A silence broken: The tragedy of Martin Bedkober & Terry O'Connell

With his gaze steady but his body gently shaking, Terry O'Connell begins a story he hasn't told in half a century. He is an old man now; white beard, pained eyes. And while, in private, the intense flashes of anger remain, his medication – and perhaps the intervening years – help him display a warm, gentle countenance.

He wears a green jacket, open, over a red-and-navy striped rugby top. Pale blue jeans. Outside, on a warm, cloudless winter's day in Queensland, he eases onto a timber bench, and smiles into the sun.  

Beside him, typically, is his former Sandgate-Redcliffe teammate Bob Joyce. Friend of more than five decades, Joyce is the "block of concrete" O'Connell has leaned on through times of desperate trouble. Yet even he isn't privy to all that O'Connell wants to tell today.

"I'm almost 76," he says, "and I feel like my story should be heard."

And so Terrence John O'Connell reaches into his past. All the way back to December 13, 1975.

* * *

It is hot and humid at Oxenham Park, home ground of Toombul District Cricket Club. A Saturday morning like most others through another endless Brisbane summer. Alongside the ground, across Duke Street, the trains roll intermittently through Nundah Station.

O'Connell's parents, Neville and Mary, are down from the Queensland country town of Charleville, holidaying at nearby Redcliffe. Today, Mary will be watching her pace-bowling son for the first time in Brisbane grade cricket.

O'Connell has driven to Toombul this morning from his home base of Toowoomba, and he has done so with a fire burning inside him. Truth is, that's been the case most mornings since Vietnam; many years later, a psychiatry report would state that he "attempted to sublimate some of his feelings on a cricket pitch". Added to that is the rivalry between his Sandgate-Redcliffe side and the boys from Toombul, which runs deep.

This summer, there are two new faces in Toombul's top three. A pair of highly regarded Sydneysiders who arrived in the off-season. One is the Test-capped 22-year-old opener, Ian Davis. The other, not widely known in Brisbane grade circles, is a 23-year-old wicketkeeper-batter from Petersham-Marrickville named Martin Bedkober.

The two recruits, Davis and Bedkober, are sharing a house in Wooloowin, just a 10-minute drive from their new home ground. Toombul's other Sydney signing, Jeff Thomson, lives there too. Thomson, who made the move north 12 months prior, is away for this match, playing a Test against West Indies in Perth.

It is the second Saturday of this contest. Sandgate-Redcliffe have 300 on the board, and now their pace bowlers – O'Connell among them – like what they see in the Toombul pitch. Thomson would have been flat-out dangerous.

"No covers in that era," recalls Brian Short, Toombul's other opening bat that day. "A generous tinge of green in the wicket, and it was unusually juicy. There were plenty of places I'd rather have been, to be honest."

Shortly after play begins, O'Connell has Davis edging through to wicketkeeper Ray Brewster.

"Terry was always a new-ball bowler," says Short, "and in the context of grade cricket, he was really letting it rip."

With Toombul one down, and the match just minutes old, the right-handed and whippet-thin Bedkober walks to the wicket. He is still a foreign face in his adopted city but today he has a special supporter in his corner: his fiancée, Virginia Johnston, who is visiting from Sydney for the weekend.

To date this season, Short has found Bedkober to be a capable and composed batting partner. Together, they have navigated some tricky phases, and some fiery spells.

O'Connell eyes the new man at the crease.

"I was really fired up," he says. "Martin came in, and Brian Grace, our captain, set the trap for him."

He needs no encouragement to pitch it short. The new ball is skidding through, and he gives Bedkober a brief working over. The batter scrambles a couple of runs. From short leg, Joyce snarls a few words.

"I could be a bit aggressive at times," he offers now.

O'Connell runs in again. He can't know it in the moment, but the next few seconds will change his life.

Sitting beside him all these years later, Joyce still wonders: what if it had been him bowling – a man who wasn't forced to confront the terrors of Vietnam, and the trauma in its aftermath? Would he have been impacted across the decades as severely as his friend? He shakes his head as he considers it, knowing it is a question that will never be answered. 

O'Connell's right arm comes over. His wrist snaps down, and his fingers release the ball. It's not the fastest delivery he will ever bowl. Nor is it especially short. Bedkober moves to shoulder arms, but misjudges the trajectory as it jags back towards him. The ball strikes him in the chest, right on his heart.

Just metres away, Joyce sees and hears the impact as well as anyone.

"I was looking at him, right in the face," he says. "I was about to say, 'I hope that hurt'."

But at that moment, Bedkober falls. Almost immediately, Joyce senses it isn't right. He moves quickly towards him, instinctively shifting from rival to rescuer.

At the other end of the pitch, two men, metres apart, watch the same scene unfold in different ways.

Short, the non-striker, moves from one state of mind to the next fairly quickly. First, and because he has seen many batters fall and then recover seconds later, he is expecting Bedkober to do the same. When he doesn't, time stands still.

Come on, Martin, he exhorts silently. Get up.

