The 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games were held in Perth, Western Australia, from 22 November to 1 December 1962. Athletic events were held at Perry Lakes Stadium in the suburb of Floreat and swimming events at Beatty Park in North Perth. It was held after the 1962 Commonwealth Paraplegic Games for wheelchair athletes.
Australia first competed at the Games, then titled the British Empire Games, in 1930; and is one of only six countries to have sent athletes to every Commonwealth Games. The others are Canada, England, New Zealand, Scotland, and Wales. Australian athletes competed for Australasia at the 1911 Festival of the Empire, the forerunner to the British Empire Games.
Australia hosted the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth, Western Australia, from 22 November to 1 December 1962. It was Australia's seventh appearance at the Commonwealth Games, having competed at every Games since their inception in 1930.
Pakistan has competed in 14 of the 22 Commonwealth Games, from 1954. Its most successful games have been the 1962 Commonwealth Games in Perth, where it was 4th in the overall rankings and won 8 Gold Medals. Its most successful event has been Wrestling, where it has won 42 medals, 21 of which have been Gold. It ranks 3rd overall in Wrestling at the Commonwealth Games. Between 1972 and 1989 it did not participate in any of these Games as it had temporarily withdrawn from the Commonwealth.
New Zealand at the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games was represented by a team of 85 competitors and 11 officials. Selection of the team for the Games in Perth, Western Australia, was the responsibility of the New Zealand Olympic and British Empire Games Association. New Zealand's flagbearer at the opening ceremony was runner Murray Halberg. The New Zealand team finished third on the medal table, winning a total of 32 medals, ten of which were gold.
Robyn Woodhouse is a former female track and field athlete from Australia, who mainly competed in the high jump event during her career. She represented her native country at the 1964 Summer Olympics, and won the gold medal in high jump at the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth, Western Australia.
Trevor Anthony Vincent, is a former Australian long-distance runner, specialising in the 3000 metres steeplechase. In 1962 he competed for his native country at the Commonwealth Games in Perth, Western Australia, winning the gold medal in the 3000m steeplechase event, setting an inaugural Commonwealth Games record and breaking his own Australian record. He also competed at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan in the 3000 metres steeplechase event.
Michael Lindsay Henderson is a former New Zealand fencer who won a bronze medal representing his country at the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games.
Francis Ettore Ponta was an Australian Paralympic competitor and coach. He competed in several sports including basketball, pentathlon, swimming and fencing. A paraplegic, he lost the use of both his legs after a tumour was removed from his spinal column when he was a teenager. Ponta was a member of Australia's first national wheelchair basketball team, and is credited with expanding the sport of wheelchair basketball in Western Australia. At the end of his competitive career, he became a coach, working with athletes such as Louise Sauvage, Priya Cooper, Madison de Rozario, Bruce Wallrodt and Bryan Stitfall. He died on 1 June 2011 at the age of 75 after a long illness.
William "Bill" Edgar Mather-Brown is an Australian Paralympian. He was born in the Western Australian city of Fremantle in 1936. At the age of two, he contracted polio in the town of Agnew in the Goldfields-Esperance region, northeast of Kalgoorlie. He spent two years in Kalgoorlie Hospital before moving back to Perth. He married Nadine Vine, who attended the 1972 Heidelberg Games as a team nurse.
Lorraine McCoulough-Fry was an Australian Paralympic swimmer, athlete and table tennis player.
The Commonwealth Paraplegic Games were an international, multi-sport event involving athletes with a disability from the Commonwealth countries. The event was sometimes referred to as the Paraplegic Empire Games and British Commonwealth Paraplegic Games. Athletes were generally those with spinal injuries or polio. The Games were an important milestone in the Paralympic sports movement as they began the decline of the Stoke Mandeville Games' dominating influence. The event was first held in 1962 and disestablished in 1974. The Games were held in the country hosting the Commonwealth Games for able-bodied athletes, a tradition eventually fully adopted by the larger Olympic and Paralympic movements.
Margaret Winifred Ross, OAM is an Australian Paralympic archer. At the 1962 Commonwealth Paraplegic Games in Perth, she won a silver medal in the Women's Swimming 50 m Crawl Class E event and bronze medals in the Women's Shot Put Class D and Women's Swimming 50 m Breaststroke Class E events.
Don Watts is an Australian Paralympic swimming silver medalist.
Richard Campion is an English-born former competition swimmer who later became a respected Australian swimming administrator.
The Bahamas competed at the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth, Western Australia, from 22 November to 1 December 1962. It won one silver medal at the games.
Barbados competed at the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth, Western Australia, from 22 November to 1 December 1962. It won one bronze medal at the games.
British Guiana competed at the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth, Western Australia, from 22 November to 1 December 1962. It won one bronze medal at the games.
British Mauritius competed at the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth, Western Australia, from 22 November to 1 December 1962. It did not win any medals at the games.
The Territory of Papua and New Guinea competed at the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth, Western Australia, from 22 November to 1 December 1962. It won one bronze medal at the games.
