I grew up fast after Mum died. I had no choice. I was sixteen, but like James and my sister Alison, the tragedy made us older than our years. It was really us against the world. The Housing Commission’s attitude to us was cruel, wanting to throw us out because they didn’t think we could pay the rent. We were all dealing with our grief, and all they wanted was their money. James did not let them kick us out. He convinced them that he was capable of paying the new increased rent of $120 a week and my brother never missed a payment. They left us alone.
We had tenants move in with us from time to time to help James pay the rent and put food on the table. There were three bedrooms. James and I shared one, Alison had her own when she was staying with us and not at an aunt’s, and the tenant had his own. James handled the meagre finances, bought the food and cooked it, clothed us all, paid the bills and gave us a small amount of pocket money, which I supplemented with the money from my paper route and collecting bottles. In the years since Dad left and Mum got sick and died, I had watched in awe and admiration as James changed from a knockabout boy into a serious, single-minded man.
I wished I’d made it easier for him.
Apart from a couple of times when James and I lived at the Police Boys Club, these living arrangements continued until the mid 1980s when it was time to leave the ’Loo. The Housing Commission people never relented in pressuring us to vacate our house. James was doing well at work and I was able to get a cheap loan at the building society where I was working, so in 1986 he and I took the plunge and bought a little house in Randwick together.
I wasn’t sorry to say goodbye to Woolloomooloo. Most of the kids we knew had moved on; strangers were living in their houses. The ’Loo was changing from a rough and ready working-class neighbourhood, where everyone knew each other and stuck up for one another, to a weird and uncomfortable socio-economic mix. The yuppies who had moved in to renovate the old terraces, and who might spend hundreds of dollars on a meal at any one of the trendy new restaurants in the area, lived acrimoniously with poor people of a dozen ethnic backgrounds who had been shunted into the ’Loo without a thought by the authorities. The welfare bureaucrats had no qualms about breaking up old communities and plonking a Chinese family beside an Aboriginal family or a Lebanese clan. As a social experiment it was a failure.
Two years after Mum died, in 1984, as James had been, I was graded with the Eastern Suburbs Roosters. About ten of us kids from the ’Loo played with the team which today is known as the Sydney Roosters but also has a proud history dating back to 1907 during which they’d had golden premiership winning periods in the 1930s and under Jack Gibson in the 1970s.
I never made it to first grade. I was never better than a good reserve grader. Our coach was Barry ‘Bunny’ Reilly, a comparatively small forward with a lethal tackling technique that in his playing days had earned him a second nickname, ‘ The Axe’. He was just as hard and ruthless as a coach. Playing alongside me were such well-known first graders as Johnny Tobin, and Scotty Gale, a brilliant and lightning-quick back who would later fall victim, much too young, to cruel motor neurone disease.
Harry Raven, the old Balmain forward of the 1950s, was on the Roosters’ staff. He took a shine to me. One night he drove me home from training and he said, ‘Okay, so what’s the Steve Dack story? Do you have a claim to fame?’ I told him how I’d grown up in Woolloomooloo and was tossing up between a boxing and rugby league career. I mentioned how I’d been in the 1980 New South Wales schoolboys team that toured New Zealand, knowing that Harry had been on the coaching staff of that side.
‘I thought you were familiar,’ he said. ‘What’s important to me is how a bloke fits into a side, his conduct on and off the field, and his statistics, which never lie. I do remember you, and what I liked about you then was that you were not a flash Jack, you rolled up your sleeves and worked for the whole game. Now that’s what I want you to do at the Roosters. Make your forty solid tackles a match, not just three big hits, and hit it up all day, get up and keep going after a knock. If you can do all that, week in and week out, you’ll always have a place in any team I have anything to do with.’
Harry’s vote of confidence made me feel ten feet tall, and this was good, because I got precious little encouragement from my mates in Woolloomooloo. They denigrated my achievement in being graded with the Roosters. Just as they had when I was picked in the New South Wales schoolboys team, and later when I had boxing success, they always wanted to undercut me, bring me down. They said, ‘Well, the standard must be pretty piss-weak if you can make it, Stevie.’ I suppose it was just the great Australian tradition of cutting off at the knees anyone who manages to make their mark.
I enjoyed the rugby league culture of the 1980s. We played hard and then we partied hard. I’d get drunk with teammates at least three times a week. This was long before the days of alcohol- and drug-testing. In fact, drinking too much was largely encouraged as an aid to team bonding. The team that gets pissed together plays for each other.
