I was on track to being fit again, I wanted to play. In early August 2013, two months before I was due to go back to the Capitals, my agent was approached by a Chinese team interested in signing me up for a year. We were still working with Canberra to try and make sure that 2013 would be one of the three years (paid over five years) that I’d been contracted to play, given I’d played only one year at that stage. There was a fair bit of negotiation with my agent, and I was waiting for Canberra to get back to me to confirm that they had the money to pay me that year. Graffy had been pushing for me to play, but the team’s management for some reason kept pushing the contract back. I had to make a decision on the Chinese contract, they’d given me a deadline. Overseas contracts weren’t something you knocked back if you could help it—especially given I wasn’t already playing, I hadn’t played for months.
My agent had given the Caps weeks of leeway, but as the deadline approached they were still taking their time. They assured him they wanted me and said they would let us know by five that last afternoon of the Chinese deadline. Five o’clock came and went and I made a decision—I was going. Frustratingly, I got an email from Canberra a few minutes later with an excuse for the delay, but it wasn’t enough. I was gone, my agent had said yes to the Chinese deal.
Graffy texted me that night to say ‘Welcome back’, and I had to tell her that management hadn’t communicated, and I was now going to be overseas. I’d had to make a choice, and one of those choices didn’t seem to take my situation seriously. Everyone had expected me to go back to Canberra, and there was a bit of a kerfuffle in the media about it, but I think my agent and I were fair in our negotiations, and did everything we said we would. To Graffy’s credit, she said she understood why I’d made the decision.
I was now back with the national team, and in August I was again voted in as co-captain, this time with fellow Olympian Jenni Screen, just before the FIBA Oceania Championship game against New Zealand. There were four of us on the team from the London Olympics just the year before, and we needed to beat the Tall Ferns to qualify for the 2014 FIBA World Championship.
We flew to Auckland, and as soon as I was on the court I felt like I was back, well and truly, scoring the first nine points of the game and racking up a game-high 22 points and nine rebounds in our 65–50 win. I wasn’t as fit as I could have been, and was mindful of my body after the miscarriage, but just the feeling of being out on the court again and representing my country meant the absolute world to me. It was like a breath of fresh air, with a new coach—Brendan Joyce—and a new feeling in the Opals camp, everything was looking optimistic.
Next game was in Canberra at the AIS Arena, and if we won this, we were through. Playing that game to a packed crowd was amazing, I’d never seen so many people at a qualifying match before. Belinda Snell shot an incredible five three-pointers in her total 17 points of the game, and all in the first three quarters when the game was there to be won. I had a game-high 21 points and seven rebounds, I felt I was again playing at my best and I loved it. I couldn’t have imagined a better way to finish the tournament that would take us to the Worlds in Turkey the following year.
By September 2013 I was in Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang Province, getting ready to play for my new team Heilongjiang Shenda in the Women’s Chinese Basketball Association. Heilongjiang Province is right up in the north-east part of China, halfway between Russia and North Korea. Training camp started at the end of September, and I would be playing through until the end of the season in late February.
Northern China was very cold, much colder than South Korea and Russia had been. It gets down to minus 40 degrees Celsius in Harbin, and when I arrived it was like a blanket of ice had been placed over the entire city. Harbin is quite industrial, and most days the pollution was so bad that every time I went outside I would sneeze, and afterwards my nasal mucus would come out black, which was pretty shocking. Not long after I arrived, Mum and Dad called from Australia to check if I was okay, they’d seen a news bulletin about pollution levels in Harbin—they’d heard about it even in Australia. It was so extreme that I was actually afraid to go outside sometimes, on certain days you couldn’t see in front of you because the smog was so thick. I was given a driver, but being driven around in smog, and on the ice, was something I’d never experienced before and pretty scary. Harbin was freezing, even the buses that would pick me up from my hotel to go to the airport or take me to games would have trouble getting through the ice. I had trouble even walking out of the hotel and on to the bus because of the ice build-up everywhere, everything was slippery, so I took a few tumbles just walking around, which was pretty funny.
Their stadiums were cold too—and big, around 4000 to 5000 seat stadiums, bigger still in the richer cities we played like Shanghai. Basketball is very popular over there, and with China’s huge population there are big crowds, lots of fans, to support it. Basketball is major entertainment in the US, and it’s the same in China, just not with all the lights and glamour, although they still did things to keep their large fan base entertained. I think they tried to replicate the American style, but they are two completely different cultures.
