Michele Brown (née Mason) was a Normanhurst local and ground-breaking athlete, who achieved new heights for Australian women’s high jump. Michele was twice a gold medallist at the Commonwealth Games (Cardiff and Jamaica), and won silver in Olympic high jump in 1964, coincidentally at the previous Olympics to be held in Tokyo. 

This made her the first Australian woman to receive an Olympic medal for high jump.  

She achieved all this success with no professional coach and extraordinarily little training, admitting later that she rarely trained for more than “two hours a week at maximum” (from the Queensland Times). 

Michele also set these records using the “scissor” method, which was outdated even at the time, as she didn’t have a coach who could show her more modern techniques. 

Remarkably, despite these obstacles, she became the second woman ever to clear the 6 feet mark in high jump in 1964, setting an Australian record that would last over a decade, until 1977. 

In 2010 Michele was inducted into the Athletics Australia Hall of Fame, in recognition of her ground-breaking achievements.

She currently resides in Queensland, but she grew up in Normanhurst and lived there while competing in the Commonwealth Games and Olympics. She moved to Queensland after marrying fellow Australian Athlete Robert Brown, a Queenslander who competed in hammer throw. 

Michele met her future husband at the Perth 1962 commonwealth games, where he was also competing for team Australia. Not long after her marriage, she choose to retire from competition and focus on family. 

Her last major competition was at the 1966 commonwealth games, where she won gold. 

One cannot help but wonder at the results she could have achieved if she had chosen to keep competing at the highest level, but even so, Michele retired having made history, literally setting a new bar for Australian women’s high jump.