The Bradman of Billiards

If you’ve ever taken a stroll down the top end of Melbourne’s Flinders Street, you might have noticed the Hotel Lindrum, fire-engine red, with fancy swirls and arch windows. The hotel is closed now, but the building was named after a family who became known for their dominance of the local billiards scene. Walter Lindrum, in particular, was so good they had to change the rules to stop him.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
If you've ever taken a stroll down the top end
of Melbourne's Flinderstreet, you might have noticed the Hotel Lindron
fire engine red with fancy swells and arched windows in
something called the Romanesque Revival style. These days it's practically
swallowed by the high rises around it. But who was

(00:30):
Lindron and why does this random city building share the name? Hey,
welcome to the ballroom where we celebrate the winners, losers
and the weird stuff between. And today we'll be hitting
a white, red and yellow ball around the table until

(00:51):
one of us wins. The Hotel Lindrums closed now, but
it has a long and interesting history. It wasn't always

(01:13):
a hotel. It was built in nineteen hundred for the
Griffiths Brothers tea merchants, then became the headquarters of the
Herald newspaper, but in nineteen seventy three it was transformed
into something with a bit more atmosphere, a bit more sporting.
The Lindrums were billiard players, I mean that's understating it.

(01:36):
Frederick Wilhelm Vohn Lindram was Australia's first professional world billiards champion.
He beat the Great British champion John Roberts Sr. To
win that title way back in eighteen sixty nine, and
those Lindrums quickly acquired a taste for winning. The family
arrived in Melbourne in eighteen eighty five, ready to make

(01:58):
a name for themselves. Drick's son was also named Frederick.
He opened his first Victorian billiards hall in Saint Kilda
in nineteen twelve, and ten years later unveiled the iconic
Lindrom's Room in Flinders Lane. A report from the time

(02:18):
said it was so big that it needed two hundred
and seventy five yards of lino to cover the floor.
It boasted four tables, an adjoining cafe and a lounge
for social activities. Newspaper ads described it as the world's
finest you'd hope so, Fred, as he was known, followed

(02:40):
in his dad's footsteps and became a billiards champion. But
maybe more notably, he was an obsessive coach to his
two sons, yet another Fred and Walter. At the back
of the Lindram family home in Port Melbourne, Dad was
known to chalk the floor and make the boys practice
the same shot over and over until they're backed. They

(03:01):
practiced up to twelve hours a day, seven days a week.
Fred the third was an excellent player. He reigned as
Australian Professional billiards champion for over twenty seven years and
held multiple world records. But if the name Walter Lindram
sounds familiar, it might be because he's arguably the greatest
billiards player that ever lived. Walter was born in Calgooley

(03:29):
and he became a pro when he was just thirteen.
In nineteen twenty nine, he left his family in Melbourne
and headed for the UK, where he'd become a breakaway success.
In his first match in London, Walter Lindram smashed the
previously set world record break of three thy two hundred

(03:50):
and sixty two against another champion, Willie Smith. After that
it was Walter's sport. He dominated the English billiard scenely
beating world champions and his own world records. He won
the World Professional Billiards Championship in nineteen thirty three and
thirty four and held it until he retired in nineteen fifty.

(04:13):
He was also a really good bloke. In another London match,
he realized the mistake had given him a thousand extra points,
so he told the ref and willingly had the points docked.
But Lindram was probably best known for perfecting a shot
called the nursery cannon. I'm no expert, so bear with me,

(04:34):
but a nursery canon involves kissing two balls that are
very close together. H Apparently, if you get it right,
it can get you some serious points. Lindram loved it.
In one match in nineteen thirty three, he scored a
world record five hundred and twenty nine nursery cannons. He

(04:56):
once did it nineteen hundred times in a row. But
the experts from the day were getting restless. They reckoned
this shot was making the game monotonous and look, I've
watched a few clips on YouTube and they might have
a point, but still a campaign began to put a
stop to it. Headlines called it a crusade. Walter Lindram

(05:19):
wasn't the only one who used the nursery canon, but
he won the most games, and no Englishman likes to
lose to an Aussie. Nursery canons were eventually restricted. Pros
of the sport were quick to let people know it
was definitely the boredom thing, and not because they were
losing so much and thus was born the legend of
the man who was so good at billiards they had

(05:41):
to change the rules to stop him. During the war,
Lindram turned his attention to fundraising. He played about four
thousand exhibition matches and raised over half a million pounds
for the war effort. That was the beginning of his

(06:02):
real life's work. It's said that he raised more than
two million pounds for charity in his lifetime. Walter's good
nature and talent were endearing. Everybody liked him. Even the
Prime Minister Bert Newton, of all people, said he was
one of the finest men I've ever met. When he

(06:27):
died in nineteen sixty, newspapers called Walter the Bradman of billiards.
Fifteen hundred people attended his state funeral, and he was
buried with a memorial shape like a billiard table. Many
thought Walter to be not simply Australia's greatest curest, but
our greatest ever sportsperson. So let me take you back

(06:52):
to Flinders Street, Melbourne, to a red building jammed between
a couple of skyscrapers from nineteen seventy three eighty eight.
This was Lindram's billiard Haul players flocked to break balls
here under the watchful eye of Walter's niece Dolly, who
became a Melbourne icon in her own right. One last

(07:17):
thing on Old Walter. So skilled a player was he
that he didn't even use his dominant hand. He was
right handed, but he lost a finger tip when he
was three years old. His determined dad simply coached him
to become a left handed curist, merely the best of
all time. Well that's it for another episode of The

(07:56):
Ballroom and iHeart production. I hope you enjoyed it. I'm
Tony Armstrong and I'll catch you in the next one.