The Roosters’ first grade coach was a fellow named Laurie Freier, who was a bit ahead of his time, and he tried to curb the booze culture. Laurie didn’t entirely succeed. Once at the pub he pulled aside the first grade hooker, Jeff Masterman, a top player who had represented Australia in 1981 and who trained harder than most, and told Jeff to cut back his drinking. Jeff took offence. ‘Stuff you, Laurie,’ he said. ‘You can tell me what to do in a game and at training but what I do in my own time is my own business.’ In bucking the coach, Jeff enjoyed the support of the entire team.
Harry Raven was proud of me the day we were playing Manly and Ian Schubert, who’d played in the terrific Roosters teams of the 1970s as a winger before switching to Manly and the forwards as he got older and bigger, split my head wide open. Ian was still a powerful runner, a real danger man, and Harry had assigned me to mark him and I’d done so successfully, smashing him down regularly with low scything tackles. I only came unstuck when I tried to take him high. Ian liked to lift his elbows when he ran and one collected me fair in the face and split my cheek. I came off and got stitched up and returned to the fray. It was only my head that was in bad shape; my arms and legs still worked fine.
That was me, a gutsy, no-frills journeyman of a player who may have made it as a part-time first grader if I’d persevered. For some time I’d been spreading myself too thin between footy and boxing. I figured my best chance of really succeeding in sport was as a boxer.
I went on the end-of-season trip to Queensland with the team. Don’t ask me what we did because I was drunk the entire time. As far as I know I didn’t get into trouble, at least not the kind that landed me in jail. Then, on my return to Sydney, I retired from rugby league to devote myself to boxing.
The City of Sydney PCYC in Woolloomooloo saved my life. I mean that. It was there in the club’s boxing ring and gymnasium where I released all my pent-up anger. With losing Mum and having no father, being poor and resenting the lack of opportunities that other kids had, I was a very angry kid indeed. If I hadn’t had that safe refuge down on Cathedral Street I would probably have fallen into serious crime like a lot of my mates did from St Mary’s and the ’Loo. The men at that club, like president Bruce Collins and Constable Bill Pearce, were substitute father figures for me, and the boxing trainer Bruce Farthing took a kind interest in me.
I was cut out to box. I was fit, strong, had the temperament of a pit-bull and excellent reflexes, and, maybe most important of all, I enjoyed getting into a ring and defeating my opponent. I had no qualms about hitting someone and I didn’t mind being hit myself. I understood boxing and it was something in my life that I could control. About the only thing.
I spilt a lot of blood on the PCYC canvas against people from all walks of life. Every time I fought or sparred or trained I did so proudly. I was very territorial. I started to become known as a boxing talent. My friends from the district came to watch me, and I would always try to live up to their expectations. If a new boxer showed up at the club and was in my weight division, I’d fight him to make sure he didn’t challenge my standing in the place. That’s how I was.
It was Bruce Farthing, and, later, the great trainer Johnny Lewis, who convinced me that I could be a successful amateur boxer, and possibly even win an Australian title. Bruce entered me in the light heavyweight division.
Bruce was my trainer in my amateur boxing days. He is the gentlest, most generous and toughest man I have ever known. He treated me as if I was his own son … and is much more of a father to me than my own old man ever was. I love that man. Bruce immersed me in boxing. He was excellent on the physical aspects of fighting and just as good on the mental side. He told me the colourful history of my chosen sport.
When, in 1985, I first announced my intention to box seriously, James was convinced I was going to get hurt and he tried to talk me out of it. For about the first time ever, I put my foot down and said that I was going to box and, as much as I loved him, he was not going to be able to talk me out of it. My desire was so strong because I knew boxing was going to take me somewhere. In time, James became my biggest supporter.
It made me feel good to measure myself against another fellow. I tried to knock my man out, and if I couldn’t do that, I’d settle for a technical knockout or, if worst came to worst, a win on points.
