CAROLINE JONES, PRESENTER: Hello. I’m Caroline Jones. Its 14 years since people around the world mourned the death of international cricket legend Sir Donald Bradman. He was one of Australia’s greatest popular heroes, yet his fame dismayed him and has affected his family, even to this day. Now they are facing a moment of truth because Sir Don Bradman’s granddaughter, Greta, is on the threshold of her own career in public life.

GRETA BRADMAN: I’ve always loved singing and I think I always had that as the dream of what I would do when I grew up. But at the same time it seemed a little bit like a pipe dream, like something that you don’t really do in the real world.

(Footage of Greta in her dress for evening recital)

JUDITH BRADSEN, GRETA’S MOTHER: That looks absolutely stunning, darling.

GRETA BRADMAN: Thank you, Mama.

JUDITH BRADSEN, GRETA’S MOTHER: Break a leg.

JUDITH BRADSEN, GRETA’S MOTHER: I used to always joke that she should have been a pop star by the time she was 20 and made me a few million dollars so I could retire. But she stuck her nose up at that and thought that that was ridiculous.

RICHARD BONYNGE, CONDUCTOR: She’s a one-off as far as I’m concerned. She should be singing in Covent Garden, because I’ve heard many singers there who are not as good as she is.

GRETA BRADMAN: Having a name like Bradman as a classical singer is actually a little bit of an impediment, because you run the risk of being seen to be a gimmick.

DIDIER ELZINGA, HUSBAND: Greta’s voice has its own particular idea of what it wants to do and, you know, she's hanging on and following that journey but it's certainly not a desire to be on the world stage for its own sake. You know, she's a singer and she loves to sing.

GRETA BRADMAN: Privacy was absolutely important to my Grandpa and to my Dad and to all of us, really, because privacy equated with just being like everybody else. At the same time, I think we are ready to in some ways come out of the shadows a little bit more.

(Archive footage of Sir Donald Bradman batting. Song: 'Our Don Bradman' by Art Leonard)

ANNOUNCER (archive): Throughout his career at the crease, our Don Bradman spoke most emphatically with his bat. But since his retirement in 1948, he’s been reluctant to voice his opinion. The world’s greatest batsman has been a media recluse, with all requests for interviews being met with a polite "no."

JOHN BRADMAN, FATHER: Some people are fascinated by fame. It just draws people to be part of it. There is absolutely nobody who ever lived who could enjoy that process less than my Dad.

TOM BRADMAN, BROTHER: Cricket was not all that he was about and certainly, if you’d asked him - and I think a few people did - what he wanted to be remembered for, it wasn’t for cricket.

GRETA BRADMAN: I associate my grandparents’ house with family and with music. My grandmother whistled every moment of the day and, as I went in the front door, I would hear my grandfather playing piano. Everything is largely as though they’d just kind of left the room for a short amount of time. My Grandpa was hugely into music. He composed music. He also had a very large record collection and he was really interested in certain soprani and certain conductors. He and I would sit and listen to his record collection and talk about it.

JUDITH BRADSEN, GRETA’S MOTHER: Don was very, very fond of the female voice. I think that would have inspired Greta.

GRETA BRADMAN: For me, my music connects me to my grandparents and to my extended family. I think that’s part of why it is that I want to sing as well as I possibly can.

TOM BRADMAN, BROTHER: Seeing my sister’s children up at the farm in the Adelaide Hills, where my mum lives, it reminds me a lot of our childhood.

GRETA BRADMAN: We lived in hand-me-down clothes and never really had a sense of the commercial side to life.

JOHN BRADMAN, FATHER: It was quite a big place and a lot of work and more than just a hobby. But I thoroughly enjoyed it.

(Footage of Judith and the boys picking vegetables in the garden)

JUDITH BRADSEN, GRETA’S MOTHER: Oh, look. If I break that bit off when we can have that for dinner.

GRETA BRADMAN: I think both my parents had a dream to have a life where we were connected with the natural world, where we had a sense of where food came from.

TOM BRADMAN, BROTHER: Greta and I spent hours running around the property when we were kids and we had a fantastic friend who we still maintain a close relationship with, Gen. We were essentially all siblings. That’s the way we saw it - and we sort of still do.

