I'm in Coburg in Melbourne to meet a national living treasure.
An athlete who was the fastest woman in the world.
She carried Australia's athletic hopes on her back
for more than a decade.
It's the magnificent Raelene Boyle.
I'll just roll in.
What are those lovely welcoming crunching sounds
you're doing as you're approaching?
Nice to meet you. Nice to see you!
I've wanted to meet you for a long time.
Oh, well, now is the moment. And where do you bring me to Pentridge?
I know. Welcome to my upbringing.
So you lived around the corner from Pentridge.
What was that like as a kid to have that nearby?
Well, look, I think it was probably a good lesson.
It was a place that I didn't want to end up in.
I'm not so sure that my parents at some stage didn't think
that that might be a place that I ended up.
Well, you've got a great car here. The Vanguard.
All I've got to do is be able to drive it!
Well, let's give it a crack. Let's give it a crack.
You're driving, luckily.
Got it! You got it. Amazing.
♪ Jump in my car
♪ I wanna take you there
♪ Jump in my car
♪ It's too far to walk on your own. ♪
Raelene Boyle exploded onto the athletic scene
as a 16-year-old flyer.
Selected for the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City.
Over the course of a tumultuous 14-year international career,
she was selected for three more Olympics and four Commonwealth Games,
scooping up medals before bowing out in style
with a famous victory in Brisbane.
Raelene Boyle's got the gold medal!
Since retiring,
she has led a personal and public battle against cancer
and in 2017 was named a legend in the Sport Australia Hall of Fame.
Is he going to let me go? What a lovely gentleman.
Thank you. Maybe he recognised you, Raelene.
Tell me about Coburg in the '50s and '60s.
What was it like?
Look, it was a happy place.
I had a happy childhood in many ways.
When I was asked to do this show, I did think about a lot of my memories
and a lot of my memories were not actually happy
but there were so many happy times that I had,
it was silly that I went to the negative.
But to grow in the world you've got to have the highs and the lows
and certainly I had lots of highs and lots of lows.
Extremes, really, in a way, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Extremes. I didn't like where I was brought up,
and I didn't like the house I was brought up in
but the other side of it is that we played cricket in the street,
because there were not many cars around.
We played footy in the street. We played Cowboys and Indians.
We spent our life outside.
Oh, this is your street.
Oh, look, and they're doing it up for me.
So there's 39, so we're not far away.
So there it is, right there.
Oh, my gosh. It's tiny.
It's tiny.
Isn't it funny - I thought this street was much bigger.
The Clarke boys lived over there in that grey house.
Oh, not the Clarke boys. The Clarke boys.
I used to knock them around a bit when we played footy
because I could out-mark them
but I used to put my knees in the middle of their back to get up.
How did I not know that? Look at this!
Well, yeah. It's changed a bit.
Has it?
It's a little bit more decent.
Is it? What do you mean by that?
Well, I used to hate it because the paint was always peeling off
and I'd try to paint it and make it look a bit more decent.
What, you actually would go in and try and paint it?
Yeah, well, I'd try and scrape the paint off to paint it.
And did your parents not bother about sort of upkeep of a house?
I think my parents, particularly Dad...
..and he was the leader
because my mother suffered with chronic depression
and, you know, was away from us a lot at different times.
Um... Dad just didn't care.
As long as we were playing our sport and we were happy,
that was the most important thing to him.
Are you ready to go in? Am I brave enough?
Are you brave enough?
My psychologist said I needed to take deep breaths.
Alright. We'll breathe all the way.
Oh, dear.
Oh, wow. Yeah, this is very different.
Very, very different.
In what way?
It just looks clean.
(LAUGHS)
Mum and Dad's bed was on an angle this way.
I can remember when I had my tonsils out when I was 13.
It was very special because I was allowed
to come in here and recuperate.
And when you were recuperating with your tonsillitis,
looking out the window, what are you thinking about?
"Can't wait to get out" or "I'm enjoying having a day off school"?
"What am I missing out on?" "What am I missing out on?"
I loved having a day off school but I would've been worried
that I was missing out on something AFTER school.
Yeah. Yeah, it's certainly changed.
People have come in and loved it
and it wasn't really loved when I lived here.
It was just a place to put your head down and eat your meals.
This was wallpaper and carpet.
