Albany cricketer Sue Palmer, 99 not out, awarded State cap 75 years after representing WA against England

An all-rounder in her prime, Albany’s Sue Palmer was presented with her State representative cap by cricket historian and former WAWCA president Clare Papasergio at her family’s home last week. The presentation came more than 75 years after the young Miss Palmer, now Mrs Hunt, represented Western Australia against England and also at the national championships in Adelaide. She received the cap, plus a bag bearing her name and the number 33, as the 33rd woman to have been chosen to play for WA. Now aged 99 not out, she was a right-arm fast bowler, a decent right-hand batter and at a pinch could keep wicket. However, she loved fielding best having started aged about 10 when she was called into her father’s men’s team at Gordon River, when they were short. “They wouldn’t let me bat because they were too quick, but I loved being in the field,” she said. “I just turned up every time they wanted me.” Born in Albany to an unmarried 15-year-old, she said she was adopted practically a day later and spent her early childhood on her adoptive family’s farm near Cranbrook before going to school as a boarder at the Sacred Heart Convent in Katanning. During World War II, when her brother was stationed with the RAAF in Darwin, she left school and returned to the farm to help her parents. It wasn’t until the farm was sold and her parents moved to Perth that Mrs Hunt played regular women’s cricket, turning out for YMCA and coming to the attention of State selectors. She was picked for the WA team which played the touring England team at the WACA in 1948, nabbing the wicket of England legend and captain Molly Hide. The championships in Adelaide came the following year. She still has the representative blazer, while the ball with which she claimed the scalp of Ms Hide is a treasured possession. She met farmer Jim Hunt when she was scoring at a scratch match in Albany and, as she put it, “the wedding ring was hanging up above me”. It wasn’t really the marriage which ended her career, more a busy farm and family life plus a lack of women’s cricket in the area at the time. She had two children, Jenny and Ken, and was a key part of running the Woogenellup farm, driving the tractor and doing the seeding. The property is now run by her grandsons, the fourth generation to do so. From cricket she turned to hockey, with no regrets about giving up the sport she loved. “It sounds like a dull life when you look at it like that,” she said. “But you have to run around a few corners before you can get back on the right road again.” She now lives in an aged care facility in Emu Point near son Ken and his wife Judy and will reach her century in April next year. Ms Papasergio’s book For the Love of the Game has been a passion project as it tells the story of women’s cricket in WA. She is keen for any family members of WA players who have not got their cap to get in touch with her at cpapasergio@hotmail.com.