Then, as he notes the urgency with which Joyce is responding, he moves into a state of shock.

O'Connell meanwhile, sees it all through a lens coloured by war. It takes him only a matter of seconds to reach the end point of this scene, well before it has played out for Short, or anyone else.

"I got down to him – and Bob got to him – and his eyes rolled back," he says, very slowly now. "And my experience, being in Vietnam, I've seen people who had died – and I knew then that he was dead."

Yet he continues to act. He removes Bedkober's boots, as Joyce – performing resuscitation – and now Grace – compressions – coordinate CPR. For just a moment, as they await an ambulance, the Sandgate-Redcliffe boys feel a pulse in the young man's groin. Yet they cannot revive him. Bedkober vomits, but he is motionless.

An ambulance drives onto the ground, parks only metres away. Even the paramedics are shocked by what they see at this suburban cricket oval. One of them, Des Klaassen, applies an oxygen mask to Bedkober. Two more ambulances arrive to continue the supply of oxygen, firstly at the ground, and later en route to the nearby Royal Brisbane Hospital.

From beyond the boundary, the stricken onlookers include not only O'Connell's parents, but Bedkober's fiancée Virginia. Toombul players, led by Davis, attempt to shield her from what is unfolding.

"Then they put him in the ambulance, and they drove away," O'Connell says. "I walked off the field and just yelled out: 'He's f---ing dead'."

* * *

A 14-year-old Greg Hartshorne was standing at the school bubblers with his buddy Martin Bedkober when an older kid with a warm smile approached them.

"He said to us, 'You look pretty athletic – you play cricket?'" Hartshorne recalls. "We said, 'Yep'. He said, 'Well come down to Petersham, we're trialling Green Shield (Under 16s)'. And that was Bill Anderson who, although he was still at school, managed the team."

Hartshorne and Bedkober met at Fort Street High School a year earlier, as grade seven kids in 1965. They immediately hit it off over their mutual interest in sport. The Sydney school is well known for the prime ministers, scientists and Rhodes scholars who have passed through its halls, but there's plenty to offer those with a sporting bent as well. Ashes legend Fred 'The Demon' Spofforth is its most famous cricketing alumni.

And Bedkober was a natural sportsman. In 1967, he was named 'best forward' in the 15s rugby union premiers for being a "tireless worker – excellent in defence and penetrating in attack". Three years later, he received a School Blues sports award in cricket, was named captain of the Combined High Schools team, and was the senior school winner of the Johnson Memorial Award for Sport.

At the same time, he was showing himself to be an exceptional baseballer, being picked in the Combined High Schools team, making his state underage debut at 16, and also starring for the nearby Canterbury first grade side. In an obituary that appeared in the 1975-76 Petersham-Marrickville Cricket Club yearbook, it was written: "It is generally agreed that, had he decided to make baseball his chosen sport, he would almost certainly have played for NSW in the Interstate Claxton Shield series."

Bedkober was also intelligent. In his School Certificate in 1968, he earned an 'A' for every subject bar English. He served as a prefect in his senior year, 1970, and in acknowledgement of his creative skills, one of his cartoon artworks was selected for the Fort Street yearbook.

Petersham-Marrickville CC meanwhile, was happy Anderson had recruited him for the 1966-67 Under 16s AW Green Shield. Two summers later, Bedkober broke then Test opener Bob Simpson's club record of 627 runs in the competition, while averaging 80.60. He was picked for the Sydney Combined Green Shield team and won Petersham-Marrickville's Col Hollingsworth Memorial trophy for the most promising Under 16s player.

"We won the competition (in 1967-68)," Hartshorne recalls. "We had another fellow called Dave Chardon, and we joke about it now, but at the time, I called him 'Mr Chardon' because when I first met him, he looked like a man – he was only 15 or 16, of course. He was a fantastic player too, and the three of us ended up working our way up to first grade and becoming an integral part of that club."

Across the years, the three also became good friends, together with Graeme Hughes, a renowned sporting allrounder who went on to play for New South Wales in both cricket and rugby league. The young men were immersed in sport on a daily basis but when it came to Bedkober, the others sensed a worldliness beyond their relatively simple lives: Hartshorne recalls his friend as "artistic"; Chardon offers "bohemian"; and Hughes says "unique".

"Martin was different," Hartshorne adds. "He was smart, but he wasn't particularly interested in school. He used to read lots of different books and listen to music and write poetry, and you could talk to him about the most bizarre things.

"I was just a basic kid. I was interested in sport, and school, but he was different. He was a really interesting character."

The Bedkobers lived on New Canterbury Road, across the trainline from Petersham Park though only a 10-minute walk from the ground. Martin's father, Jack, who died in 1990, was a notable figure in the world of Speedway racing. It was a path successfully followed by his youngest son, Malcolm, whom Martin called 'Moggo'. They had a sister, Karen, and their mother was Hilda.

"I used to visit there quite a bit," Hartshorne says. "His dad was quite a rough nut sort of bloke. Not a bikie, but he had the long hair, a couple of tatts, and he used to talk about bike racing.

