Tent Boxing: An Australian Journey

by Wayne McLennan

When Wayne McLennan was growing up in a sleepy Australian mining town in the 1950s, the most exciting event of the year was the arrival of Jimmy Sharman's boxing tent. Boxers would stand on a raised platform and challenge the local men and boys to fight. Aside from providing entertainment, these events challenged preconceptions about Aboriginals, who made up the bulk of Sharman's fighters. Decades later, McLennan returned to Australia to find that a few tents were still in operation in the remote, northern part of the country. This is McLennan’s thrilling memoir of joining with one of the tents and traveling with the group as a driver, referee, and occasional fighter. In the process of finding out what makes a man fight for money, McLennan learned even more about Australia’s troubled cultural past and the current mood of social relations and his fellow countrymen.

256 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2007

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the first page I had to read this. A story about a Novocastrian (Newcastle region NSW Australia) boy & an ex boxer to boot, who traveled all over the world. But he wanted to come back to the Australia of his past, "you know all those things that never can be the same."

So he joined a boxing troupe that traveled from central N.S.W. to F N Q that's Far North Queensland.

With a group of misfits, murri's & Maori's. But basically people that don't fit in the system and lots of booze, yanni that's marijuana. All the fun, fights, sadness, history of a better or just an older way of life.

The end was? Well life goes on so that's it.

All in all a good story I recommend it.

[Lennox Nicholson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Creative non-fiction based on being there and doing it, by someone with a natural command of story arc and language who is prepared to get their hands dirty.

Put Fight Club out in the open on a schedule of the rural Australian agricultural show circuit and you’re tent boxing with Wayne McLennan.

Probably the last opportunity for anyone to travel with and write about an Australian tradition that had the rug pulled out from under it by bureaucracy and our national obsession with knee jerk nanny state governance and rules developed by people far removed from the subject - which has become an Australian tradition in itself.

Another example outlining how much of our own country we just don’t know or understand until after the fact.