A mother’s mission
The tiny wheatbelt town of Dowerin is tucked up in the bottom corner of Western Australia, 160 kilometres north-east of Perth. There’s a pub on one end of the main street and a bakery at the other. The main attraction is Rusty the Tin Dog, a 2.7-metre-tall steel kelpie that stands guard at the town entrance. It’s thought that the community was named after Lake Dowerin from the Aboriginal word dower, meaning “place of the throwing sticks”.
It’s here where AFL great and Noongar man Lance “Buddy” Franklin, 34, grew up on a farm on the outskirts of town, kicking a footy at the goalposts painted on his family’s tin shearing shed. And it’s here where Lance and Jesinta Franklin will take their children, Tullulah “Lulu”, 17 months, and Rocky, four months, for a Welcome to Country ceremony later in the year.
“I’ve never been [to Lance’s home town]. This year we’re spending Christmas in Western Australia, so we’ll take the kids to Dowerin to show them the farm where Bud grew up and the bus stop where he would wait for the local school bus,” says Jesinta.
