His grandfather was a good player and defeated John Roberts Sr. in 1865. Walter's father and older brother were players. His father ran billiard rooms in the goldfields of Australia and elsewhere. Walter watched his older brother (by 10 years) being trained by his father and wanted very much to play. Billiards was what his family did. He was allowed to start practicing when he was about 8 or 9 and (according to his biography) was allowed to use only one ball for the first six months. At 12 he saw John Roberts Jr. play and later claimed he could remember and replay an entire 600-point break that Roberts had made.
Interestingly, Walter's father changed him from a naturally right-handed player to playing left-handed. That was because Walter was missing part of a finger on his right hand and could not grip the cue well with it. In films/videos you can notice his bridge hand does not look quite right. Sigel is also a right-hander who shoots left.
I urge everyone to get and read this biography by Andrew Ricketts which is packed full of interesting historical details:
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Sorry to stay off-topic, but as an Australian who used to play a lot of billiards, Lindrum is a special name for me.
I believe his father also had some pretty strict rules regarding practice (being forced to stay at the table for 6+ hours).
His instructional book is also amazing. A good friend of mine is a multiple Australian champion and has a high break of 964. He discovered billiards fairly late in his life. His college had a snooker table, and he found Lindrum’s book on billiards and spent a year alone with that book and the table before even meeting anyone else who plays billiards or snooker. He would spend hours with an object ball on the rail, cueball about 2-3 inches away, just double kissing the cueball back in a straight line to his tip. If you look for Danik Lucas on YouTube you can find some 400 and 500 breaks of his. Any book that can get a player to the point of knocking in centuries without any interaction with anyone else is pretty amazing.
Actually, here’s 300 points of top of the table: https://youtu.be/72Hb96zYBdw