Thirst’,

  A. B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson

  Four hundred and fifty-eight long and lonely kilometres separate Narromine from the traffic snarls and ceaseless tramp of feet in Sydney. The township of 3500 people nestled on the eastern fringe of New South Wales’ Western Plains was named ‘Narramine’ by the area’s original inhabitants, the Wiradjuri. One translation suggests it means ‘place of honey’, while another insists it’s ‘place of lizards’. The only irrefutable fact concerning the town’s name is that a simple error by the local newspaper’s first editor changed the spelling to Narr omine.

  John Oxley, the Surveyor General of New South Wales, and the members of his 15-man expedition were the first whites to view the district’s open, sunlit plains during their 1818 exploration of the Macquarie River. While Oxley searched in vain for an inland sea, he noted the region’s fertile land and the potential for crops and livestock to thrive there. Narromine’s first white settlers were squatters who followed Oxley’s trail in the 1830s. William Charles Wentworth, a member of the first group of Europeans to cross the Blue Mountains in 1813, became a celebrated resident of the district when he counted ‘Narramine Station’ among his vast landholdings in 1835. The Main West railway linked the outpost to Sydney in 1883; the district’s first school opened that same year and the population started to grow.

  In 1973 Kevin McGrath bought the 1140-acre property Lagoona, which lay about 14 kilometres south-east of Narromine. He hoped to God that Narromine would be a place of milk and honey, because he was staking his family’s future on the move being a success. He had reason to be optimistic; after all, in the good times the district was renowned for producing wheat, citrus, fruit, vegetables, lambs, wool and even cotton. He was aware, too, of the risk that nature could turn on him. When drought bites, Narromine shares the same postcode as Hades: the ground blisters, the air feels like the Devil’s breath and symbols of desolation – sheep skulls, limp crops and skeletal cattle – dominate the landscape. But as Kevin packed up his young family – which now included two-year-old Dale – to make the 40-kilometre trip from Dubbo to Lagoona, he was buoyed by a genuine belief he could kick a goal. His family was, after all, leaving behind a successful enterprise in Dubbo.

  ‘We owned our own place. Dad had acreage on a small farm on the edge of Dubbo,’ Kevin recalls. ‘When Malc and I each got married, Dad surveyed 100 acres off for me and the same for my brother.’ The brothers also owned a poultry and pig farm, with over 4000 chooks and 20 or 30 sows, and share-farmed on a couple of well-known properties near Dubbo.

  When Glenn was almost three, the McGrath clan found what Bev and Kev agreed was the perfect spot to drop anchor and raise their family. There were two adjoining properties for sale at Narromine; Kevin bought one and Malcolm bought the other. Lyle felt it was important to remain close to his sons, so he and Vera also moved, leaving the chicken and pig farm for a property just a few kilometres down the dirt road from the boys. Bev describes the move as ‘long and difficult’. It was a logistical nightmare by any stretch of the imagination, with lots of machinery and the contents of three houses to move.

  The 4000 chickens that remained at Dubbo were probably glad to see the back of Glenn and his cousin Craig, older by four months. The pair had terrorised the chooks almost from the first day they could walk, screaming at the top of their lungs as they chased them around the barnyard.

  ‘They were like twins,’ says Bev of the two boys. ‘They grew up and did everything together, be it playing cricket or kicking a football. They were that close many people actually thought they were brothers.’

  Despite hitting Narromine in a convoy of heavily laden trucks, the McGraths’ arrival at Lagoona went seemingly unnoticed. If anyone had a thought for the newcomers, it may have been simply to wish them good luck for having a go. However, the eventual rise and rise of Glenn McGrath from battling bush cricketer to international sporting superstar would become entrenched in the town’s rich folklore, which included ‘The City of the Dreadful Thirst’, a poem about the dust-bitten place by the famed bush balladeer Banjo Paterson. Another noted moment, one of the proudest in the town’s history, occurred in 1944 when a Royal Australian Air Force twin-engined Beaufort Bomber – christened Narromine because it was paid for by the townsfolk – taxied all the way down Dandaloo Street to the local airstrip before seeing action in the south-west Pacific campaign.

  Narromine has also produced many sporting champions, including rugby league player David Gillespie, who played for the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs and Australia; sprinter Melinda Gainsford-Taylor, who held the 200-metre indoor track world record and competed at the 1996 and 2000 Olympic Games; David Jansen, the world’s top glider pilot in the 1990s; world champion clay pigeon shooter Kevin Heywood; and champion archer Jody Webb. And then, of course, there is Glenn McGrath. Enough to entitle Narromine to proclaim itself ‘The Town of Champions’.

  ‘Narromine was a great place to grow up,’ says Gillespie. ‘While it was only a small town, sport played a really important part in the everyday activities. It was a release. And one thing you have out there is the time to work on your game.’

