Scariff shares connection with Olympic gold

At the Olympics in Stockholm in 1912, a young girl representing Australia took her place in the final of the 100 metres freestyle event, the only swimming event in which ladies could compete.

Back home in Sydney there was an expectation that this phenomenon would be the first woman to win a gold medal swimming for Australia. That particular Olympics should, in this centenary year, have a particular resonance for Scariff people and especially for the community of Cappabane because in that year, Fanny Durack laid claim to the inclusion in the World Swimming Hall of Fame.
Fanny, born in Sydney in 1889, was a daughter of Mary Mason of Sheaun House, Cappabane and Thomas Durack of Clounty, Mountshannon, both of whom had emigrated to Australia in the late 19th century.
Thomas was the first to emigrate and he worked up country for a number of years before returning to Sydney where he bought a hotel. Mary arrived in the city at the age of 16 and got employment in the hotel. Three years later she married Thomas, and Fanny was one of their daughters.
From a very young age, Fanny had demonstrated a keen interest and ability as a swimmer and this at a time in Australia when swimming in public by ladies was distinctly frowned upon. Any woman who did so was in danger of being socially ostracised and it was believed that swimming “coarsened females”.
The times were changing, however, and Fanny was at the forefront in the struggle for equal treatment.
In 1906 she won her first Australian title and over the next few-years she dominated the swimming scene in her country. By 1910 she held every woman’s world record from 100 metres to the mile.
Despite her achievements and outstanding ability the Olympic Selection Committee for the Australian team would not select Fanny for the Stockholm Olympics of 1912. This was not surprising given that there was still a very definite male bias in the committee. However, there was clear public support for the inclusion of Fanny and a subscription list was opened to help defray the expenses.
The response from the public was so successful that the selection committee relented, so Fanny Durack and her good friend and fellow swimmer Mina Wylie were added to the team. As one media commentator wrote “two girls and their supporters had battered down prejudice and prudery to become Australia’s pioneers in women’s international sport”.
Interestingly, at Stockholm the Australian men’s team did not perform well at all and so it was left to the two young ladies to salvage the nation’s honour. They proceeded to do so in style. Fanny had developed the Australian crawl and it simply whitewashed the opposition. For example in one of her heats she knocked seven seconds off the world record in the 100m freestyle. None of the other competitors could stay with her and with Fanny taking the gold and her best friend Mina Wiley winning silver, the two girls truly arrived on the world stage.
Before returning as heroes to Australia, the girls competed across the continent of Europe winning first and second in every single event in which they took part. We know from postcards which she sent to her aunt that she intended to come to Scariff and Cappabane but her sister Kathleen who was travelling with her got sick when they were in London and doctors advised that they return to Sydney. That Ireland trip was postponed but in fact she never did get to visit her mother and father’s birthplace.
World War I put paid to the 1916 Olympics but further honour beckoned at the 1920 Olympics. However, a week before she was due to sail she came down with an attack of appendicitis, and so she never got an opportunity to win a second Olympic medal. Until 1932 Fanny was the only Australian woman to win an Olympic gold in a swimming event.
In the period between 1912 and 1918 she broke 12 world records in the 100 yards, 100 metres and in the mile. A reporter of the day described her as “determined and selfwilled, who had long dark hair and a figure that showed no symptom of ropes of athletic muscles”.
She retired from competitive swimming in 1921 and in the same year married Bernard Gately, a horse trainer, but she did make time to coach young children. Fanny died of cancer in March 1956, and in 1967 her name was included in the International Swimming Hall of Fame, in Fort Lauderdale in Florida – the ultimate accolade from her peers. Her Olympic gold medal is to be seen in the National Library of Australia in Canberra.
So every family has a story to tell but this one story of a young lady whose blood is rooted in Cappabane and Mountshannon is worth telling and remembering especially as we celebrate the centenary of her great victory in Stockholm, one hundred years ago.