"Martin was so different to that. He was sophisticated, he went to (Macquarie) University (where he studied economics part time). He was quite a worldly character, and a spiritual sort of guy."

Hartshorne remembers Bedkober visiting his home, too. Often he wound up sitting with his mother, drinking cups of tea while talking about life, religion and other matters that held little interest for Hartshorne.

Brian Hughes, Petersham-Marrickville CC secretary at the time and later Cricket NSW CEO, has a similar memory.

"Martin was a deep thinker," he nods. "He used to come around to my place a fair bit, he'd be quite happy to sit and talk, and that could go on till 11-11:30 at night.

"He'd talk about anything and everything; I think he was somewhat concerned about what was happening around the place. He was a very interesting young man, he really was."

* * *

Terry O'Connell moved out of the family home in Charleville when he was just 16. As one of seven kids, there simply weren't enough beds.

O'Connell found himself a public service job with SGIO in Roma, three hours east of Charleville. It is a dry, dusty world out there, around 500km inland from the Sunshine Coast. But it is where O'Connell also found the love of his life, Bev – now his wife of almost 54 years. The pair, who today have teenage grandchildren, were teenagers themselves at the time, country kids in one sense but also possessing a shared curiosity for discovering what was beyond the horizon.

Soon enough, work and study took them both to Brisbane. Bev, a teacher in training, was based in Auchenflower, on the outskirts of the CBD. Officially, Terry landed in Shorncliffe, just on the other side of Bramble Bay from Redcliffe, though he might as well have paid rent to Bev's landlord.

O'Connell had opened the bowling for Roma's district side, and once in the big smoke, word of his promise reached the ears of a man named Roy Tanner, who was on the Queensland Cricket Association (QCA) board and president of Sandgate-Redcliffe Cricket Club.

Tanner invited O'Connell to play for Sandgate-Redcliffe in the winter competition of 1969. It would prove a significant signing; across a couple of stints with the club from 1969-84, he collected 188 wickets at 22.69 in the A Grade competition.

"Terry was a very good opening bowler," his old mate Bob Joyce says. "Got a few wickets in A Grade – although we'd have never accused him of being a batsman (laughs)."

Yet as one decade made way for the next, O'Connell found himself in a position he did not wish to be. The Vietnam War was showing no sign of coming to an end, and so the potential conscription of 20-year-old men across Australia continued coming down to a series of Government-arranged 'birthday ballots'. Numbered wooden marbles, each representing two birthdates, were placed into a hand-spun barrel. Those whose birthdates corresponded to the drawn numbers were then called up for compulsory national service.

In the September 1969 ballot, when O'Connell was 19, his birth date – December 7 – was drawn.

Initially, he thought little of it; with hundreds of thousands registered, he figured the odds of having to serve in Vietnam were still lengthy.

"I was selected to join the Army," he says, "but only about 60,000 personnel actually went to Vietnam."

But O'Connell, soon to be numbered among the 15,000 National Servicemen, was one of them.

Even now, more than half a century on, the political policy that would prove so significant in his life exasperates him.  

"Bev was going to Teachers College, I was working," he says. "No-one was bloody interested in Vietnam, you know? We were just interested in playing cricket."

The reality of his immediate future properly set in when, after initial military training, O'Connell began three weeks of jungle warfare training at Canungra Land Warfare Centre, west of the Gold Coast, in early 1970. He had just turned 20. It was a hostile environment; demanding both psychologically and physically.

"Some fellas say you would rather spend more time in Vietnam than go back to Canungra," he says. "I thought: Shit, I better get bloody serious about this."

Later, before he left for Vietnam – and to a fate unknown – O'Connell made his way back to Charleville to say goodbye to his parents.

"That was one of the hardest things," he says. "Dad asked me, if I got killed, where would I be buried?"

His last port of call before boarding a bus to Brisbane was Roma, where Bev was at the time. The pair were not long engaged, and on the day O'Connell was due to leave, they ended up sitting together for hours, not knowing if it was the last time they would see each other.

"We sat outside the bus station, saying goodbye," he remembers. "And the bus was late." 

Not 24 hours later, he arrived in Sydney, where he was met by military police and taken out to the command depot at Middle Head.

"I was there for three days," he says. "I went down to the phone box to ring Bev – she had to go next door to answer the phone – and the woman (on the switchboard) said to me, 'Are you extending (the call)?'

"I said, 'I'm going to Vietnam', and she extended me for a long time."

* * *

Ian Davis noted the familiar face as it came through the doors of the Martin Place branch of the Commonwealth Bank, in the heart of Sydney's CBD.

It was the winter of 1975, and Davis's career was at an interesting point. As a 20-year-old he had played six Tests and an ODI under Ian Chappell. Batting in the middle order, he had managed a top score of 50. The lean returns saw him jettisoned, and a poor Sheffield Shield season followed.