And whose room was this?
This was my room. I shared this room.
My bed was this side and my younger brother's bed was here.
So Ron, your eldest brother, wasn't here?
He was out further. This window wasn't the same window.
It was a sash window before and it was great for escaping through.
If I was really deep in the 'S', I used to climb out there
and just disappear for a while.
You sound like you were in trouble a lot.
I was.
More than Rick?
Oh, yeah. Rick was the baby. He was the favourite.
What would you get in trouble for?
What are you running out of the window for?
No, I can remember when I was quite young,
I was actually expelled from kindergarten
because I wouldn't wear a dress.
Yeah!
Yay, and I was put in this room and told not to come out
until I put a dress on to go to kindy.
Well, Mum gave in. Um...
But it's so much more practical in pants.
Well, you couldn't play on the monkey bars in a dress.
Turn upside down and your knickers would be showing.
It was just embarrassing.
So, yeah. So, yeah, I was a pretty stubborn kid.
This has really changed. So, this was the little lounge room.
I can remember our first TV being put there by the TV man
and I was sitting on this funny little couch here
just pushing him along
because I wanted to watch Roy Rogers and Trigger.
I've always loved horses.
But this house, I mean, right down to basically the door level
was just an orange... film, I guess you would call it,
from my parents smoking.
My father died at 50 because of it
and it eventually killed Mum at about 70.
How did your parents meet?
My parents met because of the war. The Second World War.
My father was a flight engineer who flew out of Sale
and Mum was... came across from Perth to do her bit for the war
and was a parachute packer.
So they met in Sale and she never went back to Perth.
Were they a united couple, Irene and Mac, your parents?
I'd love to say yes but I don't think so.
I think my mother's chronic depression
played an enormous part in them having a difficult life.
They were very united in the fact that they were not going to split up
and bringing us up
and doing everything they could to make sure
that we had the right shoes on our feet
or the right bike under our bum or whatever.
But they struggled,
and I think struggling makes you unhappy in the world,
to a certain degree.
And obviously that's caused my mother's illness,
as well as probably having the genetic interest in it.
How did your mum's depression affect the family in general?
Obviously depression affects everyone
because depression is sadness and lack of confidence
and often screaming and confusion.
And so there was a lot of that went on at different times,
particularly with Mum and Dad at about bill time.
And... Yeah. Paying bills.
Yeah, it was kind of like, "How are we going to pay these?"
and Dad would say, "Don't worry about it, we'll do it,"
and there would be... and I think that was a lot of families post-war
living like that.
When Mum was away -
she spent a bit of time in the Royal Park Psychiatric Hospital -
it was difficult in the household because I was the girl,
and I was expected to do the female chores, like prepare dinner,
do the dishes afterwards and... and I objected to things like that
so as there was a bit of screaming in the household then as well.
But it was difficult for her,
and sadly I've inherited that genetic interest as well.
Since my cancers, I've been quite depressed as well.
Do you feel you understand it more because you've seen it,
or it manifests itself in a different way?
Um, I think because I've seen it and because of today's world
and today's openness about depression,
I think I've been able to deal with it better
and, you know, you can go on medication,
which I did for many years
and spent a lot of time talking to a psychiatrist,
which my mother didn't have...
Didn't have the opportunity to do. ..the opportunity to do.
I've been able to manage it and take over,
take charge of my life again by becoming involved in exercise again
and horticulture and doing things that I like to do
that actually keep the black dog from my heels.
Did you ever visit your mum at the psychiatric hospital?
I did. Yep.
I can remember riding from here to Royal Park with my younger brother
and I can remember getting there and Mum didn't know us.
And so we got on our bikes and pedalled home.
She didn't want to see you?
She actually didn't know us.
She was so... She went through the shock treatment phase.
Oh, no.
So yeah, so she was in pretty bad... a pretty bad way
and so we, um... yeah, she didn't know us.
So, your dad was your first coach.
Dad was my first coach, yep.
He trained me up to my first Games.
Why did your dad stop training you?
Um, we had a falling...
I had a falling out with the Athletic Association.
So you did... you ran a 400m race in Horsham.
What did you do, firstly?
Well, we were there for fun.
It was the end of the season.
