Evonne Goolagong Cawley - There's No Place Like Home

It’s been 50 years since Australia thrilled to Evonne Goolagong’s first Wimbledon win. In a rare and exclusive interview with Susan Chenery, Australia’s ‘sunshine supergirl’ recounts the dizzy highs of life on the international tennis circuit, and the strength and wisdom she’s found in family, community and coming home.

- Susan Chenery

Everyone was in their pristine tennis whites at the Albury Tennis Club when an Aboriginal man with a cigarette in his hand and a fedora on his head walked across the back of the court. Following him was an Aboriginal woman with a pram and six children walking in a row. “All the people who were playing just stopped,” says Evonne Goolagong Cawley. The Goolagong family had come to see their prodigy play but they didn’t know much about tennis – or its etiquette. “They didn’t realise they were on the court.” Later her father, Kenny, a gun shearer and a Wiradjuri man, put his fingers in his mouth and loudly whistled her. “And I heard him,” Evonne shrieks with laughter, “and I came.”

A lifetime later, we’re in a gated resort at Noosa, where there are grand Mediterranean houses with terracotta roofs, streets lined with neatly trimmed hedges and lush tropical gardens tended by flocks of gardeners. And there is that face, that famous face. It is a face that is etched into the national consciousness, part of the story of Australia: The humble Aboriginal girl from a tiny country town who, against all the odds, became the number one tennis player in the world. And did it with grace and humility; a symbol of hope for her people and pride for her country.