Bestselling cricket author and historian Roland Perry shines a light on the game’s biggest players and dramas through the ages in Great Australian Cricket Achievers and Characters.
The Inspiration for Scott Boland
Exactly 150 years after Charles Lawrence and his Aboriginal team toured England, Scott Boland, who had been plying his bowling for a few years with Victoria, discovered his family link to the Gulidjan tribe near Colac in Victoria’s Western District. His maternal grandfather was Aboriginal and had been adopted into a white family.
Boland and his brother Nick made their way to the tiny town of Harrow, from where they were driven fifteen minutes away to a bush water-hole area where the star of that 1868 tour, Johnny Mullagh, had spent much time in his final days. A large, hollowed-out tree is where he is said to have sought shade on his visits there. Mullagh’s reputation among locals, and those who know his story, places him at the top of legendary Indigenous Australian sportspeople. The trip meant much to the Boland brothers, whose pride in their recently discovered heritage and culture was growing.
