Boxer Cameron Hammond emerges from a town with a shameful past IT'S a little past dusk on a Friday night and as the winter shadows fade across northern NSW, young Aboriginal man Cameron Hammond is at Moree's Royal Hotel, flexing his muscles, sticking out his chin and spoiling for a fight. He spends most of his time in Brisbane these days. But surrounding him in this country pub is a noisy crowd of admirers egging him on as he slowly peels off his shirt and runs his hand across the tattoos decorating his wiry, finely honed shoulders and arms. He breathes in deeply and puffs out his pectoral muscles, adding volume to the one ornate word that a Goondiwindi tattooist, an hour's drive north of Moree across the border in Queensland, spent two and a half hours inking across his chest. The word is `Kamilaroi' and it announces Hammond with more volume than if he had a megaphone in this bush town of 10,000. For thousands of years the Kamilaroi were nomadic hunters living around Moree and Goondiwindi on a diet of insect larvae, frogs, kangaroo and emu, but these days Hammond, 23, dines out on his success as Moree's favourite sporting star, a London Olympian now rising through the ranks as a professional boxer. As he takes off his shirt and prepares to step on the scales for the official weigh-in before his first pro fight in his hometown, old timers marvel at the way he has all of Moree fighting beside him in a place that once attracted worldwide attention as Australia's home of racial discrimination. In 1965 Aboriginal activist and budding soccer star Charlie Perkins arrived in Moree with his Freedom Riders to lead a protest at the local swimming pool which had barred Aboriginal children. Perkins turned water and chlorine into accelerants that sparked an international controversy. At the Royal Hotel on this Friday though, Moree is gearing up for a fight of a different kind as Hammond weighs in ahead of his bout at the Moree War Memorial Hall the following night. His international promoter Ricky Hatton, the Englishman who finished the career of boxing great Kostya Tszyu, says Hammond has the boxing talent to be another Lionel Rose, an Indigenous boxing great whose talent and charisma did so much for Aboriginal reconciliation in the late 60s. Hammond says he's overwhelmed by the support of community, once infamous around the world for its treatment of Australia's first people. He's heard the stories about what Moree was like back in the days before the 1967 national referendum that finally recognised Indigenous Australians in the census, or as the great Queensland Aboriginal jockey Darby McCarthy describes it: ``The time we went from being fauna to being human beings.'' He's heard the story of another Kamilaroi warrior, Len Waters, Australia's only Aboriginal fighter pilot and how on leave from battling the Japanese in New Guinea in World War II he spent a night in the Moree lockup, in his air force uniform, for not having a pass to be off the Aboriginal mission. Spotto Hammond, Cameron's granddad, has told him about the 60s when Indigenous shearers would sweat it out all day and then have to wait outside the Moree pubs in the hope that a white man might bring them out a beer. ``But it's all changed for the better here,'' Hammond says. ``Moree might have been known for racism once but now the whole town is supporting an Indigenous boxer. And they've supported me ever since I was a little kid starting out.'' Hammond was a promising rugby league fullback when he took up boxing at 13, hitting it off with trainer Danny Cheetham, 54, whose Moree Boxing Academy, housed in a shed at the local showgrounds, is a Mecca for Moree kids of all shapes, sizes and ethnicity. ``When I was a kid growing up here Moree was a racist town, but Australia was a racist country,'' says Cheetham, who back in the 80s fought on boxing shows featuring world champs Jeff Fenech and Jeff Harding. ``I remember at the local picture theatre the Indigenous kids would all have to sit up the front near the screen and the white kids would have the best seats at the back. Thank God those days are gone.'' In 1965, Charlie Perkins chartered a bus and took other activists on his Freedom Ride through NSW bush towns. They found Indigenous Australians living in squalor and often barred from pubs, clubs and cafes. At Moree, Perkins challenged a by-law of the local council which barred Aborigines using the municipal pool. He gathered eight Aboriginal children and confronted the pool management. There was an angry standoff before the kids were finally allowed to dip their toes. Moree's mayor Katrina Humphries looks upon the Freedom Ride ``as a great positive and a turning point for the town.'' ``Moree is certainly not like that now,'' she says. ``We recently re-opened the pool after a $7 million revamp and it is the focus of a great community where everyone works together.'' Mrs Humphries also opened Cheetham's Moree Boxing Academy four years ago. ``The boxing gym has a real community spirit,'' she says, ``Danny Cheetham tries extremely hard to make a difference in people's lives. He's kept a lot of kids on the straight and narrow and all of Moree has followed Cameron's journey through the Commonwealth and Olympic Games. ``Cameron is a very decent young man and Moree is really proud of what he's achieved.'' Cheetham helped Hammond win a scholarship to the Australian Institute of Sport at 17 under the Australian Sports Commission's National Talent Identification and Development (NTID) program and the young boxer fought in New Zealand, Fiji, Thailand, Serbia, Cuba, the Delhi Commonwealth Games in 2010 and the London Olympics two years later. While it is better for his training to be based in Brisbane, where he works out with Gareth Williams, he returns home to Moree whenever he can. Often he drives a bus for a local community group, visiting Indigenous and Non-Indigenous kids, telling them to study hard and focus on their goals. He says the Moree Boxing Academy has done much to promote reconciliation. ``There's no black or white in this club,'' Hammond says, ``it's probably made up 50-50 of indigenous and non-indigenous kids. But right from the time I started boxing in amateur tournaments at the Memorial Hall the crowds came out to support me.'' Immediately after the Olympics Hammond was signed to a promotional deal by Ricky Hatton, one of the most popular boxers of all time. But despite his international profile, Hammond wants to fight in Moree as often as he can. ``Ricky is very happy for Cameron to fight at home as he builds his career. He knows the value of a local support base,'' says Hammond's manager Matt Clark. ``Cameron could earn more fighting overseas but his heart is always with this community.'' The night after Hammond weighs in at the Royal, he wales away, stopping outgunned Sydney boxer Kane Buckley in six rounds. It seems half of Moree is packed into the Memorial Hall and 22 business houses have bought corporate packages to sponsor the young Aboriginal fighter. Hammond fights in Dubbo next month and he will fight again in Moree in the New Year. Ricky Hatton, speaking from Manchester, tells The Courier-Mail he was ``very impressed'' by Hammond at the Olympics. ``Cameron didn't win a medal but his speed and his timing were exceptional,'' Hatton says. ``He has the talent to go from Moree to the very top of world boxing.'' If he does Hammond will be proudly thumping his tattooed chest to show what the Kamilaroi can do. He fights with a loose limbed, hands down style relying on freakish speed and radar reflexes. It's a style other Indigenous world champions perfected. ``In the past we've had great Aboriginal boxers - Lionel Rose, Dave Sands, Robbie Peden, Tony and Anthony Mundine, Daniel Geale,'' Hammond says. ``I hope to be a champion like them. ``I want to repay the faith Moree and the rest of Australia has placed in me.''
Just read on another forum that Hammond is going to be Mundine's main sparring partner for the Mosley fight. Makes a lot of sense.
