After two days with Evonne Goolagong Cawley, I couldn’t help but text her one final question

“The one thing that kept me going was that I just loved playing tennis. I loved it enough never to tell Mum that I cried every night, or any other thing that happened with my coach,” she says, pausing. “Basically, he was a dirty old man. But he didn’t get away with it. I stopped it pretty well.”

It started when she was a teenager, with his words – “If you want to learn about sex, come to me” – before progressing to deeds, such as the day he cornered her in the office of the local tennis club. “He gave me a tongue kiss, and I surprised myself and said, ‘You do that again, I’ll bite it off!’ ” she says, laughing. “I just walked out, and didn’t tell anyone else.”

Occasionally, his dark words and deeds coalesced, too, such as the moment in a taxi in London, when she was in her 20s and he turned to her, put his hand on her leg above the knee, and declared his drunken feelings – part affection, part threat. “You know I love you so much,” he said, with scotch on his breath, “I could rape you.”

Evonne simply turned and looked out the window, and realised she needed a plan for when they got back to the hotel. That plan was to make so much noise that people would inquire. When he followed her into her bathroom and tried to pull her into the bath, she called out loudly, and it worked. “I got a call in the room from reception – a noise complaint – and was able to say, ‘I’m sorry about that, Mr Edwards is just leaving.’ ”

He’s a consistent figure throughout her story, scolding her both publicly and privately after losses, spreading rumours about her weaknesses as a player, while also exercising restrictive financial control. She wasn’t free of him until the late 1970s.

“I guess I’d been through enough then that I knew how to handle it, and it just ran off my back. But now I think back to everything I’ve done, and I realise I was quite tough,” she says, beaming, “in a quiet sort of way.”

Evonne Goolagong Cawley, perhaps more than anyone I’ve ever met, sees the good over the bad. This is a conscious choice – a kind of governing philosophy for living. She was given elocution lessons as a young woman in Sydney, for example, and where many might see a transplanted Indigenous girl being forced to walk in a white world, all she saw was preparation for her travels and the adventure of life.

The culture shock was real, but largely a source of fun, not fear. Like the time she was flummoxed on a trip to Newcastle, when it was her turn to make tea. A group of women called out and asked what was taking her so long: “I said, ‘It takes a long time to get the tea out of these stupid little bags!’ ”

Nothing seemed to weigh her down. At Willoughby Girls High School in Sydney’s lower North Shore, she had to write an essay in which she pretended to be an early settler, and described her day in the new colony. “What happened during my day was I tended my sheep, smoked my tobacky, and when the Aboriginal people came on my land, I shot ’em,” she says. “I got 10 out of 10!” If that strikes you as inherently racist – that an Aboriginal child be asked to write an imagined account of bloody dispossession and is rewarded for doing so – it was nothing compared to facing her first overtly racist comment, after playing doubles against two older ladies.

“When it was time to shake hands, one of them said, ‘This is the first time I’ve had the pleasure of playing against a n-----.’ And I did get really upset,” she says. “I didn’t tell Mum until later, and she said, ‘Don’t worry bub, they’re just ig-or-ant’. Mum never went to school – ig-or-ant – but she knew everything. And she knew that’s what racism is about: ig-or-ance.”

Evonne knew that she had a platform for presenting Indigenous Australians in a positive light, but she felt no pressure to do so. “Being a role model never entered my mind,” she says. “Mum always said, ‘Just be yourself,’ and I just loved playing so much, it was all I ever wanted to do. I loved travelling to different countries, meeting different people.”

That became harder when she toured South Africa. Many felt let down by the decision to go, given the Apartheid policy, but the decision was made by her coach. She does remember, however, the stark dichotomy in the grandstands. “It did scare me when I first went there, to see all the crowds – people sitting in the black section and the white section, all in suits and hats.” But she also remembers a black woman approaching her to share a thought. “I don’t know what the fuss is about,” Evonne, laughing now, recalls her saying. “You’re not even black!”

Tennis great Margaret Court looked after her well on that visit, she recalls, eating with her every night. Court also used to invite her to stay at her home in Perth whenever they were playing against one another in Western Australia. Court, of course, has more than courted controversy in recent years, with her conservative faith compelling her to oppose same-sex marriage and compare transgender acceptance to “the work of the devil”. Long before that, she resisted calls to better compensate female players, and for good measure asserted that “lesbianism has ruined women’s tennis”.

