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Rudy

'Rudy - a face lined and pitted like the battered end of a rusty oil drum' © PETER ADAMS 1998

Crystals?

Us blokes didn't know diddly-squat about crystals. The closest most of us got to them, was those dangle-y things hanging from the bar maid's ears on a Saturday night - I never did understand why her ears didn't stretch under the weight.

"Cime off-of a chandy-leer in Veer-sigh, they did" - or so were told countless times, as she rested her boobs on the beer stained Mahogany bar at the 'Bat and Ball' and gave us the opportunity for an in-depth examination.

As far as I can recall, not too many of the Weipa miners were terribly interested in jewellery - I certainly can't recall what hers looked like - but being a little younger then, and perhaps more brash, we were rather more concerned with who among us had won the Friday night bet about the colour of her bra.

Now, where was I? Oh yeah, Rudy.

Personally, I can't imagine a more unlikely bloke as a physiotherapist. With a face lined and pitted like the battered end of a rusty oil drum - not unlike a map of the bauxite mine itself - it seemed every part of Rudys' body had been worked over with a copper beaters' hammer. He was as stocky as a pit pony, with calloused skin tanned to that peculiar shade of pinkie brown associated with too much cigarette smoke.

In many ways, he was a bit like a supermarket bag full of over ripe quinces. Anyway, he earned his crust, just like the rest of us, by scratching Bauxite from the ground.

The thing one remembered most about Rudy was his huge laceless leather, boots - in fact this was the first thing you'd notice. The second was the dainty way he removed them before entering a building.

Even in a pub he always took off his boots before he went in, leaving them outside with the blokes' dogs. Mind you, the mutts used to piss in them - well, so did some of the blokes - but that never seemed to worry Rudy - "Keeps the leather supple", he used to say.

He'd even take 'em off at the entrance to the mine, which really got the foreman teed-off. Apart from wasting time, people used to trip over the bloody things.

Sometimes he'd return to find them Kango nailed to the concrete floor outside the door and then filled with fast setting concrete. Rudy would just smile and leave them there and dig out another pair. Several became permanent fixtures outside the foreman's shed and the mineshaft and the entrance to the Masonic Temple - there forever, cemented to the concrete path. The girls from the mine office would plant petunias around them and in them. They really looked quite colourful.

The foreman finally put his foot down - so to speak - by insisting that he wore boots around the site - including his office. Rudy never complained, just went around with that enigmatic Lona Misa smile of his - of course, the foreman never realised that he was going around wearing only his uppers.

In the end, none of Rudys' boots had soles - something about an aboriginal legend he'd read somewhere or other - spiritual stuff. He believed with keeping his mind in touch with the red earth - but quite what that had to do with his boots I'm not sure.

Rudy was the only bloke I ever met who would wear out his boots, from the inside first. He might have been invisible except for his boots.

Anyway, Easter was coming round and the company usually put on a hunt-the-egg competition for the blokes. Bloody silly, if you ask me - 42°c at midday and no shade and all those chocolate eggs sitting in the sun. Those that didn't get colonised by bugs ended up melting away into the ground leaving little more than a flimsy silver paper shell.

Not that it mattered too much, the event was really just an excuse for us blokes to wonder around the bush with a few mates, a tinny in one hand and a tinny in the other hand trying to find the bastards.

Of course, everyone said it was good fun. Didn't take people too long to discover what a great splat a soggy Easter egg makes when lobbed at an unsuspecting mate. Of course once the first egg was lobbed it didn't take long for a full scale offensive to be mounted - with platoons and brigades and scouts and snipers and so forth - most of the blokes went home looking like they'd been dipped in a chocolate Fondue.

'Two hundred and fifty blokes with king gee cleavages and white pads and clubs made of english willow' © PETER ADAMS 1998

Anyway, to cut a long story short, this year Rudy found himself elected as Chairperson of the Social Club Sub-Committee. God knows how or why. Nobody could work it out - someone said it was a wry jest on the part of the Big Bloke upstairs, but I recon' it was more likely to be one of us blokes havin' a go!

Made no sense at all.

Rudy was the least 'social' person I'd ever met. Anyway, he really got down to it, like he was on a mission, or something. Convinced everyone that the miners had never had a chance to play a decent game of cricket.

So, that's what we did.

Two hundred and fifty beefy blokes with King Gee cleavages and blue singlets, and white pads and clubs made of English Willow charging about all over the place trying to catch up with a red leather ball on a bunch of red dirt in 42 degree heat. Madness. As things do, when the amber liquid flows, the whole thing turned into a sort of unofficial competition between the blokes and a team made up from management.

I know! Sounds silly, but no one ever forgot that day.

'A couple of blokes borrowed one of the companys' earth movers and piled up a huge mountain of bauxite' © PETER ADAMS 1998

Pretty soon the songs got started - as they usually do once the amber liquid begins to flow. Then, as the afternoon progressed, the songs got more and more ribald and most of the sandwiches and bottled fruit got used as ammo in the ensuing ritual punch-up with the locals - after which everyone ended up life-long buddies, the kegs got well and truely drained and we all went home.

I'm not convinced we'll be playing cricket next year. Rudy mentioned something about building sand castles down at Coolangatta - I can't imagine how that would work but who knows?

And Rudy? Well, last I heard, he left the company shortly afterwards but not Weipa. He opened an underground Massage Parlour in a back room at the 'Bat and Ball'. Well, when it became known that most all the Sheilas round-a-bouts were going to him, on a regular basis, a few of the blokes changed their minds about Rudy and suggested he might even give them a few free lessons on the side.

Never did 'tho!

'S funny. You could always tell when he was open for business, by the pair of sole less boots left outside on the veranda.

Alongside the dogs.

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