That said, the big challenge for me was to master the fine art of boxing. I believe that boxing is an art. It’s mental and it’s physical. It’s about subtlety and brains and having a huge heart as much as it is about possessing a powerful punch. When I was starting out I soaked up all the knowledge I could. I became a fixture at the Police Boys Club, sparring, hitting the bag, doing strength and endurance exercises and living for my fights, and I travelled around to gyms such as trainer Bernie Hall’s in East Sydney where I sparred with well-credentialled professional fighters who punched the crap out of me. Bernie, a one-of-a-kind guy who sometimes wore his pyjamas in the gym, was always kind to me, and made sure I didn’t get too badly bashed up by his fighters. Ron McKellar, who’d been one of my junior rugby league coaches, went out of his way to help me in my boxing career. He would come to these sparring sessions and film me so I could see what I was doing wrong, and right.
I loved to fight and I loved to train. I had my own little corner at the Woolloomooloo Police Boys Club where I always worked out and shadow-boxed and I was never happier than when I was down there after school or during the day after I left St Mary’s, skipping, and doing endless sit-ups to strengthen my stomach and push-ups to make my shoulders and arms more powerful.
I was a natural fighter. Since my brawl with my childhood mate in the block of flats in Camperdown, when I had actually found myself enjoying the fight, I had never been afraid of fighting, never nervous when I shaped up to another kid. I’d think, Am I going to die? and my answer to myself was, Very unlikely. Most probably the worst that could happen was that I’d be knocked down, or out cold, and my pride would be dented.
I had a routine just before a fight. I would ask myself: ‘Sunshine, have you trained hard? Have you eaten and dieted well? Have you sparred and done your skipping and roadwork? Have you had lots of sleep? Have you studied your opponent and decided on a strategy and combination of punches to beat him? Are you a skilled and brave fighter who will never give less than everything you have?’ I truthfully could always answer ‘Yes’ to every question, and I knew that I was ready to get into the ring and do what I had to do. While my opponent would be giving me the death stare and mouthing threats as the referee gave us our pre-fight instructions, I’d stand there still and composed, laughing right in his face, knowing I’d done all I could to prepare. Having done all that, I always believed I would win.
Of course I didn’t always come out on top, but I never once got into the ring feeling anything less than total confidence.
My first fight was in March 1986 at South Sydney Juniors and my opponent was Steve Hanson from South Sydney Police Citizens Youth Club. I hit Steve with a right to the body and he went down. As he struggled back up to his feet while the referee applied the count he was eyeballing me and trash-talking that I hadn’t hurt him. But just as Bruce Farthing had trained me to do, I gave nothing away, just stared at him impassively, even though I was thinking, Hard words, mate, but you’re the one getting counted, not me! I went bang bang bang and down he went again. This time there was no glaring, no trash-talking from Steve Hanson.
Can I tell you, the mean face means nothing to a good fighter who is well prepared. No well-prepared fighter is intimidated by that. Sugar Ray Leonard used to wink and blow kisses at guys who gave him the evil eye. I was no Sugar Ray, but I couldn’t take sledgers seriously either.
I fought Jeff ‘Hitman’ Harding – the future World Boxing Council light heavyweight champion between 1989 and 1991 – very early in my career, in 1986, and he belted me all over the ring. I’d sparred with him before and actually got over the top of him. But, as I learned to my cost, sparring and boxing are very different beasts. Jeff was not a good sparrer but he was unbelievable in a real fight, when he would go up many levels. He could hit like he had hammers in both gloves. Our fight ended ignominiously for me, but I learned so much, and my reputation grew because I gave a reasonable account of myself. Certainly I never turned it up. Later when I became a lawyer, I represented Jeff when he found himself in alcohol-related strife.
After my defeat by the Hitman I fought again as soon as I could, and won that fight, and the next and the next, and before I knew it I was matched against champion Bobby Wilson for the Australian light heavyweight title. The way it works, you have to win the state title and then you enter a tournament against all the other state title winners and the last man standing is the Australian champ. I became New South Wales champion, which earned me the right to fight to become national champion.
In this match, the first of my three tilts for an Australian amateur title, Bobby Wilson hit me with the sweetest overhead right in the second round, and I went down. For a second or two, everything went white, and all I was aware of as I tumbled to the mat was the crowd’s ‘Ohhhhhhh.’ My head cleared almost immediately and I wanted to go on with it but the ref called it quits on my behalf. He thought I was out of my league and I probably was. Again, though, I didn’t let the defeat deter me and climbed back into the ring as soon as the amateur boxing administrators said it was okay for me to do so.
Bobby and I became great mates, as fighters who have fought a fierce battle against each other often do, and the following year when I fought a guy named Darren Obah for the Australian light middleweight title, Bobby was in my corner. Darren got the points that day, and, like Bobby, he and I had a mutual respect that turned into friendship.