Evonne doesn’t agree with those sentiments. But equally, she finds it hard to hang someone who showed her such kindness. Her husband, Roger, explains: “Margaret was just someone who had a religious experience,” he says. “God spoke to her at a time when she was feeling really down. But that point of view she has is so unnecessary, for such a great person.”

Evonne feels sad not just for the hurt caused to the LGBTQI+ community, but to those within their shared tennis community, like her good friend Billie Jean King. “I don’t agree with many of the things Margaret has said, but my main thing is that love is the main thing,” she says. “I believe that God is love for everyone.”

On the second day that I interview Evonne Goolagong Cawley, she comes armed with a prop. It’s a deck of “angel cards” – one of many so-called oracle decks (like tarot cards) enjoyed by people who consider themselves searchers. She bought them in a local crystal store. “Every few days, I do them before I go to sleep,” she says. “And last night after we spoke, this card came up.”

The title says Learning Experience, and it has a picture of a hooded figure holding a lantern, meant to convey inner peace and security, derived from overcoming hardships. Without the challenges that life has presented to you, you wouldn’t be the person that you are today, it reads. This is a time for you to reflect upon the incredible strength you have.

“I agree with that,” she says. “I feel that all these hardships in my life have made me a strong person.”

She shuffles the deck, fans them out, and I pluck one from the middle. The card is Holy Love: You are blessed to receive this card today, for it shows that you are being surrounded by loving energy, and the cup of your heart will be filled, until it overflows with goodness.

“Oooh, I’ve never had that one,” she says. “Well there you go!”

The holy love story of Roger and Evonne begins in 1970 at a wine and cheese party on the outskirts of London, when the young man with long hair and roguish charm spotted the self-conscious tennis star on the fringe of the soirée. “I remember you coming in,” says Roger, “and I remember you staring, and I remember me staring, and that was it.”

That night, after a short drive through town, they found themselves dancing on the seventh green of Guildford Golf Course, at one point looking up from their giggling moonlight waltz – an English boy and an Aboriginal girl – to find a cow gazing up at them in puzzlement.

“I had read all about her in magazines,” Roger says. “But when I saw her, something went click, and from that moment on I was besotted, and by the end of the year I was totally in love.”

“He seemed really nice, this man – and funny! That’s what got me. He definitely knew how to make me laugh,” Evonne says. “We’ve been married 50 years now. Actually, 51!”

I wonder what they’ve learnt about love – or if they have any advice for people hoping to last that long?

They devolve momentarily into cackles and guffaws.

Evonne: “You’ve gotta have a sense of humour – about everything. That’s what keeps us going through the really bad times.”

Roger: “We laugh at the silliest things, and the same things, at the same time.”

Their daughter, Kelly Inala Cawley, was born in 1977 – Inala meaning “peace” or “peaceful place”. Then son, Morgan Kyeema Cawley, was born in 1981 – Kyeema being “the dawn” or “new beginning”. And that was a beginning, in a way, of a whole new chapter in their mother’s life.

Evonne retired in 1983 and, as with almost any top-tier athlete, she went through a period of mourning – re-evaluating her reason for being. “It was so depressing,” she says. “It was like going into a dark space.” She was given medication but unfortunately has allergic or adverse reactions to many drugs, including antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and yes, anti-depressants. “I think I just sulked. I was miserable.”

Emerging slowly, she found a new way to enjoy life, and spent a lot of time fishing where they lived in South Carolina. “It’s so relaxing and beautiful. It’s calming. And being Aboriginal, you’re connecting to the land, the water, the trees – the beauty of the place – and you’re very much a part of it.”

Evonne’s father had passed away in 1974 at the absolute peak of her career, but when her mother finally died in 1991, it became the catalyst for a move home from the United States. She had seen and done so much. Had her hair styled by Vidal Sassoon and her photo taken in the Oval Office with [former US president] Ronald Reagan. She counted Kenny Rogers among her close friends, even travelling to the Bahamas to go scuba diving with the country star. “One time when Kenny came to stay with us in South Carolina, I called up Mum – who was a big fan – and I said ‘Mum, I’ve got someone here to talk to you.’ It made her so happy.”

Evonne wanted to be back on her mother’s country, too. Very early in her career, Edwards had disparagingly attributed any lack of focus on court as Evonne going “walkabout” – now she wanted to do so properly. She went to mission shacks and rock-art sites, always meeting with elders and gaining their permission to visit sacred places. She camped by rivers and slept under the stars and drove down a dirt track in South Australia, headed for the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands, where she was allowed to do sacred women’s business.