We would have to train on really cold days in duffle coats, playing five on five, up and down the court—the thick coats were restrictive, but at least we were warm. Some of the newer stadiums were fine, but the older ones, they were icy cold. I’ve played in the hottest stadiums and I’ve played in the coldest.
The other players in my team were such gentle, warm girls. They were so respectful, the way they spoke to me and treated me and everything about them was just lovely. That had been my experience in South Korea as well, my teammates were beautiful. As for the opposition teams, I’m sure they were lovely to their foreigners as well, but they would still go after you on court, that’s just the nature of the sport. I loved it, I went out and gave as good as I got, I was back playing well and really enjoying it.
None of my teammates spoke English, there were no other foreigners on the team, but we found our own way of communicating. I did have a translator, she was the only one I could talk with, so she would come to games and training. I learnt how to order what I wanted to eat and how to get around to a degree, but it was pretty strange. I had to do media interviews with my translator, and I’d see photos of the girls, teams, games in the newspapers, but I was never able to understand what was in those articles, and in some ways I’m glad I wasn’t. I didn’t mind not speaking the language or not understanding, because it doesn’t matter how good you are or what your reputation is, if you’re not winning enough games there’s always going to be something in the media. Even if you’re performing well, there’ll be someone who’s not happy. And I didn’t care, I didn’t have to, I had no idea what they were saying. In South Korea it had been the same, even though I was playing great basketball, we were winning, there’s something so comforting in not having to read or listen to any criticism—it was my coping mechanism once again. I’ve been like that most of my life, which is not necessarily a good thing, but it helped when I was overseas.
The girls in my team lived in these tiny little dormitories, four of them in one room alongside one of the courts, similar to how the South Korean players lived, but in even less space. They were paid a minimal salary and were contracted to these clubs, living there year-round. By contrast, I had a hotel room, and I could eat whatever I wanted—that was until I got an email from the head doctor to the Australian team telling me not to eat the meat there, as one of the Australian cyclists had been done for Clenbuterol, which had been found to come from meat they’d eaten in China. That was frightening, my anxiety went straight through the roof, all I could think or dream about was being drug-tested, completely irrational. The Australian team later qualified the warning and said the issue was linked to meat in street food, rather than meat found in restaurants—but you know what, I was so paranoid about it I just didn’t eat any meat in China after that.
In China, people would stare, openly stare at me. There’d always been comfort for me when travelling with other tall people. The greatest thing about being in a basketball team, with people who are like you, is that you don’t feel isolated. At airports, we were a team in uniform, I didn’t really notice people looking at us because we were in a group, we weren’t there as individuals. I’m used to being the tall blonde on the court, it didn’t bother me standing out like that, but off the court it was different.
Back at the Chinese hotel, especially in the evening as I was going up to my room after games, after every game, there would be people drinking down in the lobby, who I’d try and avoid. I’d often find myself in an elevator with drunken guests, usually men, they’d all be looking up at me, then they’d pull out their phones and start taking photos right in my face. Honestly, one night I responded angrily in English, which they probably didn’t understand, but they would have read my body language. I couldn’t handle it anymore, I thought it was so rude, the whole personal space issue was so different over there. And then in the mornings, when people were leaving, coming down in the elevator, I knew that they were talking about me. I could see them looking and laughing and I’d think, ‘Come on, you really don’t think that I don’t understand, of course I know, I’m not stupid’. It was so blatantly rude.
By the end of December, I was starting to get a niggling pain at the back of my right knee. During my time with the WNBA I’d always get pain behind my knee, I had tests done over there and no one found anything on the MRIs, so I kept playing. I was so used to pain, it was a very familiar pain, and I just kept going. In January, I felt a crack in my knee, as if something had gone in it, and I was glad there was a break for Chinese New Year coming up, which meant we’d have two weeks off before the playoffs started. It would give my knee a chance to get right so I could play properly. It was fairly traditional for the Chinese to travel back to their families over the New Year, and that included my translator. Mum came over for the break to keep me company, and on Australia Day I remember listening to the Triple J Hottest 100 in my hotel room with her, and Vance Joy’s ‘Riptide’ came in at number one. I was so glad Mum was there. We had no translator, because she’d returned home for the holidays, and we were in this hotel room alone, it was the middle of winter and minus 40 degrees Celsius outside. When we did venture out our eyelashes would immediately get icicles on them, it was that cold. There was no snow, it was just ice, everything was blanketed in ice all of the time. Mum and I were trying to stay fit, and so every day we would walk up and down the stairs in the hotel or do circuits of the floor we were on for an hour.
