In 1932, "the Don" played for Australia against South Africa and set a record 299 runs. For St George, he scored a record 246 against Randwick, and in a match in Blackheath, he scored 256, taking just three overs to make 102.

Bradman married Jessie Menzies at St Paul's Church, Burwood on 30th April 1932, and the couple sailed on the Niagara on a North American cricket tour organised by Arthur Mailey. There, Bradman met baseball legend, Babe Ruth and played against Gothic actor, Boris Karloff in Hollywood. On the tour, he scored 3,799 runs at an average of 102.1. When they returned, the couple set up house at MacMahons Point, on Sydney Harbour. Despite not being resident in the St George district, Bradman still turned out for St George, captaining the team on several occasions.

Nothing had prepared the cricket world for the controversy that was about to erupt over the Bodyline Series, when an English bowling attack, led by Harold Larwood and Bill Bowes, used leg-theory tactics against Australia for the first time in Test cricket. Australian batsmen, as well as English cricket's gentlemanly reputation both came in for a battering but Bradman still won the Test averages at 56, even though the Australian team lost the series 4 - 1. The fickleness of both public and press created great strain on all team members, with Bradman responding by retreating further into himself.

With the Bradmans' decision to continue living at MacMahon's Point, Don lost the residential qualification required to remain with St George. With its increasingly valuable privacy, he was unwilling to give up his home by the harbour so, reluctantly, he stopped playing for the club and began playing for North Sydney.

The Don's records at St George

Bradman's Centuries for St George

Older residents who were lucky enough to have witnessed Bradman's playing at St George, have never forgotten it. "Physically Bradman was a small man," said Alan Smeaton, who was a boy during Bradman's years at Hurstville Oval. "He was almost inconspicuous really but he had a nice face and a nice smile. We children were pests sometimes. As soon as they'd put the nets up for practice, there'd be about thirty of us, waiting to jump over the fence, as soon as Lou Dunbar disappeared. We'd start trying to fox balls because if you foxed a ball that Don Bradman had hit, then you were about ten feet tall in the eyes of your mates. He never went crook on us for making a nuisance of ourselves."

Tom Mead, then a schoolboy living in Kogarah, remembers going up to Hurstville Oval on a Saturday afternoon, towards the end of the Bradman era. He recalled the cricketers as "a genial bunch, happy. The kids would be lined up to get their autographs from them and we were well-behaved." Many years later, when Mead was Chief of Staff at the Daily Telegraph, Frank Packer instructed him to buy up any "good suburban papers" in the Rockdale area, where Mead was living. The result was the St George Leader, with Mead resigning from his position as Editor when he entered politics in 1965 and became a Member of the Legislative Assembly.

Smeaton remembers that the cricketers eventually had to give up these practice sessions because of the crowd they attracted. As a result, Bob Louden, then captain of the first grade team and living in Carrington Street, Penshurst, set up a pitch on a vacant block of land next to his home. "When word got around that Bradman was up there, of course, the mob got interested," Smeaton said. "He had a marvellous way of acknowledging all the adulation. He'd smile but he wouldn't talk. He seemed to cope with the almost god-like stature we gave him, which speaks volumes for his modesty. When I think back on those years of dreadful hardship, it often seems to me that Sir Donald did a lot more for Australia than is realized. With Sir Donald, cricket became the No 1 sport in Australia and he became Australia's most loved son."

from HURSTVILLE OVAL: A history of Sport and Community 1899-2001, by Elizabeth Butel & Tom Thompson (Editions Tom Thompson, Sydney, 2002). Commissioned by Hurstville City Council and the Centenary of Federation Fund.