Yet Davis was still young and promising. Queensland captain Greg Chappell and the QCA liked what they saw in the right-hander, and an appealing package was offered: job, car, accommodation. He was already planning his move to Brisbane when Bedkober came more prominently into his life.

"He walked into the bank one day, and he said, 'I heard you're moving up to Queensland. I want to do the same thing'," Davis says.

"I knew Martin from the grade scene in Sydney, but I didn't know him well. A few years earlier he'd been chasing a Green Shield record I'd set for most runs – I don't know if he ever got there – but I knew he was a good player; good ball striker, busy 'keeper. I think he had potential to play first-class cricket."

Davis headed up first. He moved into the two-storey apartment in Wooloowin, sharing the place with Thomson, whom he told about Bedkober.

"I had a good deal with Queensland," Thomson said many years later. "So I had this guy (Bedkober) live with me for nothing. He was a real star."

Bedkober, who was working part time at what is today known as Sydney Water, had holidayed on the Gold Coast earlier that same year. He and his close mate Greg Hartshorne travelled up with their then respective girlfriends, Virginia and Penny. 

"It was always the four of us," Hartshorne says. "We stayed in this house, the weather was fantastic, and the poor girls, what they put up with – I reckon Martin and I played cricket in that backyard for about six hours every day (laughs)."

It might have been the seed that planted the idea for a move to the sub-tropical climes in Bedkober's head. Petersham-Marrickville had won the 1974-75 Sydney first grade competition and he was a key cog in that title-winning side, scoring 541 runs and claiming 36 dismissals. His form earned him selection in the Sydney Metropolitan Colts team, and in their lone match, against NSW County Colts, he opened and top scored with 77.

By then, the scope of Bedkober's potential had been established for some time. For Graeme Hughes, the truest indication of his talent arrived a year earlier, in January 1974; ironically, against Thomson, and his fellow Bankstown speedster Len Pascoe.

"We played those two at Marrickville Oval one day," Hughes says. "Both of them were just tearing Sydney grade cricket apart in those days.

"We got knocked over for not a huge total because of those two, but Marty was cutting and hooking the pair of them on a wicket where the sightboards at either end were about as big as a postage stamp.

"He was such a raw talent. He was just waiting to be put into the right hands to look after his career."

Bedkober made 42 that day, the top score for Petersham-Marrickville in a total of 173. There were 620 runs that 1973-74 summer, including a maiden first grade hundred – 122no against Waverley at Waverley Oval – as well as a club record 37 dismissals. He was named Petersham's Player of the Season, and the whispers of a potential state call-up began doing the rounds. Over the ensuing 18 months, he threw himself deeper into his cricket craft.

"Even in the wintertime, we used to meet up at Hurlstone Park RSL, and they had a little gymnasium there," says Dave Chardon. "After cricket finished we'd go there and do some weights, sauna, that sort of thing. He really was very ambitious."

Yet opportunities for wicketkeepers at first-class level are scarce. In 1974-75, as Bedkober played his lead role in Petersham-Marrickville's title charge, another young gloveman, Steve Rixon, nabbed the inside running with New South Wales, debuting and playing every game that summer.

"He was as good as Steve Rixon, as good any of those guys," Hartshorne says. "And he was good enough to play state cricket. He just didn't get the chance."

And so Bedkober approached Davis. From there, he got in touch with Toombul Club executive Errold Le Frantz, and the pair negotiated a deal.

"He saw an opportunity there, which I think he'd have grabbed with both hands," Brian Hughes reflects. "It's easy to say at times that people were destined for higher honours, but he was one you could safely say was."

* * *

Practically every day in Vietnam, O'Connell wrote a letter home to Bev. He had landed in a complicated world. Immediately before he joined his unit, a private had shot two sergeants. In the conflict zone they occupied, roads were mined, and snipers were active. He served on night picket duty, and experienced gun fire. 

Through it all, he couldn't escape the thought: Why me? He knew others around him were asking themselves the same question. He continued to write to Bev, and she would faithfully reply. In July, for her birthday, he bought her an Omega watch. He was a young man in love.

Back in Wandoan, where she was teaching, Bev was more practically minded but her fondness for O'Connell continued to grow when he returned home in 1971, a new cutlery set in tow. In the half-century since, her love has been evident in her stoic support – and protection – of her husband through depths of turmoil only they will know.

After some none-too-subtle prompting from Bev, they were married three months after O'Connell touched back down in Queensland.

"We were walking along the beach at Redcliffe," he recalls, "and Bev said, 'I want to get married'."

As a nod to his Irish heritage, he liked the idea of a St Patrick's Day wedding. The nearest Saturday was March 18, and as fate would have it, the 1971-72 Brisbane A grade final fell on the same day; for once, O'Connell was thankful his team hadn't made it.

It wasn't long before Bev noticed that Vietnam had changed him. He was drinking a lot more, and he was volatile. When she asked him direct questions, he was evasive. From his perspective, O'Connell felt detached from much of what was happening around him. His only strong emotional responses were of irritability and anger. He could feel it happening with colleagues, too. After just three months back in the workforce, he resigned.

