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The Big Issue : Edition 444
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But what about entertainment, other than getting tanked? Planned communities are famous for manufacturing fun. The answer was good and honourable: football. The Roxby Miners play in the Far North Football League. From far north come the Coober Pedy Saints, a 450km return bus journey to take on the Miners. Roxby Downs Oval is the home ground for every team in the league. As luck would have it, I had brought a football from home, and I wandered over to the oval one morning. Although it was bereft of both grass and spectators, you got the feeling all visible signs of life would gather here on match day, pumping the desert air with cheer as the Miners battled the Olympic Dam Devils, the Andamooka Roos, the Hornridge Magpies and, of course, the bus-weary Coober Pedy Saints. The oval was huge – a desert itself. I kicked some remarkable goals – my feats witnessed only by the goalposts – then took potshots at the scoreboard, partly because it looked unbreakable enough and partly because I liked the sound the ball made as it thumped against the side and bounced back to the dirt to dart off in a direction of its own choosing, like a startled lizard. The coaches’ box looked more like a dog box, the goalposts were skinny, meek, insignificant. Everything was dwarfed and compressed by the oval, the huge sky, the thick, heavy air. Alone in an empty ground, in an empty state in an empty continent. If you ever feel like you need a bit of space, I know just the place. Miners and interlopers like me stayed in barracks on the edge of town. Each person had a key to a tiny room with a battered TV, a wet shower curtain and a cracked sink. Water dripped from the crack and pooled on the floor. I had no one to tell about it. We ate in the communal kitchen – long tables beneath white lights; quiet, mumbled conversation. It was dark each morning when we arrived – cold, too. The long- term miners pulled their beanies down tight and slowly turned their spoons through their cereal, their families over 1000km away. Australian Story. I found comfort in all-you-can-eat trifle, Christmas cake with custard, and the thought I would be home tomorrow. One of the lucky ones. Show over, the entire entourage gathered at Olympic Dam Airport at 8am. FitzSimons had made it off stage and now paced restlessly outside the terminal, talking in quiet and serious tones into his mobile. As a final cruel joke, my seat hadn’t been booked on the charter flight out. I briefly wondered what it would be like to earn $48 an hour, before a boarding pass was thrust into my hand and I was frogmarched onto the spaceship and soon saw an alien country far below me. There it was: Roxby Downs and its overcooked surrounds. Red and singed, ancient and plundered, home to miners, builders, geoscientists, real-estate agents, waddling shoppers, wishful community centres, a few vengeful lizards; not even a dot in the dirt. » Ricky French is a regular contributor to The Big Issue. His most recent story was ‘Election Day and Night’ in Ed#440. Also find his work at rictorious.blogspot.com.au. illustrationbyjacktierney,listentothegraphics.com down in roxby THeBigissue25OcT–7NOV2013 21
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