Dawn Fraser AO MBE

Readers note: This is an excerpt from the 200 Treasures exhibition catalogue, developed in 2017. This content was written as a brief biography on why this person was included in the exhibition.

Dawn Fraser was Australia’s ‘gold- medal girl’ and has remained, over the 50 years since she competed, Australia’s greatest Olympian. Her record also needs to be viewed in light of the fact that she competed in three Olympiads (Melbourne 1956, Rome 1960 and Tokyo 1964) but could not compete in the 1968 Olympiad in Mexico City. This was because she was hit with a 10-year ban by her nemesis, the Australian Amateur Swimming Association (AASA), for, among a list of infractions, disobeying orders not to march in the opening ceremony and wearing an unofficial swimsuit in Tokyo. Although the ban was reduced to four years, it effectively ended her stunning swimming career – holder of 41 world records, winner of four Olympic gold and four Olympic silver medals – at its peak.

Fraser was born in the Sydney harbourside suburb of Balmain, in 1937. She began swimming to relieve her asthma and did not start serious training until she was 16, three years before the Melbourne Olympics. Her training regime included wood- chopping and weight lifting and, throughout, she never lost her taste for beer. She credits her determination as a swimmer to the loss of her much-loved brother, Don, as a youth. She competed in the Tokyo Olympics just months after her mother was killed in a car accident. Fraser was driving the car and suffered serious injuries herself.

Since the end of her swimming career, Fraser has remained a prominent public figure. She had a short-lived political career in the NSW parliament and belongs to a long list of associations and charities. Her love of Balmain, especially the Wests Tigers League Club, endures. As with her swimming career, Fraser’s public persona is not stage-managed. Dawn Fraser continues to march to the beat of her own drum and enjoys great national affection as a result.