GENEVIEVE LEVINSON, FAMILY FRIEND: I just remember it being a really, really happy and sort of quite idyllic childhood. There was just so much to do outside. You’d always be, you know, lighting a fire, climbing a tree, building a cubby, rowing in the dam.

GRETA BRADMAN: My grandparents were a really important part of my life and our life on the farm.

GENEVIEVE LEVINSON, FAMILY FRIEND: Jessie and Don: to a young child, they always seemed to have a really lovely relationship.

REPORTER (ABC News, 1989): Don Bradman first met Jessie Martha Menzies when he was a 12-year-old. She was just a year younger. Sir Donald recalls that Jessie, a farmer’s daughter, came to live with the Bradmans in their Bowral home.

(Footage of Sir Donald at opening of the Bradman Museum, Bowral, 1989)

DONALD BRADMAN: She didn’t know it but I decided to marry her. I didn’t ask her. (Laughs)

(Audience applauds)

DONALD BRADMAN: I didn’t ask her, I was too shy. But eventually I got around to it after about another 10 years and so formed the best partnership of my life.

(Footage ends)

ANNOUNCER (newsreel, archive): Mrs Bradman, followed by Don, leaves her hotel en route to catch the boat train at Victoria on their way...

JOHN BRADMAN, FATHER: My mother: she made his life possible. She was so strong. He said she was the strongest person he ever knew and able to cope with anything.

ANNOUNCER (newsreel, archive): It will be remembered that Mrs Bradman rushed to England when her husband’s health gave cause for anxiety after his operation for appendicitis.

GRETA BRADMAN: I think my Grandma: she kept any worries out.

ANNOUNCER (newsreel, archive): Don Bradman, already known as the most phenomenal run-getting machine the world has ever seen...

GRETA BRADMAN: All the pressure that comes, I think, from having so many people thinking about you so much of the time and wanting some of you.

HERALD (archive): My lords and gentlemen: I pray silence for Mr D.G. Bradman.

ANNOUNCER (archive): Bradman was a legend: a man who stirred this country’s pride, who soothed and distracted from its anguish during the dreadful years of depression. From 1928 to 1948 he dominated the entire world of cricket and the popular Australian imagination.

TOM BRADMAN, BROTHER: My grandparents moved to Adelaide in the 1930s. They had three children: the eldest, Ross, died as an infant; John, who is my father, was their second child; and their youngest child, Shirley.

GRETA BRADMAN: When I was growing up I used to love getting my Dad to tell me stories about his childhood.

ANNOUNCER (newsreel, archive): On that dull Wednesday morning, the indomitable Don Bradman came out to the Oval for the last time as captain in a test match.

GRETA BRADMAN: I can’t imagine that my grandfather’s travel and so forth wouldn’t have an impact in the sense of my Dad missing him and noticing his absence.

ANNOUNCER (newsreel, archive): Back home, back to his family, to John and Shirley and his wife.

GRETA BRADMAN: Just on the cusp of Dad’s teens he contracted polio.

JOHN BRADMAN, FATHER: I remember my father being terribly distraught. He gave up virtually everything and resigned from everything for the period that I was in my polio frame. It was like a bed on wheels. My mother used to take me all over the district in this thing.

GRETA BRADMAN: Dad felt a deep sense of support and love, completely unconditional love from his Mum - not to take anything away from my Grandpa, but it was different. My grandma would come up for Saturday lunch every week and she exuded a warmth.

GENEVIEVE LEVINSON, FAMILY FRIEND: She would always bring crayfish for lunch and that was (laughs) awesome. And then she'd sort of spend the afternoon playing with us around the farm.

GRETA BRADMAN: We used to love having her prowl around as a witch outside the hayshed. And we’d have to dart in and not get caught by the witch and then dart out. And sometimes we’d be waiting in there for like half an hour with her pacing outside, keeping up this act of being a witch.

JOHN BRADMAN, FATHER: She was perfectly happy to go along with it. She seemed to have this inexhaustible patience and no need for control.

JUDITH BRADSEN, GRETA’S MOTHER: She could be herself here. With Don and Jessie, there were a lot of masks that they had to put on, being such public people.