Early in 1987, in my first fight after the Wilson defeat, I fought in Melbourne at Preston Town Hall, for the Lionel Rose Shield. I was up against a bloke named Goran Midic. Bruce Farthing said to me when we accepted the fight, ‘Stevie, this is Midic’s first fight. You should have no trouble beating him, and it’ll be a good way to get your confidence back.’
When I arrived in Melbourne I learned that this was indeed Midic’s first fight. His first fight in Australia! He’d had eighty-seven in Croatia. This was one of the many times in my life when I simply surrendered to the situation, figured that I’d trained hard and was mentally right, and that, after all, Midic pulled his pants on one leg at a time, just like me. I told myself, ‘Sunshine, go out there and give it to him.’
Which is exactly what I did. In a close and hard-fought match, I won on points.
I had a few more fights in between, then Midic sought a rematch and I thought, I’m good and ready for you, mate, and this time I hit him so hard, and my timing was so spot-on, that my punch lifted him off his feet and he literally sailed through the air across the ring. He was unable to continue.
I kept in great condition. In 1987 alone, I fought in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, and in Thailand and Indonesia, and I won many more fights than I lost.
In the President’s Cup tournament in Jakarta I was beaten by the eventual gold medallist, a Filipino named Coronel Ernesto. In fact, I wasn’t beaten, I was disqualified for holding the back of his head in the clinches in an effort to slow him down. A newspaper report on the fight noted ‘Australian light middleweight Stephen Dack was disqualified for an illegal punch in the President’s Cup International amateur boxing tournament in Djakarta yesterday. Dack looked to have the better of Ernesto, but he was ruled out after knocking his opponent to the canvas with a punch to the back of the head.’
Graham ‘Spike’ Cheney, who had won a silver medal at the Seoul Olympics in 1988 and would be the Australian and World Boxing Council welterweight champ after he turned pro, and who later, like me, had a terrible struggle with the bottle, was on that trip to Jakarta. We were mates. In Bangkok I was narrowly defeated on points in the King’s Cup, and then I returned to Jakarta and fought in a major tournament, where I was victorious in every bout and won the gold medal. That medal is now framed and on the wall of my home. I’m so proud of it. It was hard to win. The bouts were all tough, and in the final I was battered, yet I hung on and didn’t wilt and won on points.
That final was fought over six two-minute rounds. Two minutes suited me, because I could go for it, bang away for 120 seconds, exhaust myself and recover in the one-minute break at the end of the round. In the first round of the final, my opponent hit me with a right hand on the chin and I was gone. I literally could see birds flying about before my eyes, like in the cartoons. Somehow I held him off till the end of the round and then as I sat there being swabbed and praying that my head would clear, my mind flashed back to something Muhammad Ali said in his biography, The Greatest. He said when he got hit with a big shot he ‘put the mask on’, that is, like a superhero, he took on the guise of a guy who hadn’t been hurt. He never let his opponent know he’d hurt him. Just kept a straight face and boxed on. He didn’t grin or trash-talk: both are a sure giveaway that you’re in trouble.
When I came out for the second round of that final after having been hit so hard in the first, that’s exactly what I did; I put the mask on, kept looking into my opponent’s eyes, no expression on my face, and bobbing around as if I was fresh when I felt anything but. I didn’t go on the defensive, just took the fight to him. I played the role, and I’m sure that the other bloke’s confidence was sapped when he thought, Wow, I’ve hit him as hard as I can and he’s still coming at me. I’m in serious trouble here.
Afterwards, I put my winnings of US$2000 on the bar and shouted drinks for everyone in the pub. My eyes were black, my nose was smashed, every centimetre of my body was aching. I got very, very drunk. I believed that I had never been happier in my life. For a short time, my violent father, my mother’s death, all the situations that ground me down, seemed a world away. Don’t ask me to remember any more about that night. I blacked out. Along with many other memorable events in my life, the memories of my greatest boxing triumph have been stolen by grog.
After that victory night, feeling so euphoric, as though I was literally on top of the world, then spending all my winnings and getting plastered, I could understand why so many boxing champions end up with nothing. What’s that old joke about boxers? They blow most of their winnings on wine, women and song … and they squander the rest.