It was fun and, you know, a few of us in the race -
I didn't like 400s, anyway -
we decided we'd... I can't remember exactly what we did
but we skipped the first 100 and we ran backwards for the second 100
and we moved sideways for the third 100
and then ran forwards down the straight,
and the people in Horsham were offended by that.
And so I was reported and, um, given a penalty
and back then if you were reported three times
you were expelled from the sport.
For that?
But I didn't even think I did anything wrong but anyway...
I guess... I don't know. I don't know what their expectation was.
But it obviously wasn't that.
And so there was extra attention put onto you?
Yeah, well, there was a lot of focus and the media were right onto me.
So the media came to this house outside and were pestering?
Yeah, it just became a bit of a bombshell, really, and ridiculous
and so Dad hid me down at Hampton with another family
and I saw the different life.
It's a terrible thing to say
but I saw this different lifestyle down there.
You know, a happy family and, um, a nicer house and...
That sounds awful.
It was just a different way of living.
Did you know these people? I knew them.
Aunty Dot became my coach, um, later, after I left Dad.
And, you know, I'd come back here and there'd be so much fighting
and stuff happening and, you know, I moved back
and brought all my stuff back and Dad sat me down in the kitchen
and said, "Well, now that you've come back, you stay here
"and you never see that family again,"
and I said, "Well, that's just not the choice I can make."
And I hadn't unpacked my car, fortunately,
and I went and drove away and never came back again.
Never came back to the house. Never came back again.
And I think I saw my father only a couple of times after that
before he died.
Why would he not let you still be friends with that family?
I don't know. Jealousy. Ownership of me he had. I don't know.
I never understood it
and, to be truthful, in the end I just stopped trying to understand
because I was never going to get to the bottom line,
because you could never sit down and have a discussion about it
because everything became so emotional and out of control that...
..that, yeah, nothing was ever resolved.
How did your mum cope?
Mum didn't cope well at all
but she felt that she had to stand by her husband
and, really, Mum and I didn't get close again
until probably about '76
and towards the end of her life we... we did become closer
but we were never terribly close anyway.
We had different streamlines in life.
We were on different circuits.
Um, some of it common, some of it not common,
and I think in many ways couldn't believe a lot of the things
I was experiencing, but able to cope with in life.
Do you remember the last time you spoke to your dad?
No. Nup.
It's gone.
Gone. At times I forget what he looks like.
I have to look at a picture.
Because we're talking a fair while ago now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
Um, but, yeah, it's sad.
And it's sad that he died so young because he smoked,
and he died in this house.
Oh, true? Mm. He died in the kitchen.
You're very brave coming back here.
Is it weird being back here?
Really weird. Yeah.
Really weird because my life has moved so far from here
but then when I reflect this is part of what motivated me
to change my life the way I did.
But it was a pretty, um... pretty sad and unspectacular,
for want of another word, home.
And, um... and it was interesting being brought up here
but I never want to live like it again.
But I think this is going to bring some closure to me about this...
..this stage, which was a very important stage
for what I've gone through and what I am now.
We'll go to Coburg Primary, shall we? Can't wait.
(LAUGHS)
So this is your primary school front.
Oh, look, Coburg School number 484. 484.
Gee. 1924, I think.
Is it? Yeah. Quite amazing.
So this is the little primary school.
So I had this little school,
then the bigger primary school
and then the high school just over there.
Alright. Well, let's have a look in here.
Oh, dear. Yep.
Oh, dear. Oh, wow.
I know. It's nice, isn't it?
I bet those doors were closed when I was here.
Yes, I bet they were.
They probably had me over here screaming
and the rest of them over there doing the right thing.
We're bringing you here to primary
because, really, school for you didn't figure largely.
No, you had to go. You had to go. Good on you. Good on you.
And... and it was the beginning of probably, obviously, my learning.
Um, but the world at large gave me the bulk of my learning
and understanding of what life's about.
Alright, Raelene Boyle, when did you know you were fast?
Probably when I was at this school.
I was fast enough to go and represent the big primary school.
So I used to go to the state championships
and primary school championships and represent the big school
when I was still at the little school.
That was really big time. Really big time.
Yeah. And what is it about running?
What is it that excited you?
Um, I'm not sure when I was this age,
when I was a kid, but I guess it was the freedom
and probably... I was faster than everyone else
so, even my brothers, I could hurt them
and outrun them and, um...
