Here’s one of my favourite essays from the upcoming Marooned memoir, set for release with Hawkeye Books, May 20, 2026.

Enjoy!

May 23, 1994

Origin Game #1, SFS, Sydney

Score: Qld 16 – NSW 12

Heaven Sent

Dear Reader, if you’ve managed to reach this point in the book without tossing it aside, and you’re Maroon to the core, and you’ve been keeping tabs on my timeline, and you perused the title of this instalment with a knowing grin, you’ll be keenly aware that it’s time to unpack a miracle:

How my beautiful wife came into my life.

(Okay, you were expecting THE miracle, THE try, immortalised by Ray Warren’s call and a must in every Origin highlight package that ever was and ever will be? Don’t worry – I’ll get to it in due course.)

Unless you’re a devotee of the destined soulmate, the chances of any two random people meeting and falling in love can be considered at best remote, at worst nigh impossible. My connection with Wendy Fraser sits squarely in the latter category. Our paths crossed on a Great Adventures tour boat to Green Island in far north Queensland. Alongside two other teachers, I was supervising a camp group of older intellectually disabled students; it was our last day of the trip – the following morning we’d be up bright and early to catch the Sunlander back to Brisbane. Wend was one of the staff working on the boat, which carried a name we would later reference with thinly veiled innuendo: ‘Mandalay’. On the 90-minute journey out to the island, she caught my eye. Cascades of dark, wavy hair. Mischievous smile. Gorgeous, tanned skin, accentuated by her bright white uniform shorts. On the trip back, she was serving behind the bar. Could she have been any more attractive?

We started talking. She was from Vancouver, Canada, and came from a family with Metis and First Nations heritage. She’d arrived in Brisbane in 1988, by way of a six month stop in Hawaii. She’d worked the staff canteen at Expo before heading north to Cairns. She loved scuba diving and bungy jumping. She was intrigued by the campers in my care and figured I must be “a nice guy” to be doing such important work. She liked my blue eyes, listened politely when I opined (ill-advisedly) that Julian O’Neill would be our next Origin great, and didn’t seem put off by the fact that I wasn’t wearing a shirt.

This mystery woman was fixing me with beers, but it was her that was intoxicating. The ease of our conversation, her spirit of adventure, that accent…I couldn’t end things by shaking her hand, saying ‘Have a nice life’ and walking away, as if this nigh impossible moment had been nothing more than a pleasant diversion. With the Mandalay nearing dock in Cairns, I threw a speculator out to the wing:

“Would you like to do something tonight?”

She said she would and wrote her number down on a vomit bag. I took it as a positive sign that the bag was empty.

I rang her on the hostel pay phone as soon as our group got back. I asked again if she’d fancy getting together and she, again, replied in the affirmative. She said she’d pick me up at the hostel at 7.30 and then we’d head to a local bar called Gypsy Dee’s. I hung up and a thought occurred to me, puncturing the balloon of giddiness enveloping my head: Umm, you’re here as a teacher, champ. You’re supposed to be looking after your students, not cracking on to beautiful tour boat strangers. Sheepishly, I approached my two teaching colleagues – both older married women – and explained the situation. They didn’t hesitate. Go on, they declared. We’ll hold the fort. Three years later at our Australian wedding reception, they would claim it was more obvious than a Mills and Boon ending that Cupid had shot me right between the eyes.

7.45 arrived and no sign of Wendy. Did I blow it? Had I been too eager on the phone? Perhaps she’d realized she could do better. Sure, I might be a ‘nice guy’, but she could get with any number of nice guys who looked better without a shirt on, made more money, and didn’t live a Sunlander journey away. I was debating whether to call again – women love desperation, right? – when she rocked up at the hostel front desk.

“Sorry, I’m late,” she said.

“No worries,” I replied, acting cool. “It’s not like I was going to phone you over and over again to make sure you were coming.”

(Many years after we were married, Wend would reveal the reason for her lateness. She was recovering from fifteen rounds of a long-term relationship gone bad and wasn’t inclined to step back into the dating ring. Arriving on the dot at 7.30, she’d driven around the block several times, wondering if she could be bothered to go through with the night, and whether she should just bail now to save herself further trouble. In the end, something convinced her to front up. Maybe it was the money I owed her for the Mandalay beers.)

