Bunyip’s Max Papley has been honoured by the Kooweerup-Lang Lang Rotary Club with a prestigious Paul Harris Fellow. After making a name for himself playing football for South Melbourne, Max and his family relocated to Cardinia Shire, where he began making an impact on the local community as a councillor and business owner. SHELBY BROOKS reports.
Football legend Max Papley grew up in the shadows of the South Melbourne Market during the 1940s.
The bitumen was his practice ground, the light poles his goal posts.
“I played in the street up against the factory walls with all my mates in the area,” he said.
“We didn’t have football ovals to kick around.
“One of the hazards was hitting the overhead wires and bringing the electric wires down but all you did was run inside for a few hours and they would come and fix them.”
With no mobile phones, computers or televisions as a source of entertainment, Max quickly grew to love the game of football.
He played with Moorabbin in the VFA for about 100 games before beginning his VFL career with South Melbourne at aged 23.
Max played 59 games and kicked 66 goals for South Melbourne in the VFL between 1964 and 1967.
The half-forward/midfielder was named the club’s best and fairest player in 1966 and was a state league representative during his time with the Swans.
Fittingly, the Papley legacy continues in the number 11 guernsey that he proudly wore for the Bloods, having been inherited by his grandson Tom Papley in 2018.
Max also has grandsons Ben and Michael Ross who played for North Melbourne/Hawthorn and Essendon respectively.
“It’s been quite an experience to watch them play their AFL careers,” Max said.
After four years with South Melbourne, Max went on to coach Williamstown in the VFA for a few years.
Whilst at Williamstown, he and wife Laraine decided on a change of scenery to bring up their young family.
(Max and Laraine have four children, 12 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren: “They are all beautiful, the cycle just starts again,” Max said.)
Max and Laraine had met when they were nine, when Max’s mother started dating Laraine’s uncle.
“She was a Port Melbourne girl,” Max recalled.
“My mother remarried when I was 15, the niece of my stepfather was Laraine. My kids joke sometimes I married my cousin.”
With four children, Max and Laraine decided they wanted to bring their family up in a country environment.
They found their new life on a farm in Tonimbuk.
It was a beef farm when they bought it, but eventually after buying some dairy calves and raising them on a bucket, they graduated to milking.
“We started a Jersey stud and got to the stage fairly quickly where we bred champion dairy cows at Royal Melbourne Show,” Max said.
“We really loved our dairy farming and our cattle. We often say we would still love to be there.”
Max couldn’t escape football entirely and spent time coaching at Bunyip Football Club, where a pavilion is named in his honour.
“It was an interesting part of what I would call my football career,” Max said.
“It was good to come back and put something back into the juniors.”
In 1988, the Papley family bought a hardware and rural merchandise business in Lang Lang.
(Over three decades later Max is now retired, but three of his children and their partners are still involved in the business.)
The hardware store is what got Max heavily involved with advocating to the council for better services and amenities in the Lang Lang community.
“We had a lovely relationship with the town and the community of Lang Lang,” Max said.
“That was one of the reasons why I was so keen to build a relationship with the council so we could defer to them more.
“When the town called for volunteers for people to stand for council, no one put their hand up so guess who fell for it?”
Max became a councillor in 1997 for Cardinia Shire and served two terms, including a stint as mayor.
“I always said I would never do two things in life. One was become a politician and another was to coach a league football club,“ he said.
“But I enjoyed it, we had a good council and excellent council staff,” he said.
“We achieved quite a bit in those years.”
He was the chairman of the board which established the Cardinia Cultural Centre but he considers the highlight of his time with Cardinia Shire was the establishment of township committees.
“We had a bit of a policy whereby we tried to establish in each town a township committee so they could have a voice on council level,” Max said.
“When the township committees were established they would have a monthly meeting which a councillor would attend and we found it established a really good relationship between the ratepayer and the council.
“It turned into a great thing for the community in Lang Lang because we looked upon it as a partnership with the council. The township of Lang Lang prospered due to that relationship.”
Another aspect of Max’s involvement in Lang Lang was as a major player in the establishment of the Bendigo Bank.
In 1998, the Rotary Club hosted a public meeting about the prospect of establishing a community bank in the town.
“From time to time, community meetings are called but they aren’t often called by someone as highly respected as Rotary is,” Max said.
“We had over 300 people attend. It was a wonderful night. That was the start of something big.
“It’s been an incredible partnership and relationship.“
Max was the chairman of the board for the Community Bank Lang Lang for 15 years.
The icing of the cake of Max’s football career was helping to establish the Lang Lang Community Sport Precinct in Caldermeade as the new home of the Lang Lang football, netball and cricket clubs.
“Lang lang football, cricket and netball clubs have been searching for years for a manner in which they could achieve new facilities,“ Max explained.
“The Lang Lang PA and H Society [where the clubs used to be based] did a wonderful job for the times they were there.“
But the opportunity came for a new precinct and Max and the community grasped it, as a result of a partnership between Cardinia Council and Our Community Company, the franchiser of Lang Lang Community Bank.
Now as a Bunyip resident, Max is on the grounds management committee of the Bunyip Recreation Reserve and has also served as chairmen of agricultural society over the years.
“I’ve loved doing these things, the community in both places are quite unique. The Lang Lang community deserve every return they have from the community bank project,“ Max said.
“They have support it to the hilt right from the word go, it’s been a wonderful experience.“