In the 1970s, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was still to be recognised as a mental health issue (while only later would O'Connell be diagnosed with an obsessional personality disorder, which exacerbated his depression). Through that time, his behaviour – the extra late nights drinking and playing pool at the pub, the mood swings, the lack of emotion – was typically explained away as that of a 'crazy veteran'.

"It's hard to imagine anyone going to war and not coming back with some problem," Joyce says. "To come home and live a normal life, it's got to be hard."

O'Connell's trauma also revealed itself physically. As well as headaches, there was excessive sweating, rashes and eczema that all caused significant discomfort. Ultimately the issues were treated with an operation on his sympathetic nervous system. But there was no such fix for his psychological issues. The moodiness, the unpredictability, and the anger continued to have a considerable say on their daily lives.

When the 1975-76 cricket season began, he and Bev had two children under three, with a third due in December. As any parent will confirm, those early years can test one's mettle. O'Connell was navigating his PTSD without psychological support, or any true sense of what was actually afflicting him. He was flying blind into fatherhood. Cricket had become a refuge. 

"When I was on the field, it was a release," O'Connell says. "I felt comfortable. But as a bowler, I was angry, too."

* * *

Bedkober and Davis were welcomed with open arms by the Toombul set when they arrived north of the border in the spring of '75. Immediately they slotted into the top three of the batting order for a team that had finished sixth the summer prior, and held high hopes for the coming season.

The A grade squad worked through its most diligent pre-season in years, adding practice at the Gabba's indoor nets to their usual routine, and even enlisting the assistance of a physical education expert from Caboolture named Barry Norton. Through it all, Bedkober, who had taken a job as a finance advisor for Leach Motors, stood out to his new teammates for his enthusiasm, and more besides.

"There was a decency and a civility about him," remembers opener Brian Short. "And he was friendly. Driven, but not obsessive. An energetic 'keeper, but an understated personality; he didn't seek to dominate."

That season's Toombul yearbook later detailed Bedkober as bringing "an infectious, friendly and intelligent approach to all that he did".

Together with neat glovework, that was principally run scoring, which he did consistently through the first six rounds of the season as Toombul dropped just one match.

In the season opener, they comfortably defeated reigning premiers Valley, with Bedkober and Davis adding 97 for the second wicket. A few weeks later he and Short put on 93 amid a fiery contest with Norths, and by mid-December, Bedkober was Toombul's leading run-scorer, averaging 35.20 while also snaring five catches.

His form had also caught the eye of representative selectors, earning him chances with Brisbane Colts and Queensland Colts in October-November as a batter only.

In the second of those matches, played at the Gabba from November 3-5, Bedkober came up against New South Wales Colts in the annual Sydney Gregory Cup. It was a line-up that included his old Petersham-Marrickville mates Hartshorne, Chardon and Hughes.

"We were staying very close to the Gabba, and Martin came into our hotel and said, 'I'm staying tonight boys'," smiles Chardon. "It was a three-day game and he stayed with us two of the nights. They're wonderful memories." 

Recalls Harsthorne: "We went into the Queensland Cricketers' Club, had dinner, and got entertained by the crowd. I don't think I got to bed 'til two o'clock – but cricket was different in those days, we were more into enjoying the moment."

In a match that petered out to a draw, Bedkober made 19 and 28.

"In the first innings, he ended up snicking one and I caught him out," says Chardon. "He wasn't happy – thought I could've dropped it for him (laughs)."

It was the last time Bedkober ever saw his mates from Petersham-Marrickville.

* * *

Davis has patchy memories of December 13, 1975. Some of it remains vivid, some has been lost to time. As he recalls that morning, he drove both Bedkober and Virginia to Oxenham Park in the new car he had been given as part of his QCA deal: a green Toyota Celica with a white vinyl roof, as was en vogue.

The young couple was recently engaged, and according to Hartshorne, were "as thick as – they were about to start a whole new life together".

Having spent the previous Saturday in the field, it was now Toombul's chance to bat. They knew if they were to make a game of it, the Sydney recruits would be an important pair.

An hour later, none of that mattered. Davis was back in his car, with Virginia, en route to the Royal Brisbane Hospital. All these years later, others – such as O'Connell, Joyce, Short, and Toombul's left-arm spinner Alan Skuse – are adamant they knew in the moment that Bedkober had died at the wicket. But Davis was unaware.

"I can remember Virginia and I were sitting at the hospital, waiting, when a doctor came up and basically asked who he should be speaking to," he says. "Virginia was in no state to be speaking, so I stood up, and he took me down a corridor, behind a curtain.

"I'll never forget it. I thought he was going to tell me Martin was going to be OK. But he explained to me what had happened, that he'd had a sharp breath in just as the ball had struck him in the heart, which had caused a haematoma, and he'd bled to death.

"I had to go back out, and tell Virginia."

A spokesman for the Hospital told reporters Bedkober had died from blood entering the pericardium – a sack surrounding the heart. The condition, they added, was extremely rare.