A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell, so I’ll describe the evening that ensued thus: it went as well as any first date ever has in the long and sordid history of first dates. When I got back to the hostel – sometime around 2.00am – I knew I wanted Wendy Fraser in my life. Who cared if we were 1,500 clicks apart? I was committed to seeing how the miracle might unfold.

*

By the night of Origin 1 in 1994, Wend and I were living together. That might seem quick (because it was quick) but establishing the bona fides of our love relied on time’s quality more than its quantity. After my return to Brisbane, we did the long-distance thing for three months. Calls every day, sometimes twice a day. Often staying on the line for two hours or more – an occasional bone of contention in the single-phone Taringa house I was sharing with three other renters. We wrote letters, too – pages and pages, handwritten. There was a brief reprieve: a flight back up to Cairns for a glorious long weekend spent in each other’s arms and, for one morning at Smithfield Bungy Jump, in the lap of the gods (an apt metaphor for our relationship if ever there was one). The rest of the time, all we had was conversation and correspondence. During those months, it was torture not being together in-person, but hindsight suggests it was the best way to grow our relationship, perhaps the best way to grow any relationship. We talked and wrote about anything and everything: family, history, politics, values, work, fun, life goals, having kids, the correct way to squeeze the toothpaste tube, the crime of having a toilet roll go under rather than over the top…Topics that may not have been on the menu for a while in each other’s presence – we devoured them over the phone and on the page. Unsurprisingly, in amongst all those essential discussion pieces were the Queensland Maroons. I’d like to think Wend had some idea of what she’d encounter in our first shared Origin the evening of May 23. But as the esteemed Swedish physician and professor, Hans Rosling, famously said: nothing beats a firsthand experience.

Our venue for the game was the old stomping ground on McConaghy Street. Dad and Mum were away, watching at a friend’s place. They were disappointed to miss Wend; she’d made a strong impression in her initial visits, accepting Dad’s offers of beer without hesitation, and laughing at his joke that the portraits of Joseph and Mary in the living room were “Darren’s grandparents”. And when his casual mention of the Broncos’ back-to-back NSWRL premierships prompted Wend to refer to Glenn Lazarus as the ‘Brick with Eyes’, Dad might’ve shed a little tear of joy. The burgeoning endearment of Wendy Fraser to my parents, though, would have to wait. Our only company for this Origin tilt would be a pair of buddies, Glen and Mark. With the four of us viewing the action in Des’ prototype of the modern man-cave – a downstairs entertainment area he’d built from scratch in the late ‘70’s, featuring a bar salvaged from the dump and a beast of a Westinghouse fridge built in 1952 – it promised to be an intimate and, from Wend’s perspective, insightful evening.

Like the on-field combatants, I’d steeled myself for a special effort. Anything short of my best self would be unacceptable. No anger, no aggression. No shouting advice at the TV. No over-the-top antics of any kind; celebration, disconsolation or otherwise. The intent was that my Maroon lunacy would initially be fed to Wendy in tiny morsels, baby bird-like, soft and pre-digested as to be easily swallowed. Over time, as her resistance built up and her constitution strengthened, the diet could be expanded until she could stomach any amount of my Queenslander excess.

As the kickoff sailed away from Mal Meninga’s boot, I mentally consulted my list of bad behaviour mitigations: sitting with Wend instead of my mates – check; sitting at the bar instead of six inches from the TV – check; first drink scheduled for half-time – check; inner voice reminding me of the Camus quote ‘Life is a sum of all your choices’, and that the sum of all my choices tonight should equal not being an utter pork chop – check; inner voice also reiterating that I really, really, really dig this woman beside me – check. I was in good shape. So much so that when Laurie Daley strolled through our defensive line the first set of six, and Mal Meninga was bundled into touch on our second tackle of the match, my response to these calamities was merely a shrug, a pained smile and a small squeeze of Wend’s knee. It really felt like I could be a man – and fan – worthy of the beautiful creature occupying the next barstool over.

*

12 – 4 Blues, five minutes to go.

