In the 110 yards freestyle she led for three-quarters of the race only to be overtaken by Lorraine Crapp and Marjorie McQuade.

"I was miserable and I felt like I had let everyone down," she said. "I was extremely upset, but deep down I knew I had it in me, that my best swimming lay ahead."

She was right. By the time of the next Commonwealth Games, in Cardiff in 1958, Fraser had won Olympic gold at her "home" Games in Melbourne in 1956, made a hugely successful trip to the United States in 1957 and set six world records at 100 metres and 200m.

In Cardiff she won two golds and many friends, showing why she was so popular with the public but less so with the sports administrators who, in the days of strict amateurism, liked to keep everybody in their place.

Fraser and her team-mates had endured a 50-hour journey from Australia so they had a bit of fun on the last leg, a coach ride from London to Cardiff.

On the pretext of needing the toilet, she recalled in her 1965 biography Below The Surface, the team pulled in at a pub and headed for the bar. It was Babycham for the girls, a sparkling perry that, Fraser recalls, was "all the rage at the time". In 1957 it was the first alcoholic drink ever to be advertised on British television. "We had a few, although our team manager didn't know it."

The Australians were seen as aloof by the home crowd, who barely acknowledged their victories. Fraser won them over when she clowned around at the poolside after the finish of a men's race. She was pulled into the pool, and when she climbed out laughing, the crowd laughed too. "From then on the Aussies became much more popular," she said.

There was a memorable farewell before the Australians left Wales, a "magical night". The team went to a local pub where they drank beer and sang songs with the locals.

"I ended up in the flowerbed back in the Athletes' Village where I slept through the night out of harm's way."

While her many medals and controversies at the Olympics brought Fraser worldwide fame, the Commonwealth Games played a large part in her life.

She won four more Commonwealth Games golds in Perth, Western Australia in 1962 and had been planning to compete in Kingston in 1966 until the Swimming Union banned her for 10 years. 

Officially it was for disobeying team rules at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, where Fraser was arrested for famously "stealing" a Japanese flag from outside the Emperor's Palace, only to then be released and presented with the flag by apologetic Japanese police.

Bill Berge Phillips, a lawyer who controlled the sport in Australia and was the most influential figure in world swimming, had never taken to Fraser and had banned her before. "He got his way by getting me out of swimming," said Fraser.

One of Fraser's greatest achievements came in Melbourne in the trials for the 1962 Games. Swimming the longer distance of 110 yards, she became the first woman to cover 100m inside a minute, something she had been striving for all her career. She lowered the mark again in winning the gold in Perth a few weeks later, and held the 100m world record in that event from 1956 until 1972.

In 1963 Fraser was at the wheel when her mother was killed in a car crash. Then came the 10-year ban. She married, had a daughter, left her husband because of his gambling, sank into depression and drank heavily. At her lowest point, in 1968, she said: “I wanted to die... I felt I had no friends, which was wrong, but I pushed away anyone who tried to help me."

She ran a pub and managed a cheese shop, but had to file for bankruptcy. She also suffered from severe asthma, which had plagued her from childhood, glandular fever and angina. She had affairs with two women, one of them long-term. Eventually, back in good health physically and mentally, she turned to public speaking and became a politician.

Fraser remained hugely popular with the Australian public who voted her into parliament in the 1980s. In various other polls Fraser was named a national treasure, the person who best symbolises Australia, and the best female swimmer in Olympic history. In 2013 she was named Australia's greatest ever sportswoman.