While filming his episode of Who Do You Think You Are? Bruce McAvaney found himself standing on land that had been owned by his great-great-great-grandparents on his father’s side. It was a moving moment – one that made him reflect on his own memories of growing up in the Adelaide suburbs.
“My mother and father didn’t have enough money to have their own home when I was a child,” the sports commentator tells TV WEEK. “With my sister and brother, we lived all our lives in a [Housing] Trust home. It was very late in Dad’s life that he was able to buy that. So the fact that the family had land was very significant for me.”
For Bruce, the experience of filming the show was more emotional than he had been expecting.
“Two or three times during the couple of weeks of the shooting I probably did get a little bit overwhelmed by it all,” he admits. “I felt very teary.”
One time was when he found out his great-great-grandmother had endured two terrible tragedies, one involving a child.
“You can’t think about the grief they might have gone through,” he explains. “But I did feel like I’d lost something pretty big myself.”
Bruce says he felt “incredibly close” to his parents during filming. His mother, Betty, died in 2004 and his father Roy in 2009.
“I think about them a lot anyway, but not as intensely as this,” he says. “It was probably the greatest gift I got from doing the show. It brought them back to life for me, which was lovely.”
Bruce has been covering Australia’s biggest sporting events for over 45 years, and, at 72, is still hard at work, gearing up for Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games in July. He believes his work ethic comes from his parents.
“Mum and Dad left school at 13. My mother said it was the saddest day of her life. They were both very bright but not well educated. Dad went to war, came back and studied accountancy. We lived in a tiny, tiny house and my father used to study at night on the kitchen table and we’d all have to be quiet for a while.
“My mother was my greatest supporter – I feel like crying now, actually – but she always said: ‘You can only do your best.’”
Bruce has always done his best in his career. His encyclopaedic knowledge and passion have won him fans around the nation, as well as induction into the TV WEEK Logie Awards Hall Of Fame in 2022. So, does Bruce – husband to Anne Johnson and father to Sam and Alexandra – have any plans to retire?
“I had a dear friend, Dennis Cometti, who we lost recently… when he stopped doing the AFL with me, he said: ‘Bruce, best to have a soft landing. Don’t just stop. Do it by degrees.’
“I don’t think I’ll ever completely retire. Even if I’m not broadcasting, I’ll be doing some of the things I do now to prepare, because this is what I do. It’s what makes me feel right. I think what I need to do is maybe take five per cent off my workload each year. That’s the plan, anyway.”
There are a couple of people in Bruce’s life who would like to see him working a little less, especially as he was diagnosed with lymphocytic leukaemia in 2014.
“Annie does so much for me, so she understands what I do,” he says. “We have a lot of discussions about life balance. And the doctor – well, stress is not good for anyone, particularly with a condition like mine.
“Those discussions are always ongoing but, in the end, I’m a grown-up. I can, within reason, make my own decisions. But I guess if it wasn’t for Anne, and maybe some medical advice, I’d probably still be doing too much.”
It must be hard to imagine cutting back on athletics commentary when there are Australians like Gout Gout running incredible times on the track. Bruce calls it a “golden era” for Australian athletics.
“It’s probably the sport I love the most, along with horse racing and AFL footy,” he says. “Athletics is very close to my heart, and so are the athletes.
“I pinch myself, because it’s what I dreamt of – that we’d have a formidable team that’s better resourced, with better coaching levels and a wide fan base.”
Despite all the tech advancements in recent years, Bruce still prepares for sporting events with “ledgers and books and pens and highlighters”.
“I’m not technically savvy at all,” he admits. “I’m going to Glasgow and my daughter’s going to come with me in case my computer or my iPad doesn’t work!”
Bruce has never stopped appreciating that he gets to do a job he loves so much.
“I had a dream as a young boy to be a broadcaster. It’s been my life and the challenge is, how do you balance your life as you get towards the end, and how do you want to spend your time? I am obsessive and I am married, in many ways, to my job as well as to my wife.
“But I love it. It’s who I am.”
