The fellow that was watching on the sidelines was Alf Hunt and the man hitting the balls in the middle of the oval was Henry Gunstone. A formidable bond between the two then followed.

“Alf Hunt noticed that I was hitting the ball out of the ground so he wanted to know who this kid was as he was a grade cricketer himself and that’s how I started getting really keen on cricket,” Gunstone said.

“He coached me for six or seven years.”

South Melbourne days

South Melbourne recruited Gunstone at the age of 17 in 1957. Hunter helped Gunstone get recruited, who at the time knew that a club in premier cricket had eyes on him after a few eye-catching seasons with the bat.

“I was having a lot of success here in the bush and they recruited me to go to Melbourne,” he said.

“My coach (Alf) played with Northcote in Melbourne, so he knew quite a lot of people like Lindsay Hassett who played test cricket and was Australian captain and played for South Melbourne. 

“So it was obvious that’s where I would go, if I was going to go anywhere.”

During his time at South Melbourne, it wasn’t just cricket that occupied him, changing sports as the seasons would change.

Having played a few football games for Great Western back home, he soon enough pulled on the famous ‘red V’ jumper for South Melbourne. To make it more memorable, he was lining up next to triple Brownlow medallist Bob Skilton.

“They (South Melbourne) asked me if I played football,” he said.

“I said ‘oh yes I play with the Great Western Football Club,’ I won the league best and fairest with the association and also the Great Western one.

“I then played a couple of games in the under-19s, then I was in the reserves and then that lead to a senior game every now and then when Brian McGowan was interstate or when Skilton was interstate or when one was injured then I would get a game.

“One day we could beat the top side, then the we would play the bottom side and get beaten we never had a really strong will to win.”

One of his favorite football moments came when he was selected to play for the Victorian Football League against the Victorian Football Association.

“It was just out of the blue and they decided to play some of the up and coming players against the regulars and I had a reasonably good day and it was just another thrill,” he said.

Back Home 

After spending six years with South Melbourne and still a young man, Gunstone returned home to look after his father’s farm who was ill at the time. He did so for 10 years, before making his way to be part of the Ararat council to take on a sport and recreation job.

Gunstone said one of, if not the biggest thrill of his cricketing days came when he was back home.

It is highly unlikely for international cricket teams to take on country sides in today’s day and age, but Gunstone got to live out a dream by taking on multiple national teams in the early 1960s. 

International sides would stop in towns on the way through from Melbourne to Adelaide or vice versa.

“I played against Sri Lanka in Stawell, Pakistan in Stawell, New Zealand in Ararat, the Englishman in Warrnambool, West Indies in Mildura,” he said.

“The only team I didn’t play against was India.”

When asked if he thought he would get selected to play in those tour matches, he remained humble despite the fact that he was a talented cricketer.

“Oh no. You had to get through a lot of practice matches before you got selected,” he said.

That run-out

There was one moment in particular that he remembers very vividly against South Africa.

“I hit the ball through the covers and it was chased by a bloke called Colin Bland. When I turned for the third run he never had the ball in his hand and yet he ran me out by a foot.

“That day I was seeing the ball very well and if you play cricket a lot there are days where you struggle and there are days were you just hit the ball and that day I was really going, I was well in my 40s and going well.”

The nickname and representative cricket 

During his time playing cricket in Ararat and Great Western he scored a whopping 129 centuries earning the nickname ‘the Bradman of the Bush’.

Picking out a favourite is somewhat difficult but with the love Gunstone had for representative cricket, he couldn’t go past the century he made for the Grampians Cricket Association against rivals Geelong South Districts in 1968.

“In Ballarat Country Week, in the final I made 152 against them,” he said.

“To get 100 against them in the final was a big a thrill and to win it of course.”

Apart from putting the pads on and walking up to the pitch, Gunstone loved representative cricket, playing in the Wimmera Shield, the Kenmac Shield, Melbourne and Ballarat Country weeks.

“In fact I would have made more runs for Grampians then for my club, because you play more games” he said.  

“In country week there is 10 games, then you have the Wimmera shield which is three, the Kenmac Shield which is three, so there is 16.

“In the representative games against Pakistan or the West Indies you would play another two or three games. So you play a lot more cricket for your association than for your club and we play Saturday and Sunday all the time back to back.

“In fact in one country week we played 13 days out of the 14, 13 days straight, it was hard but it was good.”

Relationship with Ron Maddocks 

It was during Gunstone’s time in representative cricket that his rivalry with Ron Maddocks from Stawell developed into a formidable partnership. 

“There was only two players that made 1000 runs in a season, I did it twice and Ron Maddocks did it once,” he said. 

“We became teammates and we developed a very strong push to make sure the Grampians was very successful. We won A Grade in Ballarat Country week four times in a row, we won the 1968 premiership in Melbourne. 

“Ron Maddocks was a great competitor, he never gave in and I think I was captain of the Grampians and he was vice-captain and we formed a very strong relationship.

“The players who played with us had to have the same attitude otherwise they couldn’t get a game.” 

On cricket participation today

Gunstone said that it is disappointing that in today’s world people just aren’t that keen to play cricket nowadays. 

“We hardly missed a game of cricket,” he said.

“If there was a wedding one you wouldn’t go to the wedding you would play cricket.”

Gunstone was able to achieve all of this and more from picking up a cricket bat and hitting a few balls in the middle of a Great Western school oval.