Chokljat returns to the city she called home for six years to cover the Test between Australia and New Zealand for ABC radio. It will be the one-time Prospect resident’s first live netball call on air.

Living now in Melbourne, the 37-year-old grew up in Savage River on Tasmania’s West Coast before starting her schooling at Prospect High around the corner from the Wednesday’s Test venue.

“I can’t ever remember an Australian match has ever been in Tassie, let alone Launceston, when I was there,” Chokljat said.

“It certainly wasn’t when I was growing up playing.”

Australia last faced a West Indies outfit – combining the best players from Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago – back in 1989.

The last time the Silver Ferns played in Launceston some 30 years back during a 31-19 Australian victory, Chokljat was barely seven.

“I didn’t even think that netball existed in my world back then,” she said.

Chokljat said one of her biggest regrets was not playing in front of home fans.

“If I could have had a (Test) match there when I was playing that would have been absolutely sensational,” she said.

“I’m a jealous as it would have been really, really nice to play for your country in the town that you grew up.

“I think it’s fantastic the game has actually got there, but it would have been nice to have it when I was playing, being from Launceston.”

The midcourter, who was capped 29 times for Australia from 2003 and 2006, said her excitement for Test netball returning back to the Silverdome is palpable.

Chokljat believed that Tasmanians will be “surprised how fast the game is” live inside the arena.

“The fact that young girls are going to get to experience it live is absolutely fantastic because even back in the day it didn’t get the media coverage it does today,” she said.

“You didn’t get to see a game on TV very often and I don’t even think I saw a game growing up too.”

“I think it’s fantastic they get to experience it live, experience the atmosphere.”

The netball trailblazer, who left Launceston at 17 to pursuit a dream she never considered five years earlier, hoped Test netball will inspire a new generation of Tasmanian girls.

“To go to the next step up and see that Australia versus New Zealand game it gives girls something to aspire to. They hopefully realise ‘I can achieve that, I can represent my country’,” she said.