It was left to Davis to organise a flight back to Sydney for Virginia. As he recalls, she was in a state of shock, and desperately wanted to be home with family.

"She got on a plane that night," he says. "And the Ansett air hostesses were great, they really looked after her."

Back at Oxenham Park, Joyce had ushered a distraught O'Connell into the changeroom. The match was called off, and a couple of journalists turned up, asking questions, but O'Connell's teammates refused to say who had delivered the ball.

After a time, dazed Toombul players made their way, almost by rote, to one of their two local pubs, The Royal or the Prince of Wales – no-one can quite remember which.

"Australian men aren't known for their ability to verbally or emotionally process that stuff," says Short. "But (a pub) is a refuge, isn't it? That combination of each other's company, and a familiar place."

As the Sandgate-Redcliffe players gradually dispersed, Joyce stayed by O'Connell's side. The 28-year-old, who by then had a 20-match career with Queensland behind him, brought his stricken mate home with him to Kippa-ring, where he attempted to placate and console.

"We lived on Kagara St, which is just one street back from the shopping centre there," Joyce says. "So at some stage – early morning, I think – I got woken by a security guard bringing Terry back to the house."

O'Connell remembers it all quite clearly. He was walking through a part of the shopping centre that was being renovated, rambling, and repeatedly mentioning the name of Queensland cricketing great 'Sam Trimble'. None of it made any sense.

By then, news of Bedkober's death was across Brisbane, courtesy of a front-page story in the Saturday evening Telegraph. O'Connell's name was absent from the report, while Toombul Club executive Le Frantz was quoted: "Martin was a helluva nice fellow, dedicated to cricket and his job. In fact, we thought so much of Martin that we arranged to bring his fiancée, a schoolteacher, up from Sydney."

The following morning, Joyce took O'Connell to the southern end of the Gold Coast for the day, where their friend John Stackpoole – another cricketer – was working as a lifeguard.

Bev meanwhile, was just about due with their third child, a little boy who ultimately wasn't born until January.

Soon after he arrived in Toowoomba, O'Connell received a phone call from Joyce, telling him that Bedkober's funeral service was going to be held that Wednesday in Petersham. Sandgate-Redcliffe had booked and paid for three flights – one for teammate Max Walters as well – but a fourth, Ian Moffett, also wanted to attend. So the four players divvied up the cost of the final fare equally.

Back at Wooloowin, alone in the three-bedroom apartment, Davis was going through a traumatic few days. He and Brian Short both recall having to back up and play a Channel O Cup match (a 30-overs per side tournament) for Toombul at the Gabba the next morning.

"It was," recalls Short, "the last thing on earth any of us wanted to do."

Distraught and distracted, Davis became preoccupied with fashioning a piece of foam into a makeshift chest protector. He got through the game, flying on autopilot, then used the next day to pack up Bedkober's belongings – including his kit bag, and his clothes – and sending them to Sydney. Soon after, the QCA organised for the body to be transported.

Davis headed in the same direction, for the funeral. He wanted to pay his respects to the family, and farewell his friend. Just days earlier, from the hospital, he had phoned Bedkober's parents, breaking the news to Martin's mother, Hilda.

He was 22 – eight months younger than Bedkober.

"The whole thing hit me for six," he says. "I didn't handle it well. It really rocked me – rocked me for quite a while."

* * *

Everyone was playing cricket when they found out their friend had died on a cricket field.

Thomson was in Perth, being thrashed around the WACA Ground in a record-breaking performance from West Indies opener Roy Fredericks. Australia Test team manager Phil Ridings pulled him aside after stumps.

"(He) asked to see me for a minute," Thomson said years later. "He told me the bad news, and I was just shattered."

In Sydney, Petersham had made their way to the Village Green in Kensington, home of University of NSW. A phone call to the clubhouse was passed on to Robin Gardner, wife of Petersham-Marrickville spinner Stuart Gardner, as a representative of the visiting side.

"But she was so upset," Chardon says. "She said, 'Dave, can you take this phone call?'"

"Greg (Hartshorne) was playing that game. Billy Anderson. The whole team, we were all just devastated.

"When we played together, if I wasn't the first one there, then it was Martin, doing his exercises – you know, bending over, twisting and turning. But he was very thin, and when he I got told he got hit in the chest, I thought about that."

Theories soon abounded as to why or how the blow to Bedkober had been fatal. Experts were consulted by journalists. One report, which was not confirmed, suggested Bedkober had a pre-existing heart condition. Another stated he had recently had chest surgery, though doctors said it had not been a contributing factor in his death.

Calls for more protection for batters – helmets, chest guards – gathered steam. From Perth, Australia gloveman Rod Marsh wrote a newspaper column leading that particular chorus.

But none of it was going to bring Bedkober back. Thomson flew to Sydney from Perth, while from Brisbane, an 18-strong Toombul contingent, as well as the quartet from Sandgate-Redcliffe, made their way south to attend the funeral service at All Saints Anglican Church in Petersham.