REPORTER (ABC News, 1989): Sir Donald Bradman has never liked the limelight but even he couldn’t resist today’s return to the ground where it all began. It’s more than 60 years since Bradman first wielded the willow but the Don’s legendary feats are as enduring as ever.

GRETA BRADMAN: She was so good at conversing with people and keeping the conversation sort of light and keeping Grandpa feeling really comfortable around other people, because he, socially, I don’t think was quite as fluid in his conversation as she was.

(Footage of Sir Donald and a concierge walking through a hotel)

DONALD BRADMAN: That's a new word for them. They don't know what it means.

CONCIERGE: We're endeavouring.

(Footage ends)

JUDITH BRADSEN, GRETA’S MOTHER: People went to jelly when they met Don. I won’t mention particular politicians, but people that I thought were famous in their own right: they were very, very nervous. I think that’s just that adulation that overwhelms a lot of people.

GRETA BRADMAN: And Grandpa was - just didn’t really want any of that. He just wanted a normal, really simple life.

GENEVIEVE LEVINSON, FAMILY FRIEND: I remember with Greta: she was the apple of Don’s eye because she was so musical and he loved music so much.

GRETA BRADMAN: Grandpa wouldn’t come to school concerts and things like that because he really just wasn’t comfortable with, you know, people kind of staring at him. He didn’t want anything to be different for me. Around year 5 I started going to a school down on the same road as where my grandparents lived. So I used to walk home to my grandparents’ after school each day. I would bolt up the stairs and run into his den and launch myself at his lap, as hard as I possibly could. And then I’d give him a head massage, maybe make his hair into, like, funny horns or, like, do funny hairstyles with him. I would tease him mercilessly and I think most of the time he was OK with it. (Laughs)

JOHN BRADMAN, FATHER: He had this half-smile on his face of just a mixture of awe and wonder. I’ve never seen such delight on his face.

JUDITH BRADSEN, GRETA’S MOTHER: I think that that touched John. I know he enjoyed it. He certainly didn’t have that relationship with Don himself. Don was away playing cricket for much of John’s early years.

(Footage of Greta and Tom picking vegetables in garden)

TOM BRADMAN, BROTHER: Oh, Greta. Look at these nasturtiums.

GRETA BRADMAN: I'm going to go looking for some more tomatoes.

(End of footage)

TOM BRADMAN, BROTHER: Greta and I grew up as Tom and Greta Bradsen: B-R-A-D-S-E-N.

GRETA BRADMAN: It was just totally normal that it was Bradsen and my grandparents were Bradman and it was explained to me why.

JUDITH BRADSEN, GRETA’S MOTHER: John felt as though he was not his own person: that people saw him as Don Bradman’s son. And it was crushing him.

GRETA BRADMAN: When people would come up to him as a child, quite often the first question would be: "And are you going to be a sportsman like your Dad when you grow up?"

JUDITH BRADSEN, GRETA’S MOTHER: I knew that he’d gone through some very difficult times before I met him. We’d go to Government House, to a ball. And people would treat him as though he was just an object. They would point at us.

JOHN BRADMAN, FATHER: And increasingly it seemed to me that the best way I cope with it was to change my name. Not to pretend I was somebody other than who I was, but simply to say people, "Please give me a break."

JUDITH BRADSEN, GRETA’S MOTHER: We were married shortly afterwards. And it worked. People did not know. I didn't ever, ever get a Bradman question, all through the time that I was teaching as Bradsen.

JOHN BRADMAN, FATHER: My father wrote some letters to a friend in which he expressed his anguish over my changing my name, which reflected the fact that it must have been very difficult for him.

GRETA BRADMAN: I think that Grandpa actually did understand - or at least he certainly came to understand - Dad’s reason for changing his name. I don’t think Grandpa felt shunned. Grandpa was on the one hand in the moment, quite black and white, but also quite complex in terms of how he would think about things and quite emotional.

(Footage of Greta and Tom in the garden. Tom picks up a garden fork from a vegetable bed)

TOM BRADMAN, BROTHER: Look at that. Good gardener: hard on the gear. Hard on the gear.

GRETA BRADMAN: That's Mum

GRETA BRADMAN: Make some pumpkin soup for lunch.

TOM BRADMAN, BROTHER: Yeah. Sounds good.

