Published The Advocate, November 6, 2004
IN A previous life in a land far, far away, I stood at the sidelines watching a chunky teenager in the cricket nets whacking balls one after another straight back at bowlers twice his age.
I had never seen anyone hit the ball so hard, not up close. The impact of each howitzer shot was felt in the chest as much as heard. The kid was built like a brick outhouse.
The bowlers were powerless. It might have been humiliating had the kid not been wearing a broad, almost embarrassed grin.
He was batting at another level, trusting in his instincts with perfect hand-eye coordination, which the young can do until mature consideration sows seeds of doubt. Youth cannot be denied its own nature.
He did not have a textbook technique and his footwork was suspect, yet whatever the bowlers delivered was dispatched with the minimum of fuss and the maximum of power.
Even with the protection of the side netting, I instinctively flinched when he swiveled my way and hooked. The cricket club president ducked too.
‘‘This lad,’’ he declared, ‘‘will one day play for Australia.’’
The lad was Darren ‘‘Boof’’ Lehmann, aged 15 or 16, at practice in the Salisbury Oval nets in northern Adelaide. His dad, the local cop, was parked in a police car on the embankment, ever watchful.
It took Darren a while to gain Australian selection and then he was preferred for the one-day game rather than the Test side.
It was thought his Test career was delayed because he never attended the Australian Cricket Academy, which was just starting in Adelaide back then. David Hookes, the SA cricket captain, apparently told him not to bother with the Academy.
Hookes was his great mate. They were together on the fatal night early this year when Hooksey’s head cracked against the pavement in an altercation with a hotel bouncer at St Kilda. Darren saw him dying.
Afterwards, grief-stricken, Darren spoke of the needless waste and wondered aloud about his retirement. Here was a man in pain, contemplating the point of life, not just his future in cricket.
We met briefly a couple of times but I knew him better through mutual friends. Everyone said he was a nice bloke, a family man with a photo of his twins in his wallet, who treated allcomers with courtesy and respect. Boof was no bighead.
Sadly, without wishing to put the mozz on him, I expect we have seen the last of Darren in Test cricket. He recently tore a hamstring running between wickets in the Third Test at Nagpur, in India, doing what he did best, belting out a brutal 70.
At 34, it is hard to see him returning from injury yet again in a side stuffed with batting talent.
When newcomer Michael Clarke made 151 on Test debut in India, Darren even volunteered to stand aside to allow him to remain in the side.
Such is the measure of the man. Sport is said to be character building – more often, true character is revealed.
Sunday, October 31, 2004
Published The Advocate, October 30, 2004
Tourists get downunder and dirty
AS KIDS we fished from the wharves while the ships around us had their cargoes unloaded, never a care given for our safety or for public liability insurance claims.
Now, most cargo is tucked away inside shipping containers behind chainmesh and protected by security gates and anti-terrorism units. And suddenly, fenced off, the wharves are tourist drawcards.
The only way into the docks for someone like me is under escort, so last week I was driven in a mini-bus around the Port of Burnie in the company of harbourmaster Captain Trevor Bozoky, among others.
Capt. Bozoky, a nice chap, believes the ``docks in the raw’’ could become a tourist lure for cruise ships such as the Pacific Princess, due in Burnie in a couple of weeks.
He said the attraction of a working port, for tourists, was ``you’re not in a passenger terminal, remote from all the dirty stuff’’. He kept a straight face.
We drove past stores of tallow, petroleum, wood pulp, fertilizer, limestone, pyrethrum and the mining concentrates from the West Coast. All tourist attractions, apparently.
We saw the quarantine washdown area where a special lookout was kept for Giant African Snails, which had reached Papua-New Guinea. And not a fox in sight.
In Burnie’s early days the steep hills of the hinterland offered protection from the sou’wester gales but a harbour had still to be reclaimed from the sea and rocky outcrops were constructed to calm the unruly moods of Bass Strait.