Eight days before Christmas, just 10 minutes down the road from his childhood home, Bedkober was farewelled by hundreds. As the temperature ticked into the mid-30s, small groups of men huddled around like lost schoolboys; Davis, Thomson, and the many unknown faces, one and the same amid the sadness.

Hartshorne was a pallbearer, shouldering one side of the front of the coffin. O'Connell, his Sandgate-Redcliffe mates beside him, stood on the periphery of proceedings.

"I was so bloody upset," he recalls, "that I kicked a bloody tree and hurt my foot."

Later, mourners made the short pilgrimage back to the Bedkober house. There, Martin's parents, Jack and Hilda, asked O'Connell to join them on their back porch. They sat and spoke with him. Just parents of another young man, with their own stories, their own lives, their own memories of their son. They asked what had happened. He told them as plainly as he could manage. They looked at O'Connell, looked into his pained eyes, and sensed what he needed: absolution. They gave it to him.

"They received it really well," he says. "They even wrote me a letter, saying, 'It's not your fault – you were in the wrong place'. They were very sympathetic to me, and they relieved me of a lot."

With the 50-year anniversary of Bedkober's death approaching, O'Connell has been looking for the letter. He knows it is stored away somewhere, among the important accoutrements he has collected along his winding road, but its whereabouts has escaped him. He thinks maybe reading those words will soothe him all over again; his PTSD means he dwells on the negatives in his world, which in turn means the healing power of Jack and Hilda's sentiment was only ever going to be temporary.

Today, Bedkober's ashes, as well as those of Hilda, who died in 2009, rest upon Jack's grave in – for reasons unknown – Mudgee General Cemetery. And so for O'Connell, the lost letter represents a fading final word in the tragedy.

* * *

Sandgate-Redcliffe won the Channel O Cup for the first and only time that summer. O'Connell returned to playing, tentatively, after University of Queensland veteran Bill Buckle selflessly phoned him ahead of their two sides meeting during the regular season, suggesting it might be a healthy step to take.

Against Norths in the final on March 21, he took 3-31, while his close mate Joyce was player of the match, winning a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Channel O glass for his troubles.

A year later they were back at the Gabba as Sandgate-Redcliffe tried – but failed – to defend their title against Wynnum-Manly.

Yet O'Connell continued to be haunted by Vietnam, a misery that now had company in the form of the death of Bedkober. He showed signs of depression and regular agitation; telltale symptoms of the still-undiagnosed PTSD. He would wake from night terrors – sweating, kicking, yelling. As he and Bev tried to break it down, they found the dual traumas were merging into one. A psychiatry report, written many years later, details as much: "He was quite devastated by the sudden death of a batsman who had been hit in the chest by one of his (deliveries). He had quite intense feelings of guilt and anxiety which added significantly to the feelings he was already experiencing."

O'Connell left Sandgate-Redcliffe ahead of the 1977-78 season for Toowoomba, where Bev would soon be teaching at Downlands College. He signed on with Western Districts and played three seasons, also enmeshing himself in the cricket community, chiefly as secretary of the Association.

After retiring from A grade in 1984, he was approached by Dan McCabe to be captain-coach at University of Southern Queensland Cricket Club. There he continued his service off the field as well, working in administration and later being awarded life membership.

Even as the anger bubbled away, occasionally revealing itself in smashed plates or holes in walls, O'Connell managed to give the best of himself in such capacities. He and Association president Kerry Shine (later to serve as Attorney-General of Queensland) worked to lift the standard of the Toowoomba competition, even bringing several Sheffield Shield pre-season fixtures to the region. Later, O'Connell revelled in a number of kids' coaching roles, including his son's soccer team.

From her vantage point, Bev believes at least part of her husband's altruism can be put down to – perhaps subconsciously – a sense that he must repay some hidden debt to society. It bothers her when she feels people are taking advantage of his generosity. O'Connell, on the other hand, insists he simply enjoys helping others. And so the dichotomy remains within him to this day.

O'Connell says he has hidden a lot over the years – Vietnam, the Bedkober accident, being out of the workforce – for fear of judgement. But equally he has a propensity to gloss over the good, a pattern of behaviour noted by at least one medical professional across years of constant psychotherapy. In 1990, the same year he was at last officially diagnosed with PTSD, he was awarded life Membership of Toowoomba Cricket Association for his playing, coaching, and administrative roles. Three years later, he became President of Toowoomba Legacy (a charity that aims to care for widows and children of deceased ex-servicemen). More recently, he was asked by his grandson's teacher to speak to the class about Conscription. He got a kick out of watching the boys' faces as they listened intently to what he had to say – a genuine primary source in their midst.

For O'Connell, there exists a quiet sense of pride in these achievements, but invariably, his thoughts return to darker matters. They have taken him down some hard roads, including a suicide attempt that ended with him spending three weeks in Toowong Private Hospital.

Still there are nights where he will sit in his kitchen at 2am, sipping a cup of tea alone, having been woken by another ghost from his past.

"The other thing I think a lot about," he says, "is the fellows I've hit – that I've hurt seriously. Those things gel into the whole picture."