(Footage ends)

TOM BRADMAN, BROTHER: Because Greta and I grew up with the name Bradsen, we had anonymity. That was a great thing. I wasn’t under particular pressures to be a certain way; to achieve certain things. I was simply me.

GRETA BRADMAN: I had a sense growing up that my parents were going to separate. There was just this sense that they did not get on somehow. They weren’t a match.

JUDITH BRADSEN, GRETA’S MOTHER: I have no idea how my children would have seen it from the outside. But what I do recall was that there were two very dysfunctional people at war with each other.

JOHN BRADMAN, FATHER: If you’re a parent and your child is suffering from unhappiness at home, then you have to accept some responsibility. And I felt terrible.

GRETA BRADMAN: I remember literally trying to mediate arguments and say, "This is what Dad means and this is what Mum means." I think that it did turn me into a very... anxious teenager.

GENEVIEVE LEVINSON, FAMILY FRIEND: Both of our parents ended up getting divorced, sort of at similar times. Greta got glandular fever probably sort of being run down from all of, you know, all of the sort of pressures at school and then at home as well.

GRETA BRADMAN: Coming back to school, I would find notes left by girls in my locker telling me that I was a loner, that I was a loser, that I was to stay away from these people. I would have people turn their backs on me, ignore me if I tried talking to them. (Unfolding a letter from her archive) This is from one of my teachers in, I think, year 8: "Dear Greta, thank you for your letter. You are able to express yourself very clearly and this helped me understand your friendship problems. I’m not sure this makes them any easier to solve, though." I was terribly ashamed. I put it all back on myself and thought, "Well, it must say something about me, not about them." So I pretty much went back to bed. I ended up missing most of years 8, 9 and 10.

JUDITH BRADSEN, GRETA’S MOTHER: We were worried about Greta’s physical health and certainly I was worried about Greta’s mental health. There was a lot of tension between Jessie and me in the end.



GRETA BRADMAN: I think my Mum blamed the mother-in-law for encroaching on the marriage and that that was part of the breakdown. I would do anything I could at that time to avoid going to my grandparents’ place, because I knew it would just really make Mum very upset. And I found that really difficult, because my Grandma had been a great source of support. I lost any sense of being academically capable and in some ways the only thing that I had left that I was - you know, it was a given I was good at was music. So I started running away and I would cut my arms somewhat in sort of self-harm. As time went on through schooling and I did find it harder and harder, I did, I guess explore more and more themes of, I guess, you know, ending it all and suicide.

JOHN BRADMAN, FATHER: I did understand. I had a very bad bout of depression and felt great anguish that she would feel the same or have the same sort of experience. My parents clearly found it very, very uncomfortable when I went through a difficult period. It increasingly seemed to me that that the thing I could most do to help her was to walk with me on the Overland Track. And it was a very, very difficult walk. It was freezing cold. There was slush and mud and leeches and we carried everything.

GRETA BRADMAN: I just couldn’t imagine finishing anything, including the walk. And there was something about that time and walking with Dad. And by, you know, the fourth day I was bounding ahead with, you know, my pack on my back.

JOHN BRADMAN, FATHER: She came out of it just physically stronger: a lot stronger but mentally, I think, much stronger, with an invigorated sense of herself.

GRETA BRADMAN: About 20 years ago Dad partnered with Megan, his current partner, and they had Nick, my littlest brother. : I feel so lucky to have both him as a little brother and also his other siblings on Megan’s side.

(Footage of John, Megan, Greta and family at restaurant)

(They sing 'Happy Birthday to You')

MEGAN WEBSTER, JOHN BRADMAN'S PARTNER: When I first met John, he was senior lecturer in constitutional law at the Adelaide Law School. He was then known as John Bradsen. I had the great pleasure of meeting and getting to know Jessie as well. And she said to me, "I can see why John is so fond of you." And I was really surprised because John himself hadn’t told me that.

GRETA BRADMAN: My Grandma had leukaemia for many years. She’d been extremely weak for a long time. And yet the day before she passed away, she reached up her arms and with Dad’s help sat up and gave me a big hug. And, um... yeah, when she passed away it was extremely sad.

JUDITH BRADSEN, GRETA’S MOTHER: Our relationship in the end was very complicated, but it didn’t mean I didn’t love her.

