As a future chairman of NSW Cricket and a Cricket Australia board member, Bob Horsell always had an eye for cricket talent.

On this particularly sunny morning, thirty-three years ago, at a suburban cricket ground in Sydney, he was on his way to find a shady spot to sit for a spell and watch his son playing for Eastern Suburbs in a Cauwsey Shield match. But something diverted him from the action in the middle. Something small, in the shape of rather insistent toddler—as only they can be—wearing a nappy, with a dummy in his mouth, carrying a little green plastic cricket bat … and demanding of all and sundry that balls be thrown to him so he could fiercely wield his artificial willow and whack them back.

Bob checked his stride, stopped for a bit and watched with growing amazement the prodigious mini-batsman on show. ‘That kid’s amazing’, he offered to the lad’s proud parents, Jim and Gai Harris, as he gazed in wonder at the demanding youngster tapping the plastic bat on the ground and impatiently waiting for the next ball from whichever kindly individual he had entrapped.

I always fancied myself as a batsman.

These days I would probably have ended up being recorded on someone’s smart phone and shared on various social media websites with click-baiting headlines like ‘Toddler plays better than (insert name of current out of form batsman here), you WON’T BELIEVE what happens NEXT!’

But back in that less scrutinised era, my single-minded display was probably due to the fact my big brother Gavin was playing, and if my boyhood hero was out there, then so was I. And when I was patiently diverted (several times) away from the playing surface and back to my own game, well, then that was the only game in town.

Gav told me that when his side were batting sometimes, long-suffering teammates would welcome a wicket in the middle so they could make an excuse (or at least risk the wrath of the incredulous toddler) to get away and pad up. Opposition teams must have fancied themselves a chance of a few quick wickets when looking over to see half a dozen blokes all kitted up ready to bat.

And a long innings would bring its own reward, spending less taxing times in the middle, while those unfortunate enough to be dismissed cheaply would suffer their own peculiar form of penance when they heard the repeated ‘tap, tap, tap’ and frustrated gurgling coming from over near the Harris clan.

A change of innings was also eagerly welcomed, with Gav and his mates busting themselves to get onto the field and leave me to fresh victims, usually from the opposition … I wasn’t fussy. They could have been from Mars as far as I was concerned—as long as they could throw a ball at me.

I can imagine the sighs of relief would have carried across a suburb or two when my eternal innings was interrupted for a sleep in the pram.

Dad has put his hand up, though, and admitted that if it wasn’t for him doing a spot of fatherly social engineering when I was a baby, then perhaps I might not have been so determined to ignore the toys I had in favour of smacking round objects with another object.

He was keen for me to enjoy sport, so when better to start than in the cradle? Apparently he would prop me up on the floor in the lounge room of our Coogee apartment, and roll a ball to me.

After a bit of this I would knock it back to him. Dad kept it up, and after a while I was grabbing the ball in my chubby little hands and shoving it back to him as best I could. By the time I was walking, I would usually have a ball nearby to kick or throw, and once I worked out how to get various grown-ups and bigger people to throw it to me, then the time would just fly (for me anyway!).

We were living in Coogee in Sydney at the time and by all accounts I was a child who enjoyed the outdoors. Sport was definitely in the genes, so it was only natural that I gravitated to playing for as long as my youthful stamina would allow. There were always plenty of kids around and Mum, Dad and my brother Gavin had a close circle of friends to ensure that the ‘little bloke’ always had someone to keep an eye on him.

If my paternal grandfather had not opted to seek a fresh start, I could well have been telling this story with a distinctly English emphasis. Instead of Sydney it would have been Leicester and instead of cricket it would probably have been soccer.

Our family history is like most genealogies … a bit complicated, with gaps here and there where oral history and memory have been muddled and changed. My grandfather Arthur was from Leicester, where he and his wife Ouna lived in an up-and-down terrace house typical of the period. They raised four sons including my dad, Jim, and a daughter, and did their best to get by as many did in those days. Grandad worked with his hands as a fitter and turner and clock repairer, and the kids went to school and enjoyed the usual things kids did growing up in England in the 1950s and 1960s. Dad was the second youngest, while Alan one of his older brothers, was a promising footballer, and there was talk of a trial with Leicester City.

Dad recalls Grandad considering immigration as the children began to grow up and tougher economic times seemed likely in the future. A desire to make a better life for them was the prime motivation and the decision was made and enacted quickly. Dad says that he can remember the children being gathered and their parents addressing them on their Commonwealth of choices.