Not the worst outcome. A big victory, a bad defeat – they carried the highest risk of me reverting to type. A tepid loss like this? It didn’t move the needle too much. Naturally, there’d been moments of weakness. When Paul Harragon scored after a Daley play-the-ball that reeked of rugby union, I muttered a series of expletives under my breath. When a Queensland shift sent Willie Carne streaking down the sideline, I leaned forward far enough that I stumbled off the stool. When Julian O’Neill scored in the corner to level the scores, I briefly joined Glen and Mark in their festival of high-fives. When Bill Harrigan missed a blatant Blues knock-on, but then called back a line-ball Tim Brasher touchdown on the stroke of halftime, I blurted a sarcastic ‘THANK YOU!’. When New South Wales went up two scores, a pitiful groan escaped my mouth before I could gulp it back down. On the whole, nothing too damaging in those lapses. Wend had taken it all in stride. She patted my hand after a disoriented Marty Bella played the ball towards the opposite try-line, kissed my cheek whenever I called Ricky Stuart a whinger, and wondered aloud how Gary Larson juggled ‘The Far Side’ and football. And now, blessedly, we were almost at the final hooter. The first small dose of my Maroon madness had been administered to Wend without serious side-effect.

Thank you, boys, I thought. Thank you for prioritizing my love life.

Perhaps the players were waiting for this acknowledgement, or it provided an epiphany that had escaped them to this point in the game. In the 75^th minute, a brilliant hot-potato sequence involving Kevin Walters, Meninga and Steve ‘The Pearl’ Renouf  climaxed with a Mark Coyne basketball-pass to Carne for the four-pointer. As Meninga piloted the conversion between the sticks to make it 12 – 10, I sensed it: the existential threat to my shared future with Wendy. The landmine set in my carefully curated path to romantic fulfillment.

Hope.

Fight it, my inner voice barked, but the futility of the command was undeniable. I was powerless to stop the descent. Two minutes to go, Queensland with the ball. I was standing on the floor now, double-arm’s distance from the TV, hunched and tense like a half-cocked jack-in-the-box. Gaze glued to the screen. When had I vacated the barstool? No clue. Suddenly, Ray Warren’s rising voice was swamping me, lifting me off my feet and carrying me towards an unknown shore.

*

“Coyne at the 79^th minute is tackled…Langer pushing it wide…Walters onward…”

“Come on, lads!” I pleaded, fist punching my thigh, my world nothing but the next 60 seconds. “One play!”

“Renouf down the touchline…beats one…gets it infield…”

Heart racing. “Come on!”

“Hancock gets it on! Queensland are coming back! Darren Smith for Langer!”

Blood singing. “COME ON!”

“LANGER GETS IT AWAY! HERE’S THE BIG FELLA! GETS THE PASS ON!”

Shouting. “YES!!!”

“COYNE!!! COYNE!!! GOES FOR THE CORNER!!!

Screaming. “FUCK YES!!!”

AND GETS THE TRY!!!”

Chaos. “OHMYFUCKINGGOD!!!”

“THAT’S NOT A TRY – THAT’S A MIRACLE!!!”

*

What happened next was mindless ecstasy. Noise everywhere, bodies bouncing off each other. One of either Glen or Mark kept shouting “I KNEW IT!” over and over and over again. Or maybe it was me, lying through my teeth? The three of us were one giant mass of jubilation, our own personal expressions of joy indistinguishable from the whole. And it might’ve continued unchecked for the rest of the night but for a single instance of lucidity that shattered the anarchy:

Wendy.

I clamped a hand over my still-bellowing gob.

Oh, no.

I’ve wrecked everything.

Pivoting away from the TV, away from the replay of a euphoric Wally Lewis monstering Dick ‘Tosser’ Turner in the stands, I turned towards the bar. I knew what I would encounter: an empty stool. Wend had cleared out. Run for the hills. She was likely already on the Sunlander, slow-poking her way back up to Cairns. I couldn’t blame her. She hadn’t signed up for this circus. Heart heavy, I lifted my eyes to the tragic consequence of my Maroon disorder: the one that got away.

She was still there.

I stepped towards her arms outstretched. She held up a hand, halting my advance. Gave a little shake of the head. Smirked. Then she stepped down from the stool and stood in front of me. I felt her soft hands, her fingers interlace with mine. Behind her Ray-Ban specs, her stunning brown eyes were communicating a clear message: ‘What’s a girl to do?’  

“That was something else,” she said.

“You mean me or the try?”

‘I’ll never tell.”

She smiled, kissed me then announced in a commendable Aussie accent that Phil Gould could suffer in his jocks. At that moment, I understood two things:

I would love Wendy Fraser for the rest of my days.

And on the night of May 23^rd in the year 1994, I had, without question, witnessed a miracle.