From the City to Griffith'
The City Slicker Hits a Country Town
Cam Storey

I was driving straight into the setting sun blinded by its fearsome glare and furious heat.

Luckily the roads this far west are as straight as Hef.

So I closed my eyes and put my foot down, certain that sooner or later I would end up in my new home, the far'flung western town of Griffith.

I had just picked up my first ever journalism job at the local paper and was moving to a town I had never heard of before.

Well that is apart from knowing it was home to copious paddocks of marijuana, the birthplace of drug's campaigner Donald McKay and a serious haunt for the local Mafia that gunned him down in 1977 in a Griffith carpark.

I was city boy born and raised, a private school boy used to wearing ties and playing on the concrete, and later a beach bum with salt in my veins and a weakness for swanky bars serving bottled Grolsch.

And now I was heading 600 kms west to the heart of the wheat belt where cowboys ruled, utes did hot laps on the main road each night and local hobbies revolved around jumping on top of wild boars and stabbing them in the jugular.

What the hell was I doing? But there are a lot of unemployed journalists out there and I had just finished my course and this fell in my lap so I had to go.

Truth be told I was ready for change. A decade of partying and living in that vicious Sydney circle where you're constantly treading water struggling to suck in some time for your self, spluttering for a bit more money to keep pace with your lifestyle and clutching for a break from the frenetic rat race had taken its toll.

But still, Griffith? Surely a seachange would have been the way to go considering my obsession with the ocean. And the closest I would get to anything mariner out there would be watching pelicans that made the long flight to the shores of Lake Wyangan to give birth to their young.

Anyway I was going, so I drove into town and found my crappy little motel because as yet I knew no'one and had no where to live.

I sat on the bed with a pizza on my chest missing everyone and thinking what the hell am I doing? Bloody good pizza though. The Italian influence in Griffith goes well beyond the shoeing of snitches with concrete booties.

And that was just the first of many surprises that made my next 12 months so bloody enjoyable

I have got to say that I have loved 'and am loving' my time in regional Australia. Sure, I do miss people and I miss a lot of parties and general going'ons but those people will always be there. I am not losing contact with anyone. It's impossible in this communicatively shrunken cyber world we live in today.

People in Sydney have such skewed views of your typical bushie. A lot of them think redneck, racist, rum drinking, roo shootin' roughies. There may be some of these creatures around but there are crazies in every pocket of land humans inhabit.

On the whole everyone I have met in Griffith and now Wagga has been exceptional.

And that's how I judge a place or a time in my life, by the people surrounding me.
I want to live all over Australia and all over the world precisely to meet people, to be absorbed in a community and gravitate towards people that move you and educate you. For me that is what life experience is, being moved outside a comfort zone and finding people, listening to people and talking to people.

And in Griffith I found a town where honesty is a language and not treated with a skeptic's cynicism like it so often can be these days.

There are only two pubs in Griffith really so you meet a lot of people pretty quickly and get to know them with a lubricated familiarity in a matter of weeks. And the first thing that struck me was the absolute maskless honesty and open demeanor of every greeting you get, of every conversation you have. Friendships are forged after you buy another man one beer and last well after the pint is drained.
There are no egos to contend with, no sets that think they are above others. Jackaroos drink with suits, 50'year'olds party with 20 year olds, no one has barriers up and no one judges anyone. People just get on and enjoy each other's company unlike anywhere I have ever been in my life. And I think that holds true for much of regional Australia.

I made friends with characters that I would have never met in Sydney and some of them would not have even been allowed inside the pubs I used to frequent there.

One guy I'll quickly mention, who I doubt I will see again but was someone I got on well with each time I saw him, after the initial scare was a 140kg Fijian called Jimmy.

My first contact with this mass of man was on a supporter's bus heading to Wagga to watch the rugby union grand final that Griffith was trying to win for the second year running.

I was reporting on the game but caught the bus over with the fans and sadly could not take part in the beer drinking frivolity that was loudly taking place up the back.
I knew everyone on the bus except for one fellow sitting on a front seat that looked more like a foot stool than a chair when Jimmy's considerable bulk swallowed it.