Not that I wanted to hurt them all the time.
Only some of the time.
But... but, yeah, I think probably it was a power
and so, you know, I was important because I could run fast.
Can you remember your first competitive race
or a first competitive race?
No, I don't really remember the early competitive races.
I do remember one at primary school
where I came second in the state championships
and I cried because I came second, and my mother totally disowned me.
It was like, "You can't do that if someone beats you.
"That's being a very bad sport.
"You must understand that in... you know, we're all born equal
"and maybe you're not going to win all the time.
"Maybe some of the time, people are going to beat you."
Was that a good lesson?
It was a very good lesson.
I never wanted to come second again. (LAUGHS)
How did kids at school react
when you came back from your first Olympics?
All your friends around you, your contemporaries, what were they...?
They were pretty blown away.
They were at the airport to meet me when I got home.
My whole class from high school were there and, yeah, in uniform.
They looked like dicks, really. (LAUGHS)
But I've still got pictures somewhere at home
of them at the airport just screaming and yelling
like they were at a music concert.
Four years later, you go to Munich.
There is now a sense of expectation. You're a known quantity.
What did you think you would go in there to get?
I knew that I went in there as one of the favourites
and there's always going to be more than one.
Um, I had no doubt that I'd make the final.
And probably the expectation was delivered a real blow
by the East German, um, side of the track and field story.
I don't really want to go into that too much
because so many things have been said about it
but the athletes of East Germany
had no choice about what they were doing.
And they were cheating.
Um, the women were all on high levels of testosterone,
which was very sad for them
because it did modify a lot of their lives in various ways.
And they had no say because they were...
..they were being told what they wanted to do or could do
by Honecker, who ran the country, and they had no choice.
They did it or they were sent to purgatory.
I was an Aussie kid who still had choice.
Now, I lost the medals, the gold medals, and won the silvers
but I am very proud of those silvers
because of the wonderful life I've been given by being born Aussie
and... and I feel sorry for the East Germans
because they had no choice in life.
So, 1982, Commonwealth Games here in Australia in Brisbane,
the 400 metres.
Such an amazing race that you win there.
Is it one of the lovelier moments?
It was a great moment. It was a nerve-racking moment.
Was it?
Because there were a couple of the girls in the race
that certainly were better runners than me over that distance.
It was off-season for them.
But... but I went into it believing I could win the race
and it was going to be the perfect way
to say thank you to the Australian public
and put a full stop at the end of the sentence of my athletic career
and be able to walk away satisfied, and that's what happened.
It played into my hands.
COMMENTATOR: It's Boyle in front! The crowd going absolutely berserk!
Raelene Boyle in front! I think she's got it won!
She's 5 or 6 metres clear!
Raelene Boyle has got the gold medal!
Her seventh Commonwealth Games gold medal.
(APPLAUSE, CHEERING)
What a moment.
Shall we go somewhere a bit special to you now
that not many people might know about?
Shall we go there? Why not?
Oh, this is gorgeous. Now, this is Victoria Gardens.
Why is this place special to you?
Um, I worked here for a long time. This was my park.
Your park? This was my horticulture.
This was the place that I loved working at and coming to every day.
This was the place that was very good for my health -
my mental health, my physical health,
when I was diagnosed with cancer.
And I was here for about eight years, nine years.
I just loved the place. It's peaceful. It's a happy place.
The dogs running around, the kids running around.
It's just one of those lovely places to come.
Do you miss it?
There's a lot of things I miss about it.
I miss the physical activity.
I miss the creative side of horticulture and I miss the people.
The community in this park when I was diagnosed with my cancer
wanted to get together and do my work for me
so that I didn't miss out on an income.
How many places in the world would that happen? Not many.
But you're a special person, missus. I think that's why they wanted to.
It was so sweet. They were like, why wouldn't you?
So, this was a very interesting corner.
This used to be the corner, for some reason, that people would come
and have their daily sexual activity.
So... Do tell.
We had some fascinating situations here.
That seat was well used by one couple.
There was another couple that preferred the lawn
and there was another couple
that preferred under the macadamia tree over there.
But the sprinklers were actually situated extremely well
so that if the park did become well used
we could turn them on and stop the activity.
Great!
We used to have the best fun doing it.
