Roadtrips and Rednecks

I am psyching myself up mentally for a road trip this coming week. I will be doing a couple of thousand kilometres in 3 days - down to ACT, Wagga Wagga and Griffith to install some machines. The 'psyching up' is not for the long drive - the drives around here are normally quite picturesque - though Griffith is certain to be dry, but because this is the heart of Australia in some senses - and I am not sure what to expect - or perhaps I have an inkling...

In the week, I had to travel South to do a presentation on one of our more complex units and took a technical expert with me for support - he is an Aussie. We arrived at the place which was a large mine and after the initial presentation were ushered into the maintenance offices where a group of their technical personnel peppered us with questions. About halfway through this session, a rather large guy wandered in and collapsed into a chair, eyes puffy, hair kind of greased / combed to the side, tattoos in evidence and at least one or two missing teeth. He looked familiar, but only in an iconic kind of way: the redneck sitting in a faded deck chair on a porch with a rifle on one side, a mongrel called 'Killer' at his feet and the remnants of some rusted vehicle a few feet away peeking out of the jungle that is his front yard. (You see this often over here in Aus by the way - in the city nogal!) Anyway, this character beetles in and the skinny (also heavily tattooed) man who had gone to call him plopped himself down in a chair nearby, grinning for no apparent reason. I heard later from their colleague that 'the missus' had kicked the big guy out of his house after some domestic altercation (I didn't ask) and he had taken up residence in an old caravan behind the workshop. At lunch time he would go 'home' for a nap and that's what he was doing when we arrived, so skinny, his sidekick had shot off to go and bang on the outside of the caravan to call him when we city slickers had arrived.

And then he really got stuck into us with the most obtuse questions he could muster - which to his credit, my technical expert was able to respond to very well. In the middle of all of this, when we initially tripped over an answer, I heard a maniacal cackle from behind me that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I turned and saw that there was what looked like a twin of this big guy sitting in a corner nearby who we hadn't noticed as our eyes had taken a while to adjust to the gloom after the bright light outside. He had a sneer on his oily face and laughed as his brighter buddy tried to trip us up. When my partner finally concluded with the correct answer, he slumped back, obviously disappointed and amused himself for the rest of the session by glaring at us and chasing his two brain cells around his not insubstantially sized head in stony silence. What gave the whole redneck thing away was when we were talking about ongoing support for the equipment we were discussing. These guys had owned some of our equipment before and most agreed that our after sales service was really good, but our interrogator ventured that 5 years ago a technician had come around who wasn't an Aussie. He began: 'I'm not trying to be racist, but... I couldn't understand a word that that guy was saying!'
I looked at him non-plussed. Racist? I had met all the guys and we happen to have no Black or Asian technicians in NSW so I sort of blurted out without thinking: 'It can't be one of our technicians. We actually only have white guys working for us?' I could see he was uncomfortable that this was now been expanded on - I think he was hoping to make his point and let it rest.
'No,' he answered, 'as I say I'm not trying to be racist, but the guy had a funny accent.'
'But he's white!' I launched undeterred. (come on I'm from South Africa, if you are racist, it must be a colour thing). And then I clicked: 'O you mean, you're not xenophobic! Sorry, mate - I think we had a language gap there!'
He tilted his head at me - not sure if i had just sworn at him...
My fellow technical expert jumped in to rescue me and try and limit the damage: 'O you mean Viktor! (he is Romanian), yes don't worry', him and I both laughed, 'nobody understands what he is talking about half the time at our company but he is a highly qualified engineer... did you guys not get good service from him? Did he mess something up badly?'
'No, as I was saying', he said testily, 'I am not being racist, I was just saying he wasn't an Aussie and I could hardly understand his foreign accent. The new guy (who is an Aussie) is much better.'
Mercifully, one of his embarrassed colleagues threw another question at us and we moved swiftly along.

Afterwards, I asked my colleague about it cos I had never met anybody who disliked Romanians. He said not to worry about it, and that every country has them and then asked how come my Aussie accent had gotten so broad all of a sudden for the rest of the meeting?

I will try and blog next week about my trip to the deep Outback and let you know what exactly is out there...