  McGrath agrees. ‘People joke about there being something in the water in Narromine, but I reckon the town’s success comes back to the number of sporting facilities the kids have available to them,’ he says. ‘When I grew up, you couldn’t escape competing in some sort of sport because there was a basketball court, tennis courts, an indoor cricket centre, a rolle
rskating rink, golf course, footy and cricket fields, and even a gymnastics centre. It was great, but without wanting to sound like an old man, that was also pre-PlayStation days. Sport was one way we kids remained occupied.’

  Kevin McGrath believes the wide open plains encouraged kids to roam, allowing them to breathe and develop.

  ‘When I’ve been to Sydney or the other big towns around Australia, the kids don’t seem to have big enough back yards to play ... we needed binoculars to see what Glenn, Dale and Donna were up to. The bush is a healthy lifestyle. The country creates strong people, too. If you see some of those men in the back country, they’re very fit, very strong.’

  The McGraths took to life at Lagoona, although the first big rains brought floods. While the levee bank stood true and protected the house from being submerged, the deep water that isolated the sheds and back paddock made an impression on Glenn’s young mind. The water that ran down the back of the McGraths’ property gave his first cricket club its name: Backwater.

  ‘The water ran down the back of our property and it made its way to a big lake nearby that was a bird sanctuary. I don’t ever remember actually seeing the sanctuary, but I do know the area was teeming with rabbits and foxes.’

  In 1974 Beverley and Kevin celebrated the arrival of their third child, Donna, who grew into a sure-footed and talented athlete and followed Glenn into basketball and volleyball.

  At Narromine, the annual harvest break was a two-week period when all organised sport was put on hold so the farmers could harvest their crops. As a frustrated park cricketer who couldn’t ever get a bowl, Glenn loved the harvest break. After a hard day’s work in the paddock, he would usually end up with Dale, Donna, his cousins Craig and Nettie, and uncle Malc playing a ‘Test’ behind the machinery shed. The pitch would be pockmarked with pebbles and deep divots, and although this made it dangerous, McGrath enjoyed the opportunity to pretend he was playing for Australia. It was tough cricket which required quick reflexes: if a delivery kicked up off a stone it’d rear at the batsman with the speed – and venom – of a tiger snake.

  ‘The pitch was a shocker,’ chuckles McGrath. ‘I can’t remember anyone ever scoring a half-century in any of our games. The pitch just wasn’t batsman-friendly – not that there was anything wrong with that.’

  Dale remembers the matches best for the preview they offered of the famous Glenn McGrath ‘stare and verbal’ – the look and abuse the world’s best batsmen would become all too familiar with if ever they managed to connect the bat with one of McGrath’s fireballs.

  ‘You’d hit him back over his head and he’d go off like a firecracker – he’d abuse you,’ laughs the younger brother. ‘He didn’t like it as a Test player, but he hated it at Lagoona.’

  While Dale was more interested in becoming a farmer like his father than pursuing sport like his older brother, he did enjoy playing tennis once a week with the family. Families would take plates of sandwiches to the local tennis courts, and after their matches finished the adults would sit in the pavilion and discuss the latest events and the town gossip. Glenn, however, preferred to spend as much time as possible out on the floodlit court. He’d started playing tennis aged seven and had the genes to serve, volley and chase the ball well enough to be a competitive player in local tournaments.

  In the 1930s a distant relative, Vivian McGrath, had been ranked alongside fellow Australians Jack Crawford, Harry Hopman and Adrian Quist as one of the world’s leading tennis players. Quist, a winner of two Wimbledon doubles titles, wrote of McGrath in his book Tennis Greats 1920–60:

  ‘Vivian McGrath was the original wonder boy of Australian tennis. Aged 17 he defeated both Wilmer Allison [ranked fourth in the world] and Ellsworth Vines [Wimbledon champion]. His two handed backhand was then a unique stroke in tennis, and it was his great strength. No-one had seen a shot like that backhand before and the players of that time did not know how to handle it. During the 1930s I consider there was no better single shot in tennis than Vivian McGrath’s two handed backhand. [He was] one of the most likeable people ever to play the game but he never trained seriously. If he had done he might have been an even better player.’

  Not training seriously, however, was an accusation no-one could ever level at Vivian McGrath’s distant relative, because if Glenn McGrath was to prove anything as an athlete, it was the value of hard work, incessant training and bloody-minded persistence.

  As the McGrath kids grew older, so their responsibilities around the property increased. After school Glenn would drive the tractor or help Kevin with the lambs. And he and Dale grew seeds behind the chook sheds – wheat, barley, lucerne, soy beans, sunflowers.

  ‘There was lots of responsibility for all three of us,’ says Glenn. ‘But when I think back to those days, I really loved growing up in the bush. There was a sense of freedom and there were opportunities I don’t think the city kids ever had.’