My next, and second, title fight was for the Australian amateur light middleweight belt in 1987. I won my way to the final after stopping my opponent in the semi. In the final I was up against a Queenslander, Christopher Seng, and he beat me fair and square on points. I’d lost too much weight too quickly, and consequently strength and stamina, trying to make the lighter division, and I was drained physically and emotionally from my campaigning overseas that year. That’s not an excuse for my defeat, but it is an explanation.
In 1988 I was a strong chance for making the Australian boxing team for the Seoul Olympics. My good friend Rick Timperi was a contender for the team too. Rick started as a welterweight and ended up fighting as a light heavyweight. He was not tall, but he could punch. I believe he even hit harder than Jeff Harding. Rick was a decent bloke, too, and we had a lot of fun. We got into a couple of fights when we were on the drink, but our friendship was what it was. Anyway, I made the final, and Seoul was in my grasp, but I lost on points and had to be content with watching the Olympic Games on TV.
In 1989 I was interviewed by journalist Adrian Warren of the Sydney Morning Herald about my boxing career so far. He asked me about the bad reputation in the community of boxers. I had this to say: ‘You get a lot of media coverage of the professionals and that’s where you see that image created. If you see the amateur boxers, none of them have tattoos, they all speak well and they have all got good jobs. If a lot of the media covered the amateur side, you would see a big change in people’s thoughts.’ Of the toughness of the sport, I said, ‘In football, if you’re hurt you can have a rest behind a pack, whereas if you’re hurt in a boxing ring, you still have the bloke chasing you.’ Of the seeming anomaly of a boxer also being a lawyer, for by 1989 that’s exactly what I was becoming: ‘In a sense, law is like boxing, except you fight with your mind instead of with your hands.’
My final Australian title fight was in 1990. I campaigned as a middleweight, which I thought was my right weight, and Bruce Farthing and I prepared for three months, training and sparring as hard as we ever had. A lad named Stevie Hill, a good middleweight from Leichhardt, went with Bruce and me to Newcastle where the state titles were being held. We slept in an old tugboat on the river, an old school way of training. In the semis I fought Troy Dawson and I stopped him in the third round. I faced off against Marc Bargero in the final. Marc was tough. We hit each other with lots of good shots, and as I was copping it, I was thinking, This kid’s going to be a talent, and so he turned out to be. But that night belonged to me. I got the points, was crowned New South Wales middleweight champ, and won the right to fight for the Australian title in Adelaide.
I’d decided this would be my last tilt at a championship. By then I had set my heart on becoming a lawyer and it was time to concentrate full-time on my studies and my work with Chris Murphy, the well-known Sydney lawyer who had taken me on as a clerk in his thriving business.
Boxing had been a wonderful chapter of my life and to close the book on boxing with an Australian title would have been a dream come true.
I was up against it. My work had seen to it that I hadn’t boxed much over the past year, and the officials reckoned that even though I was New South Wales champion I had to prove myself. To do so I had to fight a very good fighter named Mark Picker, who wasn’t contesting the Australian championships but many good judges said should have been. I said, ‘Bring him on.’
I was feeling no fear. I could have stood on my win in the state championships and taken them to court if they wouldn’t let me fight, but, as I had learned to do when faced with unfairness or adversity, I surrendered to the situation and told them that I’d fight anyone they threw up against me. I was confident in myself and my preparedness. When I got into the ring with Picker I towelled him up comprehensively. There was no way I wasn’t going to the Australian championships now. I picked up my blue New South Wales tracksuit and Bruce and I flew to Adelaide.
I knocked out the first bloke, the Northern Territory champion, in round two, and beat my second opponent, a fighter from Western Australia, on points. I was in the final. My opponent would be the Tasmanian champion, Justann Crawford. Justann beat me, and he beat me well. The ref stopped the contest. My ability had taken me as far as I could go. An Australian title would never be mine.
Everyone had been saying, ‘Stevie, this is your year.’ It wasn’t. I had fallen at the last hurdle yet again. Big time. I was shattered.
The family of my girlfriend at the time, whose name was Lucinda, lived in Adelaide and her father owned a Bentley. He drove me, Lucinda and her brother to my first bout of the championships in it, and when I got out of the gleaming car at the stadium, I must have looked like a rock star. We all arrived for my second fight in the Bentley. But I knew the competition was getting tougher, so for the fight against Crawford I asked them all to stay at home. I said, half joking, ‘I don’t want anyone coming out to the final because it could be nasty.’ And it was.
It was also the end of my amateur boxing career.