Young Bradman

21 Beginnings acre. Most people in the English-speaking world at that time would have regarded George Bradman as rich. Why did he sink at least a chunk (and maybe more?) of his money in Cootamundra, if he was living in Bowral? We can speculate that he knew where to do business in Cootamundra; it suited him to draw rent from property, through an agent, without having to bump into tenants in the street. Don Bradman’s first job, in a Bowral estate agent, now makes more sense. As someone who sold his life story aged 22 and went on to become a stockbroker, Don Bradman had an eye for making money. It ran in the family. In March 1907, George Bradman also sold the livestock and furniture, which give a better picture of his farm: such as ten draught horses, 20 dairy heifers, 22 other cattle, two milch cows and a bull, 70 tons of stacked hay and several ploughs. As the advertisement from the original sale put it, Bradman was giving up ‘a magnificent DAIRYING, WHEAT and SHEEP FARM combined … only being offered owing to Mr Bradman deciding to relinquish farming’. Why? George Bradman’s father did not die until October 1907, leaving a widow and four daughters and two sons. Had George Bradman tired of the long, unending hours of farming? Did his wife have a say, as they were moving near her relatives? Did they want their children to be nearer a school, or to have better life choices of a town? Asked about music during the 1988 ABC interview, Bradman said: ‘One of my sisters took up music as a profession; she was taught the piano and passed the highest exam she could in Australia, and became a music teacher.’ Indeed the Southern Mail reported in October 1920 that Lilian Bradman (Lily for short) gained the highest piano diploma, granted by a London college, after an exam in Sydney. She was a pupil of George Vincent, the Bowral Association Band master who lived in Mittagong. A pupil of Lilian Bradman’s, from nearby Kangaloon, also passed an exam then. Besides music lessons costing money, a place had to be large enough to support people who could make their living from culture. While the Bradman household talked of cricket (‘my mother liked the game’ Don recalled in old age), music also mattered (‘my father played the violin, not terribly well, but enjoyed it’). ‘I liked music,’ Don wrote. Mr and Mrs Bradman were liberal enough to let their children develop, wherever it took them; and more practically, however long it took, in an age when many large families needed children to leave school and start earning money. The middle sister, May, born in 1901, gained the best exam results in the district in 1917: four A grades in history, geography, mathematics and art, and Bs in English, maths, French, chemistry and needlework. She stayed on at Bowral Secondary School; when a teacher was leaving in December 1918, May Bradman presented her with ‘a handsome cake dish’. She was literally a safe pair of hands. In February 1919 she was one of three pupils given a £50-a-year, two-year scholarship to Sydney Training College, presumably to be a teacher. Likewise Don Bradman’s brother Victor, born in 1904, in December 1916 as the senior boy of his class presented a cheque to his leaving teacher on behalf of the school;