‘I was so excited to meet this amazing human and felt honoured that he took the time to come to my home and do this interview. What an incredibly humble man. I realised we only touched the surface after checking him out on Wikipedia. So many honours including an AM, so much work for the love and compassion of people. I reckon Craig Foster for PM. Now that’s a leader Australia would respect and love.
Thanks Craig for being an absolute bloody legend …and lots of typing.’ 
Craig Foster – (Part 1/2)
“ I am very proud to have been from here. I love the place. My father Kevin and mother Deanne are both from here as were many generations. Dad was from a dairy farm in Whian Whian and Mum grew up in Lismore so she was the city girl he thought. Dad was a woodwork teacher and moved to Camden in Sydney to teach. I was born there but we moved back to Lismore when I was 1 year old and Dad built a house in Goonellabah. He then became a Motor Mechanic after getting his qualifications at Lismore Tech and had his own business in Lismore for decades.
We went to Goonellabah Public School and then onto Kadina High. We lived a real, regional country Australian life. My mother went back to work because her 3 sons were starting to excel in sport and that’s very costly. I’m the middle son and the other two were highly talented sportsmen particularly in football but they also played cricket locally. That was one of the real benefits of country life, is the opportunity and the access. We could grab our skateboards or bikes and ride to all our sporting things. It was all so close. Just last night we were explaining to our parents, with my older brother Paul who now lives at Eltham, we were telling them what we used to get up to on our skateboards and bikes. They had no idea (laughs). Jubilee Ave was pretty steep and we’d go down that on skateboards. There’s a whole generation of Lismore people my age who would remember that. We’d make our own jumps and we’d build our own bikes and on Sunday we’d fly down the hill at 100mph.
We left here quite young which must have been very difficult for my parents because I have a 24 year old daughter still at home, my 17 year old daughter is doing her HSC and she’s still at home. My son Is 26 and has been in Italy for 18 months. He’s a Triathlete and he’s come back and staying with us in Sydney, so I have my 3 kids at home and it’s precious. Whereas my parents here, because we’re from the country, they had to let us go very early at 15 or 16 years old. We all went to the Institute of Sport in Canberra for football. That must have been very difficult for them.
We used to go out to Whian Whian and later our Grandparents sold the farm and moved into Dunoon so our whole childhood was on the farm or all the family would be watching the Cricket or talking. It was always good family time and growing up in Lismore we had very close friendship groups, a very safe environment and plenty of scope to explore what you want to do. We spent our summers in Shaws Bay Caravan Park for many years. Our kids would come up and stay with the grandparents in their Caravan with the big awning, running around from morning to night.
It’s a great gift to have grown up in a place like this, there’s not many places like this in the world and I’ve travelled the world playing Football in many countries. I lived in Asia in Singapore and Hong Kong then I lived in London, Melbourne and Sydney but I always get drawn back. My two brothers have just moved back here or are in the process. Paul is in Eltham and my younger brother Steve is a Chiropractor in Sydney and he’s just in the process of moving his family back here. I live in Randwick in Sydney now.
I got married when I was in my mid 20s but I married again to Lara who is my second wife and we have 3 children, Jake, Jemma and Charli.
I ended up playing 29 times for the country. It’s not rare coming from Lismore either. We have many, many talented people here. There’s something in the air up here with the beautiful produce. We grew up so healthy. Our father would fish 3 or 4 times a week. We had a big veggie garden always and my parents still do. All of the brothers played professional football, some in Asia and I ended up in Europe playing for Australia. It was a great journey, our dream was to play. Essentially our parents, because they’re country people and so grounded, they devoted their lives to their family. All my family come back and stay at times. I’m nearly 55 now so I’ve been away 39 years but love coming home.
I was with SBS TV for 18 years. I was actually doing a lot of TV work when I was playing so it was pretty evident that I would move into that when I retired. I retired at 32. Two of our very famous people in our football history, Les Murray and Johnny Warren wanted me to go and work with them to bring in the next generation. My knees were gone and I was falling apart so I was very fortunate and walked straight into broadcasting and started doing all the World Cups around the world. We went to Germany in ’06 and Sth Africa, Brazil in 2014 and Russia in 2018. I often joke to my kids that really I’ve never worked a day in my life, I played sport then covered sport on TV.
I think because of growing up here, there’s a very strong sense of community and I think a really deep seated sense of fairness and equality. They call it the Tall Poppy Syndrome, I happen to think it also has a positive side and that is, growing up here, this was the Australia side that didn’t like airs and graces, didn’t like people thinking that they were any way better. It didn’t matter where you were from, whether you had money or not, it was…Look, your a dick and we’re not having what your selling, whereas this person over here has got absolutely nothing, barefoot and just being who he is, that’s a bloody good guy. I always took that with me. It’s like a deep seated bullshit radar that everyone in Lismore has. You learn being from here that what you have is, not who you are.
Bryan Brown is a good friend of mine, he’s a funny bugger and one of the reasons Australians love him and I like to be around him is, you would never have the faintest clue that he is an Internationally famous Actor and that I just love. Being from Lismore, that’s what we love I think. He dresses like he hasn’t got 2 cents to rub together which I like. He drives an old car, steps out in his 20 year old shirt with bare feet and trousers that have seen better days, in some salubrious Sydney suburb and people there look at him like he’s he’s going to rip someone off. I love it.
I used to surf, took a few poundings at Flatrock on big days but I’ve got back into it. I want to be able to go surfing with my son who can surf when he comes back. I want to go to Bali with him and share some trips with him. He does Triathlons so I can’t go running with him, I don’t want to exercise. I got paid to exercise for 25 years so my view is I’m not doing anything, forget it! I still play football for fun though.”