Married for 65 years, Don Bradman declared his marriage to Jessie ‘the best partnership of my life’.
Growing up in Bowral NSW in the 1920s, Jessie Menzies, whose family lived out of town, boarded with the Bradmans during the week. Jessie and Don walked to school together. ‘When I was all of eleven or twelve, I decided to marry her’, Australia’s greatest cricketer recalled at the 1989 opening of the Bradman Museum in their home town. ‘Of course I didn't ask her because I was too shy, but I eventually got round to it ten or so years later.’ The summer before their 1932 wedding was a record-breaker for the sportsman already known as ‘Our Don’, with ruthless batting displays against the touring South African team. Taken 60 years later, Robin Sellick’s quiet photographic portrait of the Bradmans was taken in Kensington Park, Adelaide, at their family home since 1934.