Now, the Toll ships sweep around the breakwater, skidding the tyres, do a dainty three-point turn, and can be tied-up backwards within 15 minutes and unloading. Stunt driving for the clap-happy Americans.
If the tourists want industrial chic, then Burnie has it in spades. Yet Capt Bozoky said just six cruise ships had visited Burnie since 1999.
The port could cope with many more passenger visits, he said, and once did. As recently as 1984, the old Empress of Tasmania regularly used what was now the woodchip berth.
Ah, yes, the woodchips. I could well imagine American tourists being gobsmacked by Burnie’s woodchip mountain.
In the early light, with the steam coming off it, the mountain certainly offers a great photo opportunity. At full capacity, it contains 200,000 tonnes of woodchips, which by my estimate takes about XXX trees.
Is Burnie happy for its woodchip mountain to be its tourist attraction? Sure is. Bring on the woodchip postcards and coasters.
The expansion of the Port of Burnie is unlimited in theory. It could keep extending all the way to Victoria.
It could happen. Take Ephesus, a major trading port in eastern Turkey a couple of thousand years ago and now a Greco-Roman ruin.
The main road, still there, once led a short distance to the docks. Except Ephesus now is half an hour by bus inland from the Mediterranean coast. The old port silted up.
I look forward to the day when I can drive to Melbourne in time for lunch.
Tourists get downunder and dirty
AS KIDS we fished from the wharves while the ships around us had their cargoes unloaded, never a care given for our safety or for public liability insurance claims.
Now, most cargo is tucked away inside shipping containers behind chainmesh and protected by security gates and anti-terrorism units. And suddenly, fenced off, the wharves are tourist drawcards.
The only way into the docks for someone like me is under escort, so last week I was driven in a mini-bus around the Port of Burnie in the company of harbourmaster Captain Trevor Bozoky, among others.
Capt. Bozoky, a nice chap, believes the ``docks in the raw’’ could become a tourist lure for cruise ships such as the Pacific Princess, due in Burnie in a couple of weeks.
He said the attraction of a working port, for tourists, was ``you’re not in a passenger terminal, remote from all the dirty stuff’’. He kept a straight face.
We drove past stores of tallow, petroleum, wood pulp, fertilizer, limestone, pyrethrum and the mining concentrates from the West Coast. All tourist attractions, apparently.
We saw the quarantine washdown area where a special lookout was kept for Giant African Snails, which had reached Papua-New Guinea. And not a fox in sight.
In Burnie’s early days the steep hills of the hinterland offered protection from the sou’wester gales but a harbour had still to be reclaimed from the sea and rocky outcrops were constructed to calm the unruly moods of Bass Strait.
Now, the Toll ships sweep around the breakwater, skidding the tyres, do a dainty three-point turn, and can be tied-up backwards within 15 minutes and unloading. Stunt driving for the clap-happy Americans.
If the tourists want industrial chic, then Burnie has it in spades. Yet Capt Bozoky said just six cruise ships had visited Burnie since 1999.
The port could cope with many more passenger visits, he said, and once did. As recently as 1984, the old Empress of Tasmania regularly used what was now the woodchip berth.
Ah, yes, the woodchips. I could well imagine American tourists being gobsmacked by Burnie’s woodchip mountain.
In the early light, with the steam coming off it, the mountain certainly offers a great photo opportunity. At full capacity, it contains 200,000 tonnes of woodchips, which by my estimate takes about XXX trees.
Is Burnie happy for its woodchip mountain to be its tourist attraction? Sure is. Bring on the woodchip postcards and coasters.
The expansion of the Port of Burnie is unlimited in theory. It could keep extending all the way to Victoria.
It could happen. Take Ephesus, a major trading port in eastern Turkey a couple of thousand years ago and now a Greco-Roman ruin.
The main road, still there, once led a short distance to the docks. Except Ephesus now is half an hour by bus inland from the Mediterranean coast. The old port silted up.
I look forward to the day when I can drive to Melbourne in time for lunch.
