With Cathy Freeman in the news again as an ambassador to the Brisbane Olympics candidacy of 2032, we take a look back at when she lived in North West Queensland.
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Freeman was born in Mackay and after her mother Cecilia split up with Norman Freeman when Cathy was just five and she remarried two years later.
Cathy's step father Bruce Barber worked for Queensland Rail and he got jobs from town in town in regional Queensland.
In 1983 Bruce got a job 1000km away in the northern rail hub of Hughenden.
While the children resisted the move, they were readily accepted by the small community.
Cathy's running coach Bessie Bauldry recognised the young prodigy's ability and she wrote to head teacher of St Francis's about her talent.
Sister Geraldine Kearney at St Francis's didn't need the prompt - she saw Freeman's ability for herself.
"Her grace and style were obvious", Sister Geraldine said years later.
"Others would run their heart out but she was lengths ahead."
Cathy was always running. She would run with her brothers - on a football oval, on sawdust running tracks, along sandy riverbanks - but always running.
"We'd ride or walk everywhere,'' Freeman recalls. "And anywhere we lived we'd be doing sports - netball, touch football, athletics.
"Our stepfather used to take us down to the local oval, and we'd have races against each other.''
Freeman told the Sydney Morning Herald she was a shy child with a raw running talent, however, she had a wild streak, and so the sense of calm I found in my running, was a godsend.
"I was 10 when my family and I moved from Mackay to a place named Hughenden in the desert region of far north-west Queensland," Freeman said.
"The vast desert land with it's wide, open skies and incredible red land was another perfect setting to cultivate my love of running," she said.
Barber recognised and fostered the talent of his step-daughter. As a railways employee, he was entitled to free travel, and he used his pass to take young Cathy around the state for competition. She won her first state primary school age group championship at the age of seven or eight.
Freeman went on to become one of Australia's best known female athletes. In 1990 she competed in the Commonwealth Games held in Auckland where she won a gold medal in the 4x100m relay, making her the first female Australian Aboriginal to win a gold medal for athletics at an international level.
She also went on to achieve the Young Australian of the Year award in 1991 and Australian of the Year in 1998.
She became the first Aboriginal Australian to represent Australia at the Olympic Games (Barcelona, Spain 1992).
She also went on to win further Commonwealth and Olympic medals, culminating in her most famous moment - the gold medal run in the 400m at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.