(Footage of Jessie Bradman’s funeral)

MOURNER: Today we celebrate and give thanks for the life of Jessie Martha Bradman.

JOHN BRADMAN, FATHER: It was very clear my dear old Dad was really struggling and so I started seeing him and just kept on seeing him, literally every day, for three and a half years. There is this discussion about us having a big falling out and then a rapprochement. You know, that’s absolute nonsense. There was never any such thing.

TOM BRADMAN, BROTHER: If it wasn’t for my Dad being so close to my Grandpa and spending, you know, every day with him over those few years, I’m not sure how he would have coped.

JOHN BRADMAN, FATHER: My Dad remained fairly well until he had a stroke. He was 87. That was an event which was illustrative of his life. People came from everywhere, including medical people, with scraps of paper for him to sign, because they wanted an autograph. And the stroke affected his right hand and he couldn’t sign, but they were still trying to get him to sign his autograph, the dear old boy. And he recovered reasonably well from that.

MEGAN WEBSTER, JOHN BRADMAN’S PARTNER: It was really around the time of the arrival of our son Nicholas that John and I began to seriously talk about the possibility of him changing his name back to Bradman.

GRETA BRADMAN: My Dad suggested to us that, for Grandpa, we all change back to Bradman.

JOHN BRADMAN, FATHER: When I told him, he just smiled and said, "Don’t do it for me."

TOM BRADMAN, BROTHER: The period of its effectiveness had somehow drawn to a close. We were ready to, I guess, resume our family name.

GRETA BRADMAN: My Grandpa was truly tickled pink.

TOM BRADMAN, BROTHER: The thing I remember most was taking my name-change forms into the bank to change my name on my bank account. And I handed over all these forms to the teller. And she looked at all of these forms and she looked at me and she said, "You must be a really big fan."

GRETA BRADMAN: People would actually treat me differently. Instead of calling me Greta in restaurants, people would call me Miss Bradman (laughs). There was far more interest from guys, all of a sudden, in me. And that was bizarre.

GENEVIEVE LEVINSON, FAMILY FRIEND: She went on a date with a guy and she turned up at his house. He opened the door and said, "Oh, I just have to let you know before you come in that I’m a bit of a fan of your grandfather." And then she walked into the house and it was like wall-to-wall Bradman memorabilia and, like, pictures of her grandfather on walls. And I don’t think that one lasted very long.

GRETA BRADMAN: I wrote Grandpa a letter. I said, "I get it now." Like, "I get what it is to have people looking at you differently. I can understand how for you that would be a really... a really difficult thing."

(Preview of next week's program)

TOM BRADMAN, BROTHER: The public response to my grandfather dying was unbelievable.

(Footage of John Bradman delivering eulogy at Sir Donald's funeral)

JOHN BRADMAN, FATHER: This means you must let him go free. Don't enslave him with worship.

(Footage ends)

TOM BRADMAN, BROTHER: It was sort of touching and moving; a little bit surreal.

GENEVIEVE LEVINSON, FAMILY FRIEND: Greta sort of did have trouble believing in herself.

GRETA BRADMAN: I would drink salt water to try and actually burn my vocal folds.

JOHN BRADMAN, FATHER: If she decided that she didn’t want to sing, she would have my full support.

DIDIER ELZINGA, HUSBAND: People think, "Well, she can’t be a singer because her grandfather was a cricketer," which is ridiculous.

RICHARD BONYNGE, CONDUCTOR: And I was astonished. You know, I don’t get astonished by singers very often anymore.

GRETA BRADMAN: The conservatorium office fielded so many calls, asking me to sing at things, and I just said no to everything. I’m never going to get past being Grandpa’s granddaughter.

(Excerpt from newsreel)

CHILD: Aren't you Don Bradman?

DONALD BRADMAN: Yes, that's right, laddie. Come on.

CHILD 2: You all right?

CHILD 3: What's the matter? Where are you hit?

CHILD 4: Will you bat, Don?

DONALD BRADMAN: Yes, sure.

ANNOUNCER: Who is going to bowl the great Bradman? It'll have to be someone sound in every limb, because Don has played a safe bat to the world's best bowlers. Clean bowled!

CHILD 5: Howzat!

DONALD BRADMAN: That was a beauty.

(Excerpt ends)