He ticks them off on his fingers. Grant Law. Steve Skala. Brett Henschell. Then of course his mind returns to Bedkober. O'Connell wavers between hoping for closure and knowing it will never come. The next words are difficult ones for him to speak.

"The thing that haunts me, is that … this was a trap that we set … I deliberately bowled the one short to hit him," he says. "I meant to hit him, but I didn't want to do that damage.

"It's an accident, I know. But deep in my mind, I deliberately did it."

* * *

O'Connell needed convincing to make his first return trip to Vietnam, in 2001.

In the months prior, he had finally been granted a war pension from the Australian Government. A letter from the Department of Veterans' Affairs, written in October 2000, retrospectively acknowledged his myriad mental health struggles which, it stated, had "evolved over a period of years".

"In 1978 … when the claim for depression was submitted for consideration of a war pension, he was diagnosed as having psychoneurosis, which was rejected as being not war-caused," the letter read.

"The fact that symptoms of this psychiatric disorder (PTSD) did not occur on service or in the immediate post-war years does not preclude the development of this disorder many years after service.

"In the previous determination, (O'Connell's) psychiatric symptoms were attributed to events that occurred after his Vietnam Service. His inability to cope with his insurance work and the sudden tragic death of a batsman killed by one of his (deliveries) were considered stressors to the psychoneurosis, developed in one with an obsessional personality."

Retirement meant for Terry and Bev an opportunity to bond over their shared passion: travel. O'Connell grins as he says they've had only one fight while visiting "practically every country in the world" in the past 25 years, though Bev wryly suggests his might be a case of selective memory.

One place they have returned to repeatedly, at Terry's behest, is Vietnam. In 2001, they were invited to Hanoi by the First Secretary of the Australian Embassy, who happened to be a friend. O'Connell refused initially but was finally coaxed into making the trip. Bev joined him, and so too did one of his few fellow Vietnam veteran mates, Jack Twist, with his wife. From Hanoi, they toured to the areas that O'Connell had been stationed, including Nui Dat. 

"Our guide, who had been Viet Cong, went into the village there, and into this little thatched-roof house," he recalls. "He came out with a bottle of wine with a snake in it, and he put his arms around us (O'Connell and Twist), and asked us to have a drink.

"We sat out on the tarmac at the old airport, drinking and talking with him. It was cathartic."

O'Connell was there as recently as June, for the fifth time. For Bev, it was the fourth and last. She wonders why her husband continues to go, and what he might be searching for. Forgiveness? Redemption? She doesn't know. And nor does O'Connell. But what they do know is this: he is yet to find it.

* * *

Another cloudless winter's day. The same café. Not far from the O'Connells' place at King's Beach on the Sunshine Coast. This time Terry is accompanied not by Bob, but by Bev.

"She's … forthright," was how O'Connell had described his wife at our first meeting. "She's been through a lot with me, I suppose."

Bev is also more cautious than her husband. More guarded. For more than five decades now she has seen adversity impact him in different ways. It has made her fiercely protective. There was a time when O'Connell was coaching the First XI cricket team at Downlands College. An opposition coach knew his history regarding Bedkober, and found a tawdry way to weaponise it ahead of their match. Bev confronted him, and settled the issue decisively, and on her terms.

The three O'Connell children are cut from the same cloth. When journalists sought their father's comment following the 2014 death of Phillip Hughes – How would Sean Abbott be feeling? What would be going through his mind? – they formed a tight-knit circle around him, shielding him from any potential pain.

Eleven years on, Bev is against Terry telling this story so publicly. Not because she fears any external reaction – she has never been one to care about the opinions of others – but because she is concerned how it will impact him. She worries he is taking a lid off a box, one that might not be easily replaced. 

Yet she also knows a simple truth better than anyone: when Terry has his mind fixed on something, it cannot be swayed.

"As I said last time we met, I'm 75," he says. "I feel I'd like some sort of closure with the whole thing."

Because the battle continues to rage inside him. O'Connell still gets depressed, moody, and "extremely angry". This particular afternoon they will make their way south to Toowong to see his psychiatrist, who has been treating him for many years. The medication he is on, designed to give him "equilibrium" in his life, is an evolving cocktail; just last year he was briefly hospitalised while it was adjusted.

Before the month is out, the pair will again travel south, though this time they will take the train from Landsborough, as they often do, to see the kids, and the grandkids.

O'Connell knows from experience exactly how one part of the journey will play out. He can see it already. As they wind through Brisbane, he will feel the train slow to a gentle roll at Nundah Station. There he will lift his gaze out the window, and he will take in the view of Oxenham Park. Just like that, his mind will flash back half a century.

It happens every time.

"I'll look over at Bev," he says, "and she knows."

* * *

 Author's notes:

• In reporting this story, attempts to locate and contact Malcolm and Karen Bedkober were unsuccessful.
• Each season, Randwick-Petersham Cricket Club's Player of the Year receives the Martin Bedkober Award.

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