Bush legend: Collie pollie Mick Murray talks about being his town’s staunchest defender and protector

A Collie pollie walks into a bar ... and it’s not long before the jokes are flying. “Mick’s shout,” one barfly shrieks the moment the South West town’s legendary politician Mick Murray steps into the Victoria Hotel for a random Wednesday night sip. Typical of the former local footy coach, he heeds the call and stumps up for a few pints poured by the night’s skimpy barmaid. He barely bats an eyelid at either the cost or the collector, and neither do the two burly miners playing Connect 4 on the bar next to him. There has never been a fiercer supporter and protector of Collie — in many ways a misunderstood WA town — than Mr Murray, who will end his long State Parliament tenure at next year’s election. And his passion for it becomes even more evident through the glint in his eyes when he talks of his mischievous younger days around places such as Minninup Pool and then the obvious heartache triggered by memories of his town’s darker underbelly. The 1980 disappearance of Lisa Mott, the 2006 murder of Eliza Davis by her 16-year-old schoolfriends, and the heartbreaking list of young losses to road trauma and suicide in the town were almost too much for Mr Murray to recall. “It hit my family hard,” he said, his tough exterior suddenly softening. “You’d hear the phone ring or a message would come and there would be a squawk. One of my daughters had to put up with it seven times from kids she went to school with. It got to the point you didn’t want to answer the phone and you wanted to tell your kids not to go out. “It’s difficult and in may ways, it shut the town down. I think we’ve come out of it because there is another generation coming through, but it was a shadow all right, don’t worry about that, and those people will never be forgotten.” Mr Murray’s demeanour then quickly stiffened in defence of his town, which he believed was often wrongly tagged as a rough-house location. “It’s totally unfair,” he said. “There might be 50 murders in Perth that are just as horrific, but people will still say ‘Oh, that Collie one’. I’m not sure why that’s the case, but it is certainly felt by the community. “And when people go out and rubbish the name by doing something wrong in Collie, Collie people are dark on them. “I’m telling you this is a great community of people who love their town. “We’re proud of our town, and don’t dare rubbish it unless you know what you’re talking about.” Mr Murray, 70, moved to Collie with his parents Phil and Vi and older sister Patricia when he was in Year 6. Collie is hardly Disneyland, but its size compared with his previous home in the small Wheatbelt town of Duranillin left an impression. “I thought our two-bedroom, weatherboard place with no veranda in Duranillin was a castle,” he recalled. “But this was a big city. “Going to a school with all these kids in it ... if you threw a ball, someone actually threw it back!” Mr Murray recalled feeling the town’s division back in those days because his father was not part of the dominant mining fraternity. But as he passed his formative years, the threat of conscription and the introduction of a pill for contraception bred a powerful, live-for-the-now mentality. “On either count, you just got stuck in,” he said. That led to fond memories of ‘playing around’ at Minninup Pool, just 3km from the townsite and a beautiful part of the Collie River, which is said in Aboriginal Dreamtime stories to have been created by the hairy-faced serpent. “It was fun and there was huge energy,” he said. “It’s probably where I got my sexual education, in the back of a car.” Mr Murray said Collie changed forever in 1995 when Premier Coal followed Griffin Coal’s lead and closed its traditional underground mining operations. It almost immediately robbed the town of its human renewal. “Your pubs were all full and there wasn’t enough room in them on a Friday night — it didn’t matter which one you went to,” he said. “Now you’ve got pubs that are shut. The change to a seven-day roster and 12-hour shifts absolutely destroyed the social fabric of the town. “The town structure fell apart and the guts of it has changed. “But I still have great pride that if you fall over in the streets of Collie, someone will pick you up. And your business is never your own because the place is small enough that every b...... knows what you’re doing.” Mr Murray caused a stir in 2007 when he was charged with having an illegal haul of green and brown lip abalone during a trip to Augusta. In hindsight, he said the indiscretion was a product of his past — particularly the seven-hour mining shifts. “We’re good at fishing and poaching and that sort of stuff because we had a lot of spare time,” he laughed. “How many times have you ever swum past a $20 note?” While Mr Murray is the town’s enforcer, WA football great Stephen Michael is the king. The pair even worked together decades ago in the town’s underground mines. Michael, who was born in Wagin and grew up in Kojonup, has lived in Collie for almost all of the 35 years since he finished his incredible playing career with South Fremantle. He moved there to be with his wife Marie in her home town. There is barely a person who walks by as we drink a coffee from the railway carriage cafe in the main street who does not say “hello” to him, or at least pause for a stare. “Marie walks down the street and says ‘I was born here, reared here and no one says hello to me ... you’ve been here five minutes and every b...... wants to talk to you’,” laughed 64-year-old Michael, whose 25 grandchildren match the guernsey number he wore with such esteem for the Bulldogs. But he quickly adds that his paternal grandmother was born in Collie and it is a much friendlier scene than the sometimes racist environment he recalled from his early days in the town. “It’s definitely changed for the better and I love the place, but racism was a big thing here and there is still a minority of it,” he said. “I say to people, if they start being racist, invite a blackfella into your place for a cup of tea. It’s just common sense. We have to be united going forward because you’re never going to change the past. “You associate with the right people and you do the right thing by people and you haven’t got a problem. It doesn’t hurt to say ‘hello’ to someone, whether you’re black, white or don’t know them from a bar of soap.” Michael works at Premier Coal and coaches a local under-14s girls’ football team, including five of his granddaughters. Like Mr Murray, he was saddened that the changes to the mining sector and shift-work had limited opportunities for Collie’s youth to stay in town. It meant the game that made him famous was filling a distinct social need. “It’s a family inside a family being inside a footy club where everyone is looking after each other,” he said. “But I’d like to see a lot more for the kids to do here because there is only so much they can do.” Mr Murray played for Collie and later coached Mines Rovers. The clubs have now merged because of the town’s dwindling player pool, but his defection back then was not looked on favourably. “When I was playing, the Mines Rovers guys would talk about going up and having a drink at the pig pen, the Collie side,” he said. “They’d come up and we’d knock them back down the stairs. “But when I was coaching Mines, I famously got the only black eye I’ve ever had in my life after a derby. “I just told the bloke I wasn’t ready as I went flying through the door. It was a bit of fun.” In one infamous coaching incident, he also once addressed his huddled players via a walkie-talkie from his car outside the ground after being suspended for threatening an umpire. Mr Murray has run something of a hardship hub in his electorate office, helping many people through tough times since he started his State Parliament representation for the area in 2001. He remained bullish for the future of his town, which had three power stations and two mines still operating, as long as local people could change their traditional thinking on what made it tick. “The physical appearance of the town has improved immensely, and our image has changed,” he said. “But we have to change the structure and the mental view of what Collie is because the mining won’t last forever. We put $10 million into cycle tracks and opened one not long ago and you couldn’t get near the place with people from all over the State, but we didn’t have a coffee shop open. “I wanted to cry. It’s time to change that attitude and it’s about believing in yourself. I want to live here with pride because I’m not shifting.” The biggest question now is how the town will find the ruthless replacement to pick up the slack Mr Murray will leave. Appropriately, the shop next door to his electorate office is called the Cheeky Squirrel. “He is an absolutely relentless advocate, he drives many of us mad,” Alannah MacTiernan, his WA Labor Party parliamentary colleague, said. If you have a worthy “Bush Legend” in your town, email steve.butler@wanews.com.au with the details.