New doco on Australia's original cricket tragic and 'game of our own' hero
Published on 23 August, 2004
Spared from Australia’s largest massacre of whites by blacks, he coached Australia’s first Aboriginal cricket team and in his spare time initiated Australian Rules Football ... Tommy Wills’ life reads like a movie script or boy’s own adventure.
And now it features in a video documentary launched before a large crowd on July 23 at Rockhampton’s Walter Reid Cultural Centre. A second launch of the video will take place as part of Back to Springsure Week on August 31.
Wills narrowly escaped death in 1861 when his father and 18 others were killed on Cullin-la-ringo Station near Springsure in Central Queensland, in what was the largest massacre of whites by Aborigines in Australian history (this was possibly a payback attack as part of a frontier war waging in the Nogoa and Dawson rivers area).
Ironically, he later returned to Victoria and coached and captained the first Aboriginal cricket team. Wills’ great, great nephew Thomas Wills (born 100 years and one day after the massacre) currently manages a station near the massacre site (now called Murdering Gap) and has been involved in the video project for ‘The Triumph and Tragedy of Tommy Wills’.
The great tragedy was that Tommy nurtured the first Aboriginal cricket team but missed out leading its famous tour of England. He later committed suicide.
Tom Wills captained Victoria in the inter-colonial matches against NSW from 1857-1869 and was know as the W.G.Grace of Australian cricket.
It was the same Tom Wills who wrote the famous letter to ‘Bells’ Life in Victoria’ in October 1858 suggesting a winter football game to keep cricketers fit, and helped set down the original Australian Rules Football code.
He played more than 200 football matches for Melbourne and Geelong as captain and coach.
The video documentary is a major element of Central Queensland University staff member Liz Huf’s PhD thesis and has been edited by CQU video producer Peter Lawrence. Sponsors include the Regional Arts Development Fund (via Rockhampton City Council) and the CQU Visual New Media Research Group.
Interview subjects on the video include former Australian cricket captain Ian Chappell and Victorian football writer Martin Flanagan.
ENDS For details contact Liz Huf via 07 4934 7184 or 0418 4934 7184.