Former Queensland Reds player Peter Fleming has had a piece of his rugby identity returned to him after losing almost everything in the bushfires that tore through Einasleigh in North Queensland.
Fleming, who toured with the 1969 Australian Schoolboys and went on to wear the Maroon and Gold for Queensland in 1972, watched the fire take his home, his vehicles and a lifetime of memorabilia in a matter of hours. Of all the items he lost, the one that haunted him most was the blazer that marked his place in the country's schoolboy rugby history.
Member for Traeger Robbie Katter met Fleming during a community visit shortly after the fire and said the rugby blazer kept coming up in their conversation.
"I met Peter in Einasleigh, a beautiful little place in the middle of nowhere, and he told me how he lost all of his worldly possessions," Katter recalled.
"He said, the one thing that really gets to me is losing my representative blazer. The QRU and Ringers Western came to the rescue and here we are today."
Fleming himself was matter-of-fact about the scale of the loss but became visibly emotional when the new blazer was presented at Parliament House in Brisbane this week. The Queensland Rugby Union supplied the replacement, with western Australian outfitter Ringers Western re-tailoring the cut to match the original 1972 specifications, and an honour cap from his Australian Schoolboys tour was reproduced alongside it.
"I'm very grateful," Fleming said. "The house, car, quad bike, old jerseys, everything... it all went in the fire."
In keeping with the dry humour that gets a community like Einasleigh through a season of fires, Fleming wasted no time pivoting from grief to a more practical concern.
"I'm right for Fashions on the Field," he said.
The gesture is a small one in the broader context of bushfire recovery in the gulf country, but for the QRU it has hit a nerve. Fleming's blazer is a tangible link to a generation of Reds players who came up through bush rugby, and the union's decision to replace it without fanfare has been seen inside the game as a reminder that Queensland's rugby identity is still tied to towns most fans will never visit.
For Fleming's part, the focus now is on rebuilding the home he lost. The Einasleigh fires destroyed multiple properties in a remote pocket of North Queensland and recovery is expected to take years given the limits on local services and supplies. Community groups in Traeger have been working alongside Katter's office to coordinate housing and equipment, with the QRU's gesture sitting at the lighter end of a heavy ledger.
The replacement blazer was officially handed over at Parliament House this week, with QRU representatives, Ringers Western staff and Fleming's family in attendance. For the first time in months, Fleming had something from his rugby life back in his hands.
It is a story that will not move the Super Rugby Pacific ladder or change the next Wallabies squad, but it is the kind of week that explains why, for many in the bush, rugby never stops being a community sport.
