The Guardian Australia has published a first-person account by a tennis player described by the paper as "the would-be Wimbledon champion", who writes that she was focused on becoming the first Aboriginal tennis champion when an act of racism "shattered her naivety". The piece opens with a match in 1969 that, in the author's words, was regular until it wasn't.
In 1969 the author was 17 and had been living in Sydney with her tennis coach, Vic Edwards, and his family for several years. She had left her home town of Barellan, on Wirajudjuri country in the Riverina region of New South Wales, to pursue her tennis ambitions in the city.
The previous year she had finished high school at Willoughby Girls High, where she was the only Aboriginal student. She was then taking a secretarial course in the city at the Metropolitan Business College, which stood near the headquarters of the Foundation for Aboriginal Affairs.