“It was amazing. I can’t talk about it, but they were all laughing at the expressions on my face,” she says, laughing yet again. “That answered a lot of questions that I had. Very powerful. Good for the soul. I felt stronger and more connected to everything – to the universe.”

The tale of Roger and Evonne doesn’t end here, in this living room in southern Queensland, but their story is – at least right now – confined to this place. Ordinarily an active couple, this is the first year in many that they haven’t been able to travel, due to an array of health concerns.

First, Roger. He had a heart attack in both his 50s and 60s, and a third one only recently, along with a diagnosis of distal dystrophy – a genetic disorder characterised by the slow weakening and eventual atrophy of his muscles. “I woke up one morning and couldn’t move,” he explains. “Every muscle in my body was throbbing. I was scared stiff.”

His doctor had no idea what it was, but specialists at the Mayo Clinic eventually identified the problem and suggested vague forms of mitigation and preparation. “The thing they were putting off saying is that I can’t get rid of it,” he says. “There’s no way it goes away. It just gets worse. That took some adjustment.”

“Here’s my bag of health issues,” she says, plonking a big plastic folder on the table between us, filled with notes and prescriptions. Her most pressing condition is the fallout from a concussion last year, after catching the toe of her shoe on a step outside her front door. “I just fell flat on my face and body, really hard, and I remember seeing stars. But I got up straight away.”

Fooled into a false sense of security, it wasn’t until a trip to Darwin in support of her charity – the Evonne Goolagong Foundation – that she felt the brunt of the blow. She was thirsty, and so tired, too, with vertigo. She shows me a leaflet about concussion in which she’s underlined in biro all the symptoms she experiences.

Trouble focusing. Trouble remembering things. Slow and foggy. Sensitivity to light and noise. Having trouble sleeping. Feeling dizzy. Feeling tired. Feeling anxious or worried. Feeling more frustrated.

I find it hard to picture her frustrated.

“I keep it to myself,” she responds, laughing.

The other issue is giant cell arteritis – an inflammatory condition causing everything from stiffness to soreness to throbbing headaches. She doesn’t know if it’s progressive or temporary. She knows she’s supposed to take Prednisolone for the concussion and Tocilizumab for the giant cell arteritis, but she has bad reactions to both drugs, including a bloated face and raised cholesterol. Oh, and she’s recently had a nasty bout of respiratory syncytial virus, and hip surgery to boot.

“It’s just been one thing after another, and all of it confusing,” says Roger. “One thing affects another, and that affects another, but when you’ve got five or six things going on in the body and you can’t take all the medicines required, it’s complicated.”

Meanwhile, they still have responsibilities with the Evonne Goolagong Foundation, which uses tennis to help Indigenous children access education, providing scholarships and encouragement and guidance. It’s hard for them to attend foundation events, but that means more time at home with their grandchildren.

“I make the popcorn, and I buy those little two finger Kit-Kats,” says Evonne, grinning. “They go straight to the other room, to watch what they want.”

It doesn’t really matter what they choose either, or even if it’s something she’s seen before.

Evonne: “That’s one of the good things about memory loss …”

Roger: ” … You can watch something again on Netflix because you don’t remember it!”

Time and again, “Rog” and “Gong” finish one another’s thoughts, almost like they’re playing a game of tennis, each exchange between them a serve and return, drop shot to net volley, lob followed by smash.

Roger: “We can’t play any more, or run, but we go out to lunch and laugh together.”

Evonne: “We’ve both got an illness, so we look after each other!”

Roger: “I think that when something happens, you just …”

Evonne: “… live with it, and try to laugh.”

I take that as my cue to leave the happy couple to their life, but later, after they’ve enjoyed a day of more giggles and angel cards – after they’ve been to the local golf club for a counter meal with the grandkids, and sat down to watch something new or old on Netflix, I text Roger one final question.

Not a Trivial Pursuit question, but a question that might sound trivial to anyone but Evonne. I want to know the answer to the question that used to greet her when she walked in the front door every night as a child – the one her mother asked: Did you have a lovely day?

Roger replies immediately: “She did, and thanks for asking!”

Then three text message dots appear, and they pulse like the ripple of a gum leaf on the surface of the river. Evonne has a return shot for me – one of those graceful and gracious single backhand winners down the line: “And she hopes you had a lovely day, too.”

Only Ever Evonne by Evonne Goolagong Cawley (Allen & Unwin) is out September 29.

Get the best of Good Weekend delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Sign up for our newsletter.

Read more from Konrad Marshall: