Loading Please Wait...Loading Please Wait...The Evonne Goolagong Story
Published by Simon & Schuster (AUS), 1993.
The great Indigenous tennis champion and I were born three weeks apart in 1951, but I never knew her at the height of her sporting powers. We met over dinner at the home of a mutual friend, the television sports guru David Hill, in Sydney in 1985, and that summer we developed a friendship with Evonne, husband Roger Cawley and their children, Kelly and Morgan. Our children were of similar age, we hung out at barbeques on the beach and started talking about Evonne’s dream of coming home to Australia to reconnect with her Aboriginal roots, maybe even writing a book and producing a documentary about the experience.
The following northern summer of 1986, we visited the Cawleys at their estate on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, and either side of a wild and crazy road trip to Orlando, Florida to take the kids to Disneyworld, the four of us worked on the ideas that would eventually form the core of Home: The Evonne Goolagong Story. But it was a long time coming. Only a handful of years since becoming the first mum to win Wimbledon, Evonne was much in demand in the US, and it wasn’t until December 1991, that I finally got the call: “Gong here. Can we talk?”
The Cawleys settled in Noosa, our adopted home town, Goolagong Productions set up an office in the riverside cottage where we produced magazines, and Evonne and I floated around the estuary in my tinnie catching fish and developing the concept. The Cawleys were among many friends who supported us during the tragic loss of our son Sol in July 1992, and research trips on the road with Gong everywhere from her hometown, Barellan, to Far North Queensland, helped sustain me.
And we got the book done! And it was something we were all immensely proud of. It was launched in Sydney in October 1993. Prime Minister Paul Keating was to have done the honours, but he was unavoidably detained over the Mabo decision, which seemed fitting. Sports Minister Ros Kelly did the honours.
Phil and Evonne share a billy of tea while bush-bashing on the research trail, 1992. The book received critical acclaim and soon became a bestseller. 60 Minutes travelled to Aboriginal Australia with us to make an extended story, but strangely the documentary series never happened, although a play and a TV drama based on Evonne’s life have both acknowledged their debt to Home.
