Don Bradman

As I lay awake listening to the rumble of the trains flying past our onsite van at Mittagong I thought of two things. I was never going to rent accommodation in Mittagong again no matter how convenient it is to Sydney Airport and didn’t the famous cricketer Don Bradman live around here. I wonder how he put up with the noise.

Sir Donald George Bradman was born in Cootamundra, two hours up the Olympic Highway from Wagga Wagga, on 27 August 1908. He was a batsman who played in 52 international games, scoring 6,996 runs at an average of 99.94. To give you an indication of this feat the next best batsmen in cricket history had an average of 53.86. It is like a batter in baseball hitting a home run in every game played. During the 1930’s and playing against England the English bowlers would purposely bowl at Don’s body not to get him out but just to limit his scoring. This was called bodylining.

So what’s the Mittagong connection? When Don was two-and-a-half years old his parents moved to Bowral a town 5 kilometres south of Mittagong. In fact at the age of twelve Don hit a century (over 100 runs) for Bowral Public School against the Mittagong High School.