During Chinese New Year we bought some cheap Chinese red wine and drank it in my hotel room, as we watched Aussie movies including Muriel’s Wedding, while outside, the noise of fireworks going off constantly sounded like there were bombs exploding everywhere, they were so loud and unsettling. We didn’t feel confident enough to go anywhere much without a translator, and mostly stayed in the hotel. I had to order food from the menus, and even though I’d been staying in that hotel it was still interesting doing the ordering, I think I even have a photo of Mum eating chicken feet! My poor mum, having to go over there—but it wasn’t so lonely with her around, Mum and I are used to being the centre of our own little universe, we love spending time together. We would play the card game 500 endlessly, and I know you need four people to play, but we managed to play it with two, we’d made up our own rules. We ventured out one day and were playing 500 in a Starbucks and the staff came over and said ‘No gambling, no gambling!’, and we couldn’t explain that we were just playing cards—but we pretty soon got the idea that you couldn’t play cards in this particular Starbucks, as they reprimanded us severely. We only played cards in our hotel room after that. China was an interesting place.
Mum had travelled with me quite a bit, especially when I had injuries, and as things got harder later in my career, she was so supportive, I couldn’t have done it all without her. She didn’t come to Russia much during those two years I was there, I didn’t want Mum and Dad to come over, to see them and then have them leave would have been too much for me. I just wanted to get through my time there, and then return and see them in Australia.
I actually needed her there in China, there’s truly nothing like a mother’s love. Mum was with me when we started playing again, and she was still there when our team made it to the playoffs. As soon as I got back on court, the knee pain started up again, it was a familiar feeling, so I played through it, and played through it. I also played through because of the language barrier—the team management couldn’t or wouldn’t understand how much pain I was in. We were coming up to the finals and they paid me to play, and that was it as far as they were concerned. And then one day it cracked again. I knew it was bad because it hurt like hell.
When my knee went the third time, I was playing against Liz Cambage who was also contracted to another Chinese team, and I was in a jump ball with Liz. I jumped up and when I landed it cracked again, and then as I tried to run up and down the court I was in tears from the pain, but they wouldn’t sub me off the court. Liz was worried about me and kept asking what was wrong. I hadn’t had an opportunity to see and speak with her before the game, so she didn’t know I had a niggling knee injury. My team still didn’t sub me off the court, my knee was clearly gone but they kept me out there. I’m not the sort of player who would walk off the court, not since I was a child, I couldn’t do that anyway, I was under contract. I found out later that the meniscus, at the back of my knee where it attaches to the bone, had pulled off and chipped my bone in the process. I was in so much pain I was openly crying, and Liz turned to my bench and yelled out to them ‘She can’t be out here!’, but they weren’t listening or understanding. I had to stay on the court for that entire first half. There was something comforting about playing against Liz at that moment, I was trying to guard her and when she pushed against me in the post, she sort of dropped her step or tried to get around me to get to the basket rather than push through me, she was trying to protect me, she wasn’t going as hard as she normally would have, she knew. Someone else would have completely taken advantage, gone to town on me. She was still playing the game, but I couldn’t even hold my ground, when there was any pushback in the play, my knee would be flexed and I couldn’t hold it. I had torn it well and truly, I knew it wasn’t good.
They eventually subbed me off after half-time and I sat out the second half on the bench. Mum kept asking why they hadn’t subbed me off the court earlier, I was upset, and I knew I needed to get back to Australia to get the knee seen to. I rang and begged my agent to help, and agreed to do a fitness test for the team management, as they insisted on seeing me moving about on the court. I went out there and I was running forward, it was okay I suppose, I could have played on it, but then the minute I started sliding, defensive slides or running backwards or breaking out and running a bit faster, it would grab, and there was a sharp pain. Every time I put weight on it, it was really painful, so they saw that too. When you can’t actually move sideways, you can’t hide it. They agreed to let me fly home, and thankfully my agent organised a release from the contract to get me out of there and back to an orthopaedic surgeon.