  But there was one chore that never failed to leave McGrath in a cold, clammy sweat – feeding the chickens late at night.

  ‘It didn’t matter what time of night it was, even midnight, one of us had to take the food scraps to the chooks,’ he recalls. ‘The hairs on the back of my neck would be on end from the moment I left the house, because whenever I shone the torch into the darkness it would catch the eyes of so many feral cats ... they were big, and they were everywhere.’ Once Glenn reached the chickens, he’d throw the scraps at them and flee straight back to the house.

  ‘I’d feel the eyes trained on me and then there’d be this awful feeling that something was bearing down on me. It terrified me, so I’d sprint twice as fast as I’d normally run and slam the back door behind me when I made it to the house.’

  But the fear he sprinted from at night didn’t stop McGrath from exploring the bush that surrounded the property on his own.

  ‘You hear some people say the bush frightens them, but I never felt that, not even as a kid,’ he says. ‘I like the solitude ... I find a real sense of serenity when I’m out there. I’m not religious but I am spiritual, and I feel very peaceful when I’m out among nature. Always have.’

  During those treks McGrath not only fostered his deep love and appreciation for the bush, but he also developed a strong arm from throwing rocks at the rabbits and foxes that infested the area.

  ‘I could throw a cricket ball from one side of the field and clear the fence on the other,’ says McGrath. ‘It weakened considerably when I dislocated my shoulder when I was at TAFE. Before that, if Dale did something to annoy me he’d run down the back to escape on his motorbike. As he bolted, I’d look on the ground and pick up a stick or a rock, whatever was handy, and even if he was on the motorbike, I’d still get him. I remember hitting him in the leg with a stone one time when he was flying on the motorbike 60 or 70 metres away! I’d also have a go at the feral cats, foxes and rabbits – Donna too, when she deserved it!’

  Donna has painful memories of her brother’s throwing arm. ‘As I said – he was always throwing things. I remember him once throwing a piece of fibro at Dale as he tried to escape from Glenn after he did something to annoy him on his motorbike. He threw the fibro and it curved and hit him square on the head. It was quite amazing, really.

  ‘But he was always doing things like that; he’d get a golf ball and point with his driver at the shed he was aiming to hit. They were a few hundred metres away, he’d hit the ball and you’d wait a few seconds. When we heard the bang of the ball hitting the tin roof or the side wall, Glenn would raise his arms in triumph!’

  So for the Narromine boy, the bush was a place of both peace and violence – a contrast that would continue in his lifelong passion for guns and accompanying respect for the creatures he hunted.

  4

  The Straight Shooter

  After Glenn took his 500th Test wicket, Jane bought him an S-2 Blaster .500 Nitro Express with an interchangeable .375 Barrel and walnut stock, and had it personally engraved.

  Australian Shooter magazine, 2006 r />
  The sound of gunfire in the bush that surrounded Lagoona kept ten-year-old Glenn McGrath awake until the early hours of the morning. It was exactly as it sounded – a battle: the latest engagement in the age-old war between farmers and the vermin that stalked and mutilated their newly born lambs. Like Dale, Glenn lay in his bed wide-eyed and excited by the action. He could hear the engines of the gunmen’s souped-up utes rev and groan as they chased the prey. Sometimes the spotlights – ‘spotties’ – would briefly illuminate his room as the men scoured the scrub for another fox or feral cat.

  Glenn and Dale heard their father describe foxes as ‘bastards’ whenever he came across lambs that had been butchered in the night. The foxes normally killed with a single bite to a lamb’s neck and, as if to add salt to the farmers’ wounds, they ate only the tongue and tail – it was, as any man of the land would swear, an infuriating waste. ‘Bastards,’ Kevin McGrath would curse.

  The McGrath boys witnessed firsthand that foxes are surplus killers – they slaughter more creatures than they can possibly eat. The lambing season – when the scent of the ewes’ afterbirth lures foxes from their dens deep within the bush – was the annual call to arms for neighbours to try to eradicate their common foe.

  Glenn and Dale lay wondering how anything could survive as they listened to volley after volley of shotgun blasts. Glenn, while buzzing at the action going on just a few hundred metres from his window, was disappointed to have been confined to the barracks by his father. But he was far too young to be exposed to the many dangers that came with being among a troupe of armed men shooting in the dark.

  In time, the boys realised their father did not like guns. He hadn’t fired a shot until he was in his twenties and had to defend his livestock from the predators that would raid the paddocks and the chicken coops. The only reason Kevin owned a rifle at all was to keep at bay the foxes and feral cats that threatened his family’s livelihood. Unlike the other members of his posse, he wasn’t attached to the weapon and he dreaded that his boys would one day want to become shooters.