But it was just this corner. I don't know what...
It inspired people to have sex.
I didn't think that that was a story that you'd be telling me today.
So how difficult was it to stop running?
For me, not too bad.
I see a lot of the young athletes really suffer.
They kind of fall into a hole when they retire
but I had a great last coach.
He established rules, and one of the rules was the day you retire,
the day that we set that you retire, you walk away from the track
and you never come back.
You did some commentary. Did you enjoy that?
Being part of a commentary team?
I'm not sure that I was very good at it
but I was lucky enough to have a good partner,
and Bruce McAvaney made my life easy.
I can remember the first games I went to -
I did all this preparation
and really got myself organised, which, you know...
Well, that's good.
..I thought I had to do for the '84 Olympics.
And I got there,
and basically all I had to talk about was how people were running.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that's my passion with the sport.
Now... commentary wise, Raelene Boyle,
Cathy Freeman's race was an incredible race.
So many high stakes for so many reasons.
But the golden moment of commentary
is Bruce in his excitement "What a champion, what a day..."
"What a legend..." And you're...
"What a performance."
And Bruce said all that and he looked at me and he went...
Oh.
And then Cathy ran across after the finishing line,
dropped to the ground, undid her zip,
took her hood off,
and Bruce looked at me and went, "Give me something."
And I went "What a relief."
It was just... it was almost as though it was a master plan,
but it wasn't.
It was all natural.
And you only get one go at it.
And you only get one go at it, but the breaks,
the picture telling the story,
and then a word coming in that... you know, says what everyone's thinking.
You were here when you were diagnosed with breast cancer.
How did that change you?
Uh... oh, in so many ways.
I don't really know where to begin with that question.
But it changed me in so many ways.
Probably one of the key ones
was that it made me realise the insignificance of sport and fame.
Right.
Um, that when everything is pulled down to its raw beauty,
you are just a human being
and if... you know, anyone can get cancer,
anyone can drown at the beach,
anyone can have an accident that's nasty.
Life doesn't always take a perfect pass because you've been...
..path because you've been famous.
So it was a big lesson for me, that it didn't matter who I was -
that I was able to get cancer
and... and that really brought me down
to a very basic level of survival.
How are you now?
I'm good.
I've had, um... pretty much five good years, which is fantastic,
'cause most of the last 21 haven't been great.
I was diagnosed with epilepsy about five and a half years ago
and that that knocked my boots... that really knocked my socks off.
Um, I made a lot of changes in my life after that.
I retired.
I established, you know, what I wanted to do
and what I didn't want to do.
And I'm aware of the fact that I don't cope with stress.
And if I do take onboard stress, I start having mini mals again.
So I've just...
..I've just learnt to manage my life with illness better.
You've been doing some incredible work
working with breast cancer sufferers and survivors
through Breast Cancer Network Australia.
That must be rewarding, but emotional as well.
What it did actually was it turned the whole breast cancer journey
into a practical, um... useful companion to my sport -
to my sporting era.
Um, it made the sport, um... something I could use to help women
who were newly diagnosed with breast cancer and going through the journey
and we did a lot of hard work in the early days -
it's still happening today -
to make sure that women diagnosed with breast cancer had rights,
that they just didn't become a statistic.
And my running career has helped... has been very beneficial with that.
Yeah.
The name and the association to sport,
but then to illness has been...
It's great when the two can combine. ..significant.
You know, they support one another.
Yeah. It actually put the sport into perspective
and made it worth something.
Before that it was just fame
and that wasn't... I don't know, it was pretty hollow.
Yeah.
But I can reflect and say I've had a bloody good life.
Oh.... A blessed life.
Is there any part of you now that is like that young girl from Coburg,
who was great at running at that young age,
ready to go into the world?
Probably the pig-headed, stubborn...
Do you thi... Really?
Absolutely. (LAUGHS) (LAUGHS)
Absolutely.
The pig-headed, stubborn little cow
who will fight to the end if she believes in something.
I think that's still there.
Thank you for giving us your time today.
And it's so wonderful to be able to bring you back here to the gardens
and hear about where you're at.
Thank you, Raelene.
It's been fantastic. I've enjoyed it.
Thank you. Mwah!
Captions by Red Bee Media
Copyright Australian Broadcasting Corporation