Bryn Walters’ dream to build a statue of Test cricket legend dad Doug in Dungog

They broke the mould with cricket legend Doug Walters. Yet as SHANNON GILL writes, Doug’s son Bryn is trying to replicate the magic of his dad via a statue in his hometown of Dungog.

A campaign has started to build a statue of cricket legend Doug Walters in his hometown of Dungog.

Eventually Bryn Walters got worn down.

“It probably went on for about 20 years and I can’t tell you how many people suggested it,” he tells CODE Sports.

What the wellwishers wanted was something that would forever immortalise Bryn’s dad, and Aussie Test cricket great Doug, in his hometown.

Arguably no Australian sports star has put a tiny country town on the map like ‘Dungog Doug’ did when he shot to stardom in 1965 scoring Ashes centuries in his first two tests.

It was Doug’s old mate, the recently passed Rolf Schufft, who nagged Bryn the most.

There is a Doug Walters Bar at the local RSL, but what about a statue in the main street?

Artist's impression of how Dungog may look with the statue.

“He suggested it for the fiftieth time and then I went ‘all right, stuff it, we’ve got to do something about it.’”

Bryn admits he was a little nervous initially heading back to Dungog to ask the town whether they’d be interested. When he got a positive response from the local council he thought it was time to get serious.

A secret meeting of Doug’s family and friends was appropriately convened in the front bar of the Bank Hotel in Dungog.

“We said ‘right-o Dougie’s not going to know anything about this until we get substantially organised so he can’t really say no.’”

Walters with son Bryn way back in 1981.

The Doug Walters Foundation was formed out of that pub discussion for the purpose of the statue and to formalise the ongoing fundraising Doug had done for regional cricket via ‘Doug Walters Club’ functions.

Now, the sight of Doug Walters forever flashing the blade in the middle of Dungog is getting closer to being a reality.

After travelling to Melbourne to see the array of sporting statues at the MCG, Bryn enlisted the maker of many of those, Louis Laumen, to help build his dad.

Smaller models are being worked on and now Bryn is trying to raise the money to get the real thing built.

An important element has been the support of the Australian Sports Foundation, who are the only organisation in Australia to have ‘Deductible Gift Recipient’ status for sport.

They have set-up a donation page for the public to contribute to the project, with any donation over $2 tax deductible.

The aim is to raise $150,000 to pay for the statue and continue to help young cricketers in the bush.

This Friday sees a golf day and dinner at Muirfield Golf Club in Sydney featuring Walters, Craig Parry and other sports stars to help push the effort along.

Doug Walters after his century on debut against England at the Gabba in 1965.

Not one to seek the limelight, Doug himself was initially a little nonplussed by the idea when he was finally told.

“Oh well …. I guess it was nice and it was a bit surprising,” he tells CODE Sports.

“It was probably too late to say no.”

Walters played 74 tests, scoring 5357 runs at an average of 48.26, where his 15 test tons often turned dour struggles into Australian triumphs. His match-turning abilities extended to the ball too, where he picked up 49 wickets with his medium pacers.

Yet as much as strokeplay, the Walters legend was built on a laconic dry wit and a laid back approach.

His love of a beer, a smoke, a hand of cards and a punt were as synonymous as his drives, cuts and hooks.

Doug Walters sits as sculptor Louis Laumen takes photos for the proposed statue.

Approaching 79 years of age, Walters has lost none of that drollness.

He met Laumen as the sculptor took photos from various angles to help him understand the nuances of Dougie’s body shape, old teammates would have been in hysterics to see him play catwalk model. Laumen will use those photos to make a mould, that unlike the man himself, won’t be broken.

“He said he doesn’t normally do blokes that are still alive, so he got a bit of a shock when I arrived in person,” Doug says.

“I told him, ‘I don’t want it to look like I’m looking now.”

“I had to keep reminding Louis that we need to turn the clock back a fair bit,” Bryn laughs.

The image of Doug Walters that the statue will be based on.

Rest assured the statue will be of Dougie in his pomp, so the final decision about what image to use to symbolise the Walters career was an important one.

“We needed a photo where you could actually see my face and see the baggy green,” Doug says.

Bryn initially thought a pull shot would be the right pose to showcase his dad’s “guts and tenacity”. A strong contender was an image of the iconic century in a session he made in Perth in 1975 brought up with a hooked six from Bob Willis, however eventually Bryn found the right shot.

Doug in the baggy green, sleeves rolled above the elbows, balanced and in complete control of a cut shot, about to set off for a run.

The purity of it means it could fit in any era of Test cricket.

There’s a nice symmetry that Dungog’s population when Dougie came into the world in 1945 was just shy of 2500 and it’s still that today.

You get the feeling time will continue to stand still around a Doug Walters statue.

“When you look at the pose of the cut shot and then you look at where it’s going to go on Dowling Street, Dungog … I just think it’s going to work,” Bryn says.

Just like the one-of-a-kind Doug Walters.

Donate to the Doug Walters statue fund

Originally published as Bryn Walters’ dream to build a statue of Test cricket legend dad Doug in Dungog