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Beyond 50 Magazine
Max’s big picture
Architect, former Test cricketer and star of Apia’s new TV commercials, Max Walker has done it all. Now meet the man behind that famous ear-to-ear smile.
As Max Walker descends the stairs of his office in Melbourne’s inner east, the first thing to stand out is the expanse of his Luna Park-like grin. The second is his famous moustache. No longer sporting a jowl-to-jowl extravaganza, it’s a neat and modest smattering of mottled grey hair. But then, perhaps I’m confusing him with that other ’70s cricket icon, Dennis Lillee.
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If I have muddled my sporting heroes, apparently I wouldn’t be the first. Dogged by mistaken identity for the past four decades, Max – or Maxie, as he’s warmly referred to – has been erroneously called Dennis (Lillee), Merv (Hughes), Ian (Botham) and even Rex (Hunt).
The first two are forgivable and he says he can almost understand how a young woman at Heathrow Airport mistook him for former English cricketer Ian Botham (that is, until he opened his mouth). But being complimented on his ability to “kiss a fish” was beyond the pale.
Warming to the task, Max fondly recalls stories of mistaken identity. “One time I was on an aeroplane,” he says, settling in for the first of many detailed anecdotes. “It was back in the days when you could take a bottle of champagne and a packet of cigarettes onboard. As the plane rose to 44,000 feet, the woman in front reclined her seat and said, ‘Dennis, would you like a glass of champagne?’ Well, I knew Dennis would never knock back a glass of champagne from a good-looking woman, so I said ‘sure’.”
While one of his mottos is ‘never let the truth get in the way of a good story’ (a trait he learnt from his dad, a master storyteller), it’s easy to imagine Max, glass in hand, knowing one day he’d be using the story to good effect. As Max tells it, he did eventually ‘fess up’ to being Max Walker and not Dennis Lillee.
“She was trying to sell me a penthouse apartment [off the plan] on the Gold Coast,” he says. “I said, ‘are you trying to sell me this? It’s an absolute shocker’.”
A trained and practising architect, he reintroduced himself as Max Walker and told the woman what she needed was a really good architect. I said, “It’s your lucky day because I just happen to be one.”
With sporting careers now being a full-time occupation, the likes of Ricky Ponting or Andrew Symonds would have no time for a profession outside cricket. But back in the ’70s and ’80s, it was the norm. In fact, at one point, Max played football and cricket for Melbourne while studying a six-year architecture course at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT).
Rewind 42 years to Hobart, when 17-year-old Max was captain of The Friends School football team (“we’d only won three premierships in 88 years and my last year of school was one of them,” he tells me). Two Victorian talent scouts had seen him play, which in turn led to an invitation by coach Norm Smith to play for the Melbourne Football Club. The offer precipitated many opportunities.
With a master builder for a father, Max grew up with an appreciation for building and design. “My dad, ‘big Max’, made me a fabulous drawing board when I was a kid,” he says. “So I’d designed big Maxie’s hotel by the time I was 13.” Max senior ran the then Empire Hotel in North Hobart – aka the ‘Institute of Experience’ – where the “good, the bad and the ugly could land on any given day”.
With no architectural courses on offer in Tasmania, Max knew he’d have to cross Bass Strait – a big deal in those days – to follow his passion. As luck would have it, his contract with Melbourne included studying architecture as well as playing footy and cricket.
So, what came first: architecture, football or cricket? “I like to say they came simultaneously, concurrently, at the same time,” he quips in his protracted Tasmanian drawl.
Explaining the football club was the catalyst for architecture and cricket, Max says his contract stipulated, “get a kick on the mainland or use the second leg of the ticket to return home”.
With an abundance of natural flair, getting a kick was never going to be an issue for the 193cm ruckman. On the other hand, fitting in 46 architectural subjects and 94 games of football for the Demons over six years – plus managing a burgeoning cricket career – could have been.
Very early on, however, Max was offered some words of wisdom by his dad: “Don’t get them [your priorities] in the wrong order. First and foremost, be passionate about what you want to do – whether that’s architecture, footy or cricket – the money and fame will follow.” And, of course, they did.
