It’s a steamy day in the late 1970s in a Queensland mining town.
A young, skinny Pat Rafter runs barefoot across the molten asphalt without even grimacing.
Until now, he has led a remarkably shoeless existence, and the soles of his feet are covered with a protective layer of heat-hardened skin.
The half-pint human dynamo carves a well-trodden path to the tennis courts down the street, and a little liquefied tar won’t stand in its way.
Life at Mount Isa was simple for the future Grand Slam champion, even if his tenure there was short-lived.
“I remember running on the asphalt… barefoot, no problem,” Rafter says.
“I also remember being able to go through bindies without any worries.
“There, everything became quite difficult.“
Rafter (second from left) pictured with his parents Jim and Jocelyn and eight siblings. (Provided)
home Sweet Home
Mount Isa is now the mining capital of north-west Queensland, with around 20,000 residents perched on the banks of the Leichhardt River.
Temperatures regularly reach highs in the 40s and a detonating explosion in the underground copper mine twice a day when the clock strikes eight, or thereabouts.
Rafter in action during a tournament at the NSW Tennis Centre, Homebush, in 2000. (PAA/Dean Lewins)
Residents frequently have their blood tested for lead exposure due to the smoke billowing from the smelter’s chimney, and it’s where the nation’s biggest and baddest rodeo takes place.
Isa has become a real city within a hundred years since prospector John Campbell Miles discovered one of the world’s richest deposits of zinc and lead, staked out a piece of land and named it after his dear sister, Isabelle.
It once claimed the title of the world’s largest city in terms of geography – larger than Belgium and Lebanon combined, with an area of 43,310 square kilometers of mineral-rich territory – although Sermersooq in Greenland now wears that crown.
For young Pat Rafter, it was right at home.
The Mount Isa copper mine, photographed in 1979, is on the outskirts of the town. (Supplied: Wolfgang Sievers/National Library of Australia)
“We ran and played sports every weekend,” he recalls.
“The fields were a few hundred meters from the house, and I would often run to find someone to (make) a shot.
“Some older brothers all played, my dad used to help sponsor the tennis tournament there.
Rafter is named after his grandfather, a former Cloncurry police officer. (Supplied: Queensland Police Museum)
“Tennis was part of our lives, but tennis was part of the lives of many rural people.“
His parents, Jim and Jocelyn, moved to Mount Isa in 1964 after Jim found work as an accountant for the mines.
It took 17 years and almost a football team before the Rafters departed for the comparative glitz and dazzle of the Sunshine Coast, leaving Mount Isa in the rearview mirror just before Rafter’s eighth birthday.
But there was already a family connection to the area long before this last batch of rafters began to scuff from the red dirt.
Patrick is named after his paternal grandfather, a police constable in the nearby town of Cloncurry – and Jim was also a Curry boy.
Cramped but happy
Life in Mount Isa was a free-range existence by today’s standards, which makes sense given that Rafter was one of 10 children, including his younger brother James, who was stillborn in 1979.
Rafter pictured in 2020 while planting a new koala habitat in northern NSW. (Provided: Bangalow Koalas)
Carving out space for the entire platoon was a task in itself, and Rafter says there was some sort of rotation system in play.
As one older brother flew off to study in Brisbane, another was invariably born to fill the vacancy.
Rafter remembers seven children living together under one roof.
“I think we had a three-bedroom house,” he says.
“Four brothers in one room…and three sisters in the other room.”
They were cramped, but happy.
Children ride bicycles in the Mount Isa CBD in 1978. (Provided: National Archives of Australia)
“I think for most kids, it’s what’s happening in front of you, and you don’t really realize it,” Rafter says.
“You go about your business and you do your job, regardless of where you live.
John Campbell Miles, pictured with Mount Isa Mines developer Douglas MacGillivray. (Provided: State Library of Queensland)
“My first plane trip was maybe only when I was 12 or 13, which is very different from our kids today.
