Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last Friday in Bendigo, a new statue was unveiled, of Barbara Rae, honouring our town as the home of the first women's cricket match to be held in Australia and the contribution that Barbara Rae made. In 1874, women still needed to seek permission to play sport publicly, and local schoolteacher Barbara Rae organised a fundraiser cricket match to be played at the Queen Elizabeth Oval in Bendigo between the red team and the blue team—all women. At 19, she recruited two teams and hosted training sessions before the match. Lis Johnson, a local artist, was commissioned to complete the piece, and she has done a tremendous job in capturing the upbeat spirit of Barbara and this moment of Australian sporting history. I was privileged to be able to take my son, Charlie, to the unveiling ceremony on Friday. All week, Charlie and his sister, Daisy, had been discussing what could be under the grey tarp on the way to school and kinder. When the big moment happened, Charlie's eyes lit up and he said, 'Wow, it's a cricket player.' When I asked him why he thought it was a cricket player, he rolled his eyes in that dramatic four-year-old style and said, 'Oh, mummy. They have a cricket bat.' Barbara Rae and her contribution to women's sport is forever immortalised in Bendigo and will be an ongoing inspiration to children for generations. (Time expired)

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