Now 51, Rafter lives with his wife of 20 years, Lara, on a sprawling 26ha property in the Byron Bay hinterland. The couple left their home beside the sea at Sunshine Beach for a life on the land in 2016.

Since then, the Rafters have become deeply engaged in regenerating the land back to rainforest, planting 7500 native plants and trees. They have also planted 10,000 eucalypts to create a koala corridor and sanctuary.

Rafter – these days trading his once trademark man bun for a salt-and-pepper beard – says he’s glad his family made the tree change.

“I couldn’t be happier,” he says.

“I really love working the land, and it occupies a lot of my time. It’s very important to us to regenerate the property back to what it once was, and we are doing it in segments.

“One half of the land we are planting native rainforest plants, and the other half we are working in conjunction with the koala foundation to plant eucalyptus for the koalas.” Rafter chuckles. “Not that we’ve seen many yet, but they should be here any time.”

Known for his good manners and sense of humour off the court, Rafter pauses for a comic beat.

“Any time,” he repeats.

The former tennis champion, who does much of the physical labour on the land himself, says his slice of heaven on earth is home to echidnas, bandicoots and swamp wallabies.

“We see them all the time; it’s pretty special.”

Rafter says he feels a deep connection to the land, with the family often enjoying walking through the trails they have made through their private rainforest, although these days, he says, “it’s just me and Lara”.

The Rafter kids, Joshua and India, are children no more, and have both left the family home for study or work.

“There’s nobody home,” Rafter says.

“They’re 21 and 18 now – I feel so old – so I don’t have a lot of commitments, and I’ve got a lot more time to work on looking after the property.”

The free time has also allowed Rafter to consider the many offers he receives for partnerships, sponsorships, business and sporting projects and reality television appearances.

Content at home, he politely passes on most of them, but says he couldn’t pass up an offer to appear on SBS’s Who Do You Think You Are?, and the chance to discover his family’s roots.

One of 10 children born to Jim and Jocelyn Rafter, the tennis star says a big part of him agreeing to delve into his family tree was his beloved mum.

“Jocelyn is now 84, and she’s an absolute classic,” Rafter reflects.

“I love her very much and now that she is getting older, I wanted to really do something for her, and she has been quite vocal in the past about wanting to know the family history.”

The scenes in Who Do You Think You Are? with mother and son are both charming and poignant. Jim, who died in 2020, “was a really good man”, says Rafter.

“I wish he was alive to see the show. I would have really enjoyed talking to him about it all. I think he would have loved what we found.”

And what the SBS show found was a family tree that Rafter says was not quite what he wished, admitting he was hoping for some sort of “raffish character with a touch of Ned Kelly” in it.

“I don’t know; I wanted a bit of a ratbag, a rapscallion,” he laughs. Instead, he got David Dee, his great-grandfather on his father’s side, who was often, like Kelly, on the wrong side of the law. But Dee was less bushranger, more small-time crook.

“His family came out from Ireland and they settled in Townsville in 1875 as free immigrants, and they also travelled and lived in Gympie,” Rafter says.

Dee grew up in Gympie, but moved to Charters Towers, where he became a baker and married a woman named Theresa. For a time Dee was successful, but he became increasingly ill tempered, and was once charged with using profanity – the offending words being “bloody bugger and damn rascal”.

After that, Dee’s life became one of mounting debts, court appearances and physical altercations, and he was sent to jail for four years for striking another man, leaving Theresa to cope with their five children.

While he was in jail, she gave birth to another man’s child, and the couple ultimately separated, with Dee dying in Cairns in 1918, broke, alone and estranged from his wife and children.

“His was a sad story,” Rafter reflects.

“Not much of his life seemed easy and he definitely made some really poor choices. He was struggling a lot and in some ways it was hard to hear it all, because he’s family, but in other ways, it’s hard to explain, but you feel quite removed from it all.”

On Jocelyn Rafter’s side, there are tales of a mysterious banishing to Australia, gold miners, publicans, sly grog runners and an eye-wateringly wealthy estate, with much of the story centred around the town of Gympie during the Gold Rush days.

“I had not been interested in my family history, but this whole experience was like reading a great book, and I have become enamoured with Gympie and Charters Towers and Townsville, because I feel like I’m part of the family and blood there,” Pat Rafter says.

Various genealogists and local historians helped trace his family history for the show, and Rafter says he particularly enjoyed chatting with them.

“They’re very dedicated to what they do, and were so keen to help out,” he says.

What he didn’t enjoy so much was the pace of the shoot. “I’m not used to it, so these shows are not just one take; it’s ‘Okay, now let’s do it again’ and again.

“I’d think I’d done something wrong, and I’d say ‘How do I help?’ and they’d say, ‘No, it’s okay; we just need to do it again’.”

Asked whether he’d do reality television again, Rafter laughs.

“I have been approached to do a couple. I was approached to do Dancing with the Stars, but there’s not enough money in the world because I cannot dance at all. No one needs to see that.”

And he rules out a spot on I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.

“I don’t want to go into the jungle – I’m pretty happy in my own little forest here.”

Rafter is, however, really glad he did Who Do You Think You Are?.

“I wanted to do this show, for Mum and for the family, and what I really took away from it was these sliding door moments, how we all end up where we are because this person did this, which led to that person doing that,” he says.

“I’m here because of all those people, and all the decisions they made. And if they didn’t make those decisions, you don’t exist. It’s fascinating.”

Interestingly, the show didn’t find any tennis aces in his family, and Rafter says that he rarely plays himself these days.

He does, however, play padel, the increasingly popular sport best described as a cross between squash and tennis, played on an indoor glass-walled court.

Not to be confused with pickleball, padel is played in doubles, and Rafter is an ambassador for Padel Australia.

In April he travelled to Spain for the Senior World Padel Championships.

It’s not quite Wimbledon, and that’s just fine with Rafter, who plays in the 50-54 age division.

He’s quite content exactly where he is, happy to have discovered his past, but living in the present, scattering seeds on his land, and growing the future.

Pat Rafter’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are? premieres on SBS and SBS on Demand, June 4