Fred Brophy OAM is an Australian

tent boxing Tent boxing is an amusement previously seen at agricultural shows throughout Australia. History Starting in the late 19th century, boxing troupes of professional fighters would travel the mining towns and outback of the country, following fa ...

promoter who regularly tours around

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

with the eponymous Fred Brophy's Boxing Troupe. Brophy organises and then referees the tent boxing bouts between the boxers that travel with the troupe and willing local participants at such events at the Birdsville Races and the Mount Isa Rodeo. Brophy puts the call out to interested local challengers by banging a drum.Fred keeps 'Outback Fight Club' alive
, ''Outback Queensland'', 28 October 2015. Retrieved 9 February 2018.

Biography

Born in

Perth Perth () is the list of Australian capital cities, capital city of Western Australia. It is the list of cities in Australia by population, fourth-most-populous city in Australia, with a population of over 2.3 million within Greater Perth . The ...

and growing up in Queensland, Brophy is a fourth-generation showman. His father was a

sideshow In North America, a sideshow is an extra, secondary production associated with a circus, traveling carnival, carnival, fair, or other such attraction. They historically featured human oddity exhibits (so-called “Freak show, freak shows”), pr ...

operator while his mother was a

trapeze artist A trapeze is a short horizontal bar hung by ropes, metal straps, or chains, from a ceiling support. It is an aerial apparatus commonly found in circus performances. Trapeze acts may be static, spinning (rigged from a single point), swinging or ...

. Brophy claims to have been boxing since he was a young as four years old when his father and his uncle toured with their own boxing tents. As a young man, Brophy served jail time, in both

Pentridge Pentridge is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Sixpenny Handley and Pentridge, in the Dorset district, in the ceremonial county of Dorset, England, lying in the north-east of the county. It is situated on the edge of Cranb ...

and

Fremantle Prison Fremantle Prison, sometimes referred to as Fremantle Gaol or Fremantle Jail, is a former Australian prison and World Heritage Site in Fremantle, Western Australia. The site includes the prison cellblocks, gatehouse, perimeter walls, cottages, ...

Hall of Fame

Brophy was inducted into the Queensland Boxing Hall of Fame in 2009.

Documentary

In 2010, Brophy was the subject of an SBS documentary called ''Outback Fight Club'' which detailed Brophy's supposedly last outback tour. Brophy had planned to retire in 2012 but after encouragement from the general public, he decided to continue touring. ''Outback Fight Club'' was nominated for a Logie at the 2012 Logie Awards for Most Outstanding Factual Program but lost to ''

Go Back To Where You Came From "Go back to where you came from" is a racist or xenophobic epithet which is used in many countries, and it is mainly used to target actual immigrants and falsely presumed immigrants. In contemporary United States, it is directed often at Asia ...

''. The program was also nominated for an

AACTA Award The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards, known as the AACTA Awards, are presented annually by the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA). The awards recognise excellence in the film and television industry, ...

for Best Documentary Series at the

1st AACTA Awards The Inaugural Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards, known more commonly as the AACTA Awards, presented by the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA), honoured the Australian films of 2011, best Australian a ...

in 2012 but lost to ''SAS - The Search for Warriors''. Brophy was also featured on the SBS program '' The Feed'' in 2016.

Awards

Brophy was awarded with a

Medal of the Order of Australia The Order of Australia is an Australian honour that recognises Australian citizens and other persons for outstanding achievement and service. It was established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, on the advice of then ...

in 2011 for his efforts in raising money for charities in Birdsville through his tent boxing work, and for services to the entertainment industry.Wilson, Karyn; Harris, Juli
Fred Brophy, boxing tent legend, awarded OAM
ABC Western Queensland, 28 January 2011. Retrieved 9 February 2018.

Autobiography

In 2014, Brophy released an autobiography he had written with journalist Sue Williams called ''The Last Showman: The Life and Times of an Outback Tent-Boxing Legend''. The book originated from decades of Brophy recording stories about his life in notebooks despite having

dyslexia Dyslexia (), previously known as word blindness, is a learning disability that affects either reading or writing. Different people are affected to different degrees. Problems may include difficulties in spelling words, reading quickly, wri ...

. The stories were typed up by a former secretary who once worked for politician

Bob Katter Robert Bellarmine Carl Katter (born 22 May 1945) is an Australian politician who has served as the member of parliament (MP) for the Queensland division of Division of Kennedy, Kennedy since 1993 and Father of the Australian House of Represent ...

as Brophy believed she was the only one who could decipher his handwriting. Williams then assisted Brophy in compiling the material into a book. As part of her research for the book, Williams visited Brophy's boxing tent and took part in a fight. Brophy said that although Williams didn't win her fight, she had performed well. Brophy has said he has allowed women to fight in his tent following the

women's liberation movement The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feminist intellectualism. It emerged in the late 1960s and continued till the 1980s, primarily in the industrialized nations of the Western world, which resulted in g ...

. Another female writer, Helen McInerney, had previously documented her experience in 2010 on what it was like to be a woman fighting against one of Brophy's female boxers.

News

Brophy's boxing tent made news in 2017 when Senator

Pauline Hanson Pauline Lee Hanson (''née'' Seccombe, formerly Zagorski; born 27 May 1954) is an Australian politician who is the founder and leader of One Nation, a right-wing populist political party. Hanson has represented Queensland in the Australian S ...

was seen making an appearance as a

ring girl A ring girl (also number girl, card girl, or round girl) is an attractive young woman hired to enter the ring between rounds of a combat sport, carrying a sign displaying the number of the next round. Ring girls are often seen in boxing, kickboxi ...

before a fight at the Birdsville Races. During Hanson's appearance, Brophy endorsed the politician by declaring that the people in the outback loved her and describing her as a "fair dinkum Australian". While Brophy's tent boxing has continued to be a popular attraction at Birdsville and Mount Isa, Brophy does take his troupe to other events throughout Queensland.

Tours

As of 2018, Brophy continues to tour Queensland with his boxing troupe. However, Brophy also now spends much of his time at pubs he owns in Kilkivan and Cracow. Brophy's troupe is based out of the Cracow Hotel. He has said he decided to get into pubs because he enjoys meeting people. Brophy has also said it was always ambition to own an old Queensland hotel and bought the Cracow Hotel, built in 1935, because of how cheap it was due to Cracow being a

ghost town A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...

.McCord, Meliss
Fred's fighting for Cracow
''R.M. Williams Outback'', Issue #15, February/March 2001. Retrieved 9 February 2018.

References

External links

Dean Saffron photographs of Fred Brophy's Boxing Troupe

State Library of Queensland State Library of Queensland (State Library) is the state public reference and research library of Queensland, Australia, operated by the Government of Queensland, state government. The Library is governed by the Library Board of Queensland, whi ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brophy, Fred Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Australian boxing promoters Australian hoteliers