Lionel (ATOM study guide)

There was a time when boxer Lionel Rose was the best-known Aboriginal Australian in the world. In 1968 Lionel beat Japan's Fighting Harada to become the youngest person ever to win a World Boxing title. When he returned victorious from Tokyo, there were so many people crowding the tarmac to welcome home their champion, the modest Rose thought the Beatles must have been on the plane with him! 250,000 people surged through the streets of Melbourne to celebrate his achievement. Lionel's story includes an amazing number of firsts: he was Australia's youngest and first Aboriginal boxer to win a world crown; he was the first Aborigine to be honoured as Australian of the Year; and the first Aborigine to be awarded an MBE.

His early life was less than auspicious. He grew up poor in Jackson's Track, East Victoria, one of the few Aboriginal communities to elude government intervention in that era. It's a place that he says now has 'lots of memories and lots of snakes'. Lionel was one of nine children, and life was hard. His father, a carnival fighter, began teaching Lionel boxing's 'fundamentals' from about the age of six. They improvised training equipment, long punching sessions with old flour bags filled with sand – he says no wonder his knuckles are 'crook' now. But while no-one could have imagined a future world champion was growing up in this bush setting – skipping school and shooting rabbits – Lionel was, from his earliest days, marked by power and determination.

Edward Martin's fascinating feature-length documentary, Lionel (2008), takes us back to the 1960s, when Rose was a hero to all Australians; and catches up with the man now, living quietly in country Victoria. Combining a remarkable selection of archival and present day observational footage and interviews, the film explores how Lionel became a mythic sporting figure and his struggle with the dimensions of that myth in his everyday life.