My mate Henry and I remarked that we had never seen this dude before and yes, he was absolutely massive.

We stopped just out of Wagga so the party boys could grab a leak, another case of beer and another pack of cigarettes. Jimmy got off the bus and at that moment the team manager turned around to inform those of us that did not know the big man about his past and he said:

"I don't mean to scare any of you guys but Jimmy has just escaped from a mental institute in Wagga. He used to play for Griffith and found out they were in the final and ran away thinking the team would let him have a jersey today. He does have some serious problems so no one startle him. He can be pretty entertaining though."

Are you frickin serious? Me and Henry looked at each other and then faced front motionless, trying not to meet his eye and sure that he was whispering in the bus drivers ear that he would let him live if only he pulled the bus over to the side of the road and left the rest of the passengers to him.

Then at our next stop along the way Jimmy got off again and another young Fijian kid turned around with an alarmed look on his face and with a voice wavering on the verge of hysteria exclaimed to the rest of us that "If Griffith win today there is no bloody way I am getting back on this bus with Jimmy, who knows what he'll do."

We got there, Griffith won and I got a lift home with a mate. But that night I saw Jimmy at the club with all the footy boys and went up to have a chat. As I was introduced to the big man with the crazy look in his eyes he charged at me, grabbed me, picked me up and almost squeezed the life out of me with the friendliest bear hug I had ever been in. He was laughing the whole time and I spent the rest of the night with him freaking people out by telling them I was going to sic Jimmy onto them. He would then glare at them before bursting out in laughter.

I saw him again recently at a house party, in fact at the house I used to live in and was a bit surprised. We had a thumper of a night and again we spent the evening in hysterics as I tried to wrestle him and he swatted me off like a pesky fly.

The next morning after everyone had left the party we walked down stairs and into the lounge room to see Jimmy and his mate on the couches in the semi dark. The mate was sitting upright and snoring like the possessed, but Jimmy was sitting there with a bong at his feet silent, just staring at the wall his eyes wide open. He turned around as we walked in, smiled goofily and returned to his spot on the wall. It was pretty creepy but his heart was good.

Another one of the best friends I made in Griffith was a guy called Ben. Ben liked, nay loved piggin'. And I am not talking shooting boars, I am talking setting dogs onto them and then jumping off the ute and stabbing and killing them. They are considered monsters in the bush because they do destroy the land but I could still never make myself go on one of his trips. He had two pig dogs that he loved more than anyone in the world, I think. In fact, when Ben brought a nice young lady home after a night at the pub he excitedly asked her if she would like to take the swag out the back with him and sleep with the dogs. Ben got no loving that night. They seriously looked like those two devil dogs that come to life in the original Ghostbusters.

You are probably picturing a big burly, four'day growth, fightin' and cussin' maniac but Ben was the absolute opposite of that.

He was the kindest most compassionate and friendly person I met the whole time I was away. He wouldn't hurt a fly, only boars. I never heard him say bad word about anyone the whole year I was there.

And that's what it's all about. Meeting people you would normally otherwise never meet and in Griffith that's all I did. In the one year I was there I made life'long friends from all walks of life. I met quite seriously some of the greatest and most interesting people I have ever come across in my 27 years in Australia and traveling overseas. Eighteen months ago if you had said I was going to live in Griffith I would have laughed in your face. Now I can't imagine having done anything else.

There is so much more I could go on with, but just briefly another beautiful aspect of regional Australia worth mentioning is that real characters still permeate the streets and pubs and shops. Eccentricity may not be openly encouraged, but it is allowed to thrive, it's not beaten down by fear and discrimination and these people add colour to a town like nothing else can.

One quick man of colour we dubbed "The Roaring Man".

Now this guy would not be allowed in any pub in Sydney, the toffee nosed steroid munching bouncers would turf him out as he approached the entrance but here he was allowed to roam free.

My first encounter with roaring man was on a Thursday arvo after work when a few of us were having a couple of beers at the pub. In walked this guy with a wild bushy beard, a bedraggled old suit and that shuffle step eyes'down gait that a number of alcoholics possess. He moved around relatively unaware of everyone around him but obviously well known as no one paid him much attention. He spoke to no one, just ordered his beer.