‘Right, well we can go to America, Australia, New Zealand or South Africa’, he put to them.

‘America!’ came back the universal reply.

‘Right then, that’s settled. Australia it is.’

So, leaving behind the rest of the extended Harris family and offshoots—I still have many relatives in the Leicester area and Dad has made a couple of visits over the years to look up great aunts and uncles and cousins and the like—they set sail for their promised land. They were among the waves of postwar immigrants known as ten-pound Poms—with adults having their fare paid for and children travelling for free as part of the assisted immigration policy run by the Australian government. More than 1.5 million people chose that option during the life of the scheme, which ran into the 1970s. As Dad tells it, the month-long voyage on the ship out to Australia was one to savour for the kids. Good weather, plenty of people to play with and ice-cream every day—the clincher for an eleven-year-old. He was among the many youngsters who were severely disappointed when the ship finally hove into port and the business of starting a new life took priority.

Like the majority of immigrants, the family lived in a hostel as they went about getting settled in their new home. In Adelaide Grandad took on whatever work he could find. An early job was as a brickie’s labourer and that constituted a baptism of fire: working outdoors in the first week of January in South Australia. He was lobster red by the end of it and spent the following week in bed recovering from severe sunburn.

Grandma and Grandad opted to settle in a relatively new satellite city built on old farming land in the outer northern suburbs of Adelaide. Their choice of Elizabeth meant they could retain some of their links to their old home. It was named in honour of Queen Elizabeth II and she visited there during her 1963 royal visit.

And while they had the royal imprimatur for their suburb, the family was experiencing a more comfortable lifestyle in a newly built home, with many of their neighbours either English or Scottish and most with families. Dad said the kids loved the space they had.

Dad’s never said so directly, but his enjoyment of his sea voyage at a formative age must have had some impact on him opting to join the Royal Australian Navy as a teenager. Dad joined the navy as a sixteen-year-old after a bunch of his mates at high school got talking about what they were going to do for a job. One of them said he was thinking of joining the navy. He must have been a persuasive bloke because, shortly afterwards, four of them left to enlist on the same day and Dad ended up in WA. He flunked the original exam, but remembered enough of the answers to help out one of his mates who went the next day. Another crack at the exam helped and as a career choice, it sat well with Dad. He served twenty years to the day with them, largely in administrative roles, and finished as a Chief Petty Officer.

In between any sea going duties in South-East Asia and Vietnam, Dad served in plenty of locations around the country, including Nowra. Why I mention this is that one of the funny quirks that has happened in my career is that somewhere along the way, it became a matter of ‘record’ that I had been born in Nowra. It still crops up occasionally in this Google-reliant world.

Now to put it on the record, my big brother Gavin was born there, but I never lived there. But we’ll get to where I came along further down the track in this story.

Mum’s story is a little different and one of the things I intend to do in the future is learn some more of her side of the family tree. Gai Robyn Walton was born in Kensington in Sydney where her father was involved in the racing industry (and right now there will be some people who will be having an ‘aha’ moment due to my, ah, interests, in matters relating to punting). Her dad had worked with Tommy Smith and Mum used to play with the legendary trainer’s daughter, also called Gai, who is better known these days as Gai Waterhouse.

Both of Mum’s parents died before I was born so I was only ever really aware of her and her older brother, John, from that side of the family. Funnily enough, Dad tells me that he used to back one of the horses her father trained, Chandos, back when he was a young bloke and was pretty surprised to see the photos from its wins on the wall of her house back when he first started going out with Mum. The world is a big place, but not as big as you think.

That’s backed up for me in the way that Mum and Dad got together. Mum had introduced one of her best friends, Fay, to a young sailor named John. Now Dad had served with John on the HMAS Yarra and they got in touch again when both were stationed in Sydney in 1968. John and Fay were married by then and they had made plans to go out one Saturday night with Mum. Fay asked John if he knew any nice-looking single sailors on base who might be a blind date for Gai, and so John asked Dad to help him. Dad was working in the pay office at that stage and knew who was married and who was single … but after John missed out on a few candidates due to it being short notice, he asked Dad (who was single) if he wouldn’t mind coming out.

They went to the ANZAC Memorial Club in North Sydney and things flourished from there.

Mum worked for Qantas in Sydney and that’s where they thought they would like to settle despite navy postings potentially interfering with those plans. They lived in Commonwealth housing in Coogee after Gavin had been born in Nowra, and spent nearly ten years there waiting for me to enter the picture.