Australian Women's Book Review Volume 14.1 - School of English ...

superficial level. When she does drop the public voice of narrative and exposition, the moments are
insightful and revealing: 'I have never felt beautiful on land the way I do when I'm in the water. When
you're at that stage of fitness and going into competition it's like a love affair…. It is an extremely
sensuous experience to swim at that level of oneness with the water, feeling a tingling sensation on the
fingertips and the skin' (p.109).
Interestingly, the most personal and engaging parts of the book are the early sections where she recalls
her childhood growing up working class in Balmain. Fraser evokes a suburb and a hard way of life now
largely vanished, and she tells some wonderful anecdotes. She worked for the SP bookie, Lenny
McPherson at the age of eleven, and she describes how she got her friends to dive bomb the middleclass
swim squad from Drummoyne when they tried to train in her pool. Fraser really did achieve
against the odds, with no AIS, no sponsors, no heated pools, no media jobs to help her, just full-time
work and full-time training. In this way, her early working-class life is central to understanding her
drive, rebelliousness, and search for recognition (often from famous people). If we don't necessarily
discover a different Dawn, we at least gain an account of a different era of sport.
And we also see how national legends get (re)constructed. By this, I don't just mean the tendency in the
book for Dawn to replace self-analysis with the easier option of reverting to the national stereotypes of
larrikinism, working-class battlers, or the working class made good. I mean, as well, the basic narrative
of Dawn's rise and fall from grace, and her eventual reinstatement to her rightful place in the national
pantheon as 'Our Dawn' (indeed, she has been described as a national living treasure). Her slow climb
back to public prominence in the 1980s and 1990s is a case study of the intersection of an ex-athlete
with the codes of national identity, and the expanding sports industry and bureaucracy. Thus Dawn:
One Hell of a Life provides dual insights: first, into a collective psyche constructed through those
stereotypes, desirous of heroes, and in love with sport; and second, into a working-class female
champion who relies on those largely male mythologies for a sense of self (and an income).
Margaret Henderson is a lecturer in the Contemporary Studies Program at the University of
Queensland, Ipswich Campus. She is writing a cultural and political history of twentieth century
Australian feminism.
66