BATHURST’S great milk crate mystery has finally been solved.
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For years the identity of the person who scaled some of the city’s oldest and tallest trees in Machattie Park before placing a milk crate in the canopy has remained unknown.
However, on the eve of the biggest moment of his sporting life, Australia’s Olympics 10,000 metres runner Ben St Lawrence has decided to come clean about an incident from his days as a self-confessed “pisspot party animal”.
In a feature article by Neil Cordy in today’s Daily Telegraph, St Lawrence claims responsibility for placing the lonely milk crate at the top of the tree.
His feat was dubbed the Great Crate Mystery in a story on the front page of the Western Advocate in January 2007, when we asked “who put it up there”.
“I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone, especially if you’d had as many drinks as I had that night. It was a hairy climb,” St Lawrence told the Daily Telegraph.
The 30-year-old from Bullaburra in the Blue Mountains had been embarrassed by the foolishness of the act, until now.
“At the time I was trying to distance myself from that time of my life and trying to make changes,” St Lawrence said.
Back then St Lawrence was a very talented athlete but in grave danger of watching his talent go to waste as he chose to hit the pubs and bars rather than the training track.
“Now I’ve come full circle and I’m far enough away from the things I was doing back then to look back and laugh,” St Lawrence said.
“I look back and think I was lucky to come through it alive some of the stupid stuff I used to do back then.
“I was always all or nothing with those sort of things, now I’m putting all that effort I put into partying and climbing trees into athletics.
“Back then it was about instant gratification, that’s why I couldn’t commit to running back then, running is all about time management, slow progressive planning for years down the track and I couldn’t commit to it.”
The turning point came when he was sitting in the stands at the MCG watched Craig Mottram bravely race for silver at the 2006 Commonwealth Games and wishing he was out there performing instead of sitting in the stands.
“In the back of my mind I always wanted to get back into running, but the more I got into that lifestyle the less likely it looked I would ever become an elite level athlete again,” he said.
“When I initially got back into running it was just about getting healthy, then it snowballed and once I dropped a bit of the weight it looked like this could be a real possibility.
“I look back now and I almost can’t believe I’ve come this far. It’s happened so gradually, I’ve just taken it step by step.”
Those steps have taken St Lawrence to a new Australian record for the 10,000 metres and a berth in Australia’s Olympics team.
“When I’m on the starting line in London thinking back to what I was doing then, I’m pretty proud of the changes I made,” he said.
“It could have gone either way. If a few things hadn’t of happened along the way I might have ended up being an average Joe in the pub watching sports every week and getting drunk and putting milk crates up trees. For a few years that was probably my greatest achievement.”