“But that’s how it was and it didn’t matter.”
The two-time US Open winner has rarely returned to Mount Isa since his childhood.
He returned to town once for the Australian of the Year campaign in 2002, and again in 2016..
“My younger brother was buried (at Mount Isa), so I went to visit the site,” he said.
“I haven’t been back since he was buried there, when I was five.”
The prodigal son
Rafter was just a primary school student when his family left Mount Isa in search of sporting opportunities in the big smoke of the south.
Tennis had been an important part of life up to that point, as had football, and he was still in that magical age where throwing skids at prams, shaving rocks and devouring lollipops are usually a boy’s main priorities.
Rafter speaks to the media after the $82 million Queensland Tennis Center was named after him in 2008. (ABC News)
His brothers were die-hard rugby league players – and Rafter says the whole town went crazy when the bandaged-legged bull riders arrived from the train stations for the rodeo.
“There was always something happening in Mount Isa, or at least it seemed like there was,” he says.
“Maybe it was just because I was one of a group of 10 kids, maybe it was always chaotic.”
Rafter still remembers the difficult location of his childhood home when he returned to Isa in 2002, heading out the front door passing the local tennis courts.
The awkwardness of this encounter is a testament to Rafter’s humility.
“I went and knocked on the door,” he said.
“There were a few parts of the house and property that I remembered, and I would have been interested in taking a look around, but I didn’t know how to ask.”
Rafter ended up leaving without being able to visit his old home, although a visit would almost certainly have been granted if he had only asked – and a pang of embarrassment is still evident two decades later.
“I don’t know what I was actually doing…I don’t know why I knocked on the door,” he says.
Lleyton Hewitt and Rafter reflect during their men’s doubles match in the first round of the 2014 Australian Open. (PAA: Mark Dadswell)
Cradle of Champions
Anyone driving to Mount Isa these days is greeted by a welcome sign declaring it the “home of champions”.
A photo of famous didgeridoo player William Barton is up there alongside former NRL halfback Scotty Prince, actress Deborah Mailman, retired AFL midfielder Simon Black and golfing great Greg “The Shark” Norman.
Mount Isa is touted as the ‘birthplace of champions’ due to exports such as Pat Rafter, Deborah Mailman and Greg Norman. (Provided)
Rafter completes the picture of parochial boasting – and this pride of place and person is a two-way street.
The soft-spoken sportsman enjoyed seeing “Mount Isa” plastered after his name on the big screen at tournaments like the US Open.
“I actually liked it, it was quite funny,” he says.
“It was great, I had a big family, I had a lot of friends.
“We just ran around and did what we had to do, and I didn’t know much about the outside world.
“Things were really different back then.”
Rafter’s father, Jim (left), during his life-saving days in 1956 at Coolum Beach. (Supplied: Sunshine Coast Council)
Bricks, mortar and souvenirs
Rafter begins to laugh as an old memory comes back to life.
“I also remember being thrown out of the cinema once,” he begins.
“We all used to throw away our drink caps.
Rafter with Linda Sparrow from the Bangalow Koalas charity. (Provided: Bangalow Koalas)
“Anyway, I was a little guy, I got taken out of Empire Strikes Back – Star Wars.”
The seven-year-old was kicked out of the biggest film of the year with tears streaming down his cheeks..
He sat in utter anguish until the projector was paused for intermission and the audience began to file out of the theater.
“My brother saw me…he said, ‘What are you doing here?'” Rafter said.
“I was crying outside, so he came and picked me up and said, ‘Come, come back with me.’
“That’s how it happened.”
The lights of Mount Isa at dusk falling over the mining town in 1985. (Supplied: Ron Gale/State Library of Queensland)
It’s a land of great people and even grander sunsets, and it will always be Rafter’s first home.
“I have great memories of Mount Isa, it was a big part of my life,” he says.
“I don’t know if it toughened me up or not.
“But there are still memories that I look back on with great fondness.”