While Max worked as an architect for 10 years (first in the Public Works Department and then in private practice), cricket became such a force that, in 1972, football dropped off. Or, as Max asserts, it got “shelved” when he was selected to play for Australia. Eventually architecture followed suit.
Max ‘Tangles’ Walker was by no means the best cricketer in the country but with a personality as big as his beloved MCG, his career quickly gathered speed. Playing cricket for Australia led to joining Kerry Packer’s renegade World Series Cricket competition and, when injury forced retirement from international cricket in the early ’80s, a successful media career ensued (triggered, he says, by the famous “’Ava good weekend Mr Walker” Aerogard commercial at the time).
If Kerry Packer hadn’t entered his life, perhaps the gentle giant would have become famous for designing skyscrapers rather than a 16-year career presenting nine hours a week of sports commentary for the Nine Network’s Wide World of Sports.
Even if he could turn back time, the author of 14 books – most with a sports bias, but all humour-based and handwritten with a fountain pen – creator of internet radio show iRadioMax and motivational speaker says he wouldn’t change a moment of his 40-plus-year career.
“I wouldn’t swap my life. My journey has been terrific,” he asserts, saying it’s been unpredictable and definitely “unordinary”, a word he frequently employs. “It’s a great word, isn’t it?” he says with his trademark grin. Ordinary – he would sooner shave off his mo’ – is “forgettable, bland, dull and beige”.
Aside from the fame and fortune, Max’s incredible journey has also included the birth of five children. With three sons (Tristan, 31, Keegan, 28 and Shelden, 26) from his first marriage and two daughters (Alexandra, 16, and Isabella, 11) from his current marriage, Max talks proudly of their achievements and their ability to keep him youthful.
“Kids are great in terms of their catalyst for stimulation and turning you in unexpected directions,” he says. These days, the girls also keep him connected to cricket.
“We play cricket a lot,” he says. “The girls like to bowl – one’s left handed and one’s right.”
While Max’s mind is probably fitter than his body (“I burn more energy thinking about ideas and possibilities than actually putting left foot in front of right,” he admits), he’s working on the latter – along with achieving that elusive work-life balance.
Grabbing a felt-tip pen from his pocket and drawing a ‘life’ diagram on the paper tablecloth, he says: “Someone once said to me that the average guy lives until 81–82 years of age. I’m 59, so that means I’ve got about 22 years to go.” With the average person sleeping for a third of those years and working for another third, he says, “I’ve probably got seven or eight years to do exactly what I want to do.”
Dexterously drawing lines and using neat architectural lettering, Max says these principles make him better at saying ‘no’, leaving more time for the really precious things in life. “I don’t see the finish line just yet but that’s a sobering diagram,” he says, pointing to his drawing.
Celebrating his 60th birthday this September, Max is ambivalent about the impending milestone.
“I retired from cricket at the age of 32,” he says, “so it’s just a numbers game on a scoreboard now.” And while true retirement isn’t yet on the horizon, Max confesses he’d be happy taking photos, painting (word has it he fancies himself as a bit of a “pen and ink and watercolour talent”), drawing and writing – all long-time passions and off-shoots of his architectural training.
It’s been some time since Max put pen to paper as an architect but he says it has taught him valuable life lessons and given him an “expansive mind for any possibility”. This applies across the board, he says, to his daily journal writing, playing cricket, commentating and public speaking.
“With architecture, you have an insatiable appetite for your environment and what makes people tick,” he says in reference to gathering information for his books. “I think graphically [using graphic notes for public speaking and work proposals] and architecture gives you your site plan – or the big picture – and then you drill down with your detail.”
Max Walker has achieved a lot in his lifetime and with attachments to several philanthropic organisations (Rotary Overseas Medical Aid for Children, Victorian Blind Cricketers Association, The Lighthouse Foundation, Cancer Institute, Multiple Sclerosis Society – to name just a few), there’s no doubt there’s more to come. Approaching sixty, Max says it’s just nice to be able to say, “It’s been fun”.
“It doesn’t feel like a task,” he says with that big grin. “Sometimes a blank sheet of paper is as tough as it gets – so I get out the coloured pens and start from scratch.”