The legend and tragedy of Elley Bennett: Australia's first great boxer

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In the autumn of 1924, in the seaside Queensland town of Pialba, a young Aboriginal woman gave birth to a boy. He was a tiny fellow, but he was strong and healthy and from those obscure and humble beginnings he would, one day, become famous.

He fought more than 50 professional bouts - many before big crowds in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane - and won more than half of them by knockout. Elley Bennett, a bantam and featherweight champion of Australia during a golden era of boxing, could have and should have fought for the world title in either weight division had he been given his deserved chance.

Indeed, at the Sydney Stadium in 1949, Bennett stood the sporting world on its ear when he sensationally KO'd the visiting African American Cecil Schoonmaker in the sixth round. The wily American was rated No.2 bantamweight in the world and he agreed to come down to fight Bennett while he waited on a promised bout with the titleholder, Mexican Manuel Ortiz, for the world championship.

After five rounds the American had built up a huge points lead. In the sixth, however, Schoonmaker left his chin unguarded for a fraction of a second and Bennett unleashed a sizzling right-hand punch that dropped him to his knees.

It seemed a formality that Bennett would soon get a crack at the world title, but the fickle finger of fate thwarted his aspirations when South Africa's Vic Toweel relieved Ortiz of his crown. Under South African law at that time, a contest between a white champion and a coloured challenger could not be sanctioned and Toweel wasn't interested in bringing his newly won title down to Australia to defend it against Bennett.

The young Bennett didn't exactly excel at school and walked away from it at an early age. At various times he was a drover, a bullock driver, a cane cutter, a fisherman and a peanut harvester. During those years he became domiciled at the Cherbourg Aboriginal Mission just outside Murgon.

When the 21-year-old Bennett moved to Brisbane under the care of trainer-manager Snowy Hill it was early 1946. After a series of victories, Hill knew he had a potential world-beater on his hands.

Bennett wasn't keen on strict training and shifted to the heavier featherweight when he ran out of opponents. He first won the Australian bantamweight title in 1948 and the featherweight title in 1951.

When he retired in 1954, he was in good health. He had been fighting for eight years, had earned a fortune by the standards of the time and he'd had enough. He was looking forward to a happy, healthy life after boxing and the future was looking rosy.

Bennett approached the Queensland government's Aboriginal Welfare Fund in an effort to retrieve the money he believed was held in trust for him only to be advised that no such trust fund existed. He was effectively broke even though he had earned upwards of £25,000 in prizemoney.

Bennett sought advice from some supposed friends and his problems escalated from there. He took out substantial insurance on his fishing boat and sank it, hoping to collect the insurance. The insurance company woke to the rort and refused to pay. Bennett's boat and aspirations in the fishing industry were lost forever.

He was devastated when his son was jailed for life for the sexual assault and murder of a small child. In August 1981, Bennett died of pneumonia in Bundaberg. He was just 57 and penniless.

In 1979, 26 years after they'd opposed each other in the ring at the Sydney Stadium, Trevor King - by then a Salvation Army officer - visited Bennett in a Brisbane jail where he'd been locked up on his 50th charge for drunkenness. King later told a journalist: ''A man who had given so much pleasure to so many people died a bum. And nobody seemed to care.''