Kalgoorlie Miner (16): Shane

I’ve decided to write about Shane Warne’s greatness – a subject so clichéd that to call it a cliché is itself a cliché. In order to differentiate between myself and other admirers though, I specifically want to write about Shane’s face (first name basis lends the column an intimate air).

The seeds of this column were planted in my mind last Sunday afternoon aboard the Prospector (yes I’ve been to Perth and back on the Prospector again*), just 8 throbbing, hazy hours after I had been dragged out of Fremantle’s “The Clink” by a mean-spirited Indian doorman.

Admittedly I made several mistakes in the nightclub, not least of which was trying to reason with him in Hindi, a language in which I know just three phrases: namaste (hello/goodbye), apka shubh nam kya hai (what is your name?), and kanjus makhi chus (you are a miser and a fly-sucker). You can probably guess which one came to mind after 27 gin-and-tonics.

But I digress.

On the train I began idly thumbing through my cohort Rhett's Sunday Times and was stunned to see, on the front cover of the TV magazine, a raw, stark close-up photograph of Shane’s face. No airbrushing, no make-up.

I simply could not look away; partly due to the dull catatonia that defines the savage transition from drunk to hung-over, partly due to the numbing effect of a mouthful of pain-killers, and partly due to shock at seeing something of quality within the pages of a newspaper that is to the Kalgoorlie Miner what Danni Minogue is to Kylie. But mostly it was due to the intense character and meaning in the photograph.

His eyes were the first thing that struck me; army green irises with flecks and rough streaks of a sulphorous yellow (lookout Mills & Boon). Almost crocodilian. Gloriously bright – not in colour, but in stored and radiant energy. The intensity of the whites doubly strengthened by their frames of darkened skin.

A deeply-etched fan of grooves could be seen escaping from the outer point of each eye, like so many rays from a Japanese Imperial sun. The term “laughter lines” is misleading for these grooves, because the causal accordion motion of the skin can also be attributed to toil, stress, anger, or despair, and one strongly suspects that Shane has experienced all of these emotions many times over.

The skin on his face was that of an average man twice his age. Deeply weathered and pock-marked. The sun damage on his upper cheeks and nose has exposed a fine mesh of red capillary veins, the likes of which one would usually expect to see covering the face of a gout-ridden barfly in a darkened English alehouse. No doubt Shane has been there too.

The overall impression of the face is that it belongs to a man who has lived a life worth living; a life spent amongst the towering peaks and frightening troughs of the Southern Ocean, while others were happy to languish in sheltered bays.

His face contains happiness and laughter, not only at his successes and strengths, but also at his failures and weaknesses. He so closely approached perfection in his craft, but is sage enough to know that perfection is unattainable, and that it is necessary to make light of one’s mistakes. The key to his legend is that, unlike a Tiger Woods or an Ian Thorpe, he is gloriously, magnificently human.

Later in the train trip I was reading a book called “Eyeless in Gaza” by Aldous Huxley, and came across this pertinent passage:

"Progress may, perhaps, be perceived by historians; it can never be felt by those actually involved in the supposed advance. The young are born into the advancing circumstances, the old take them for granted within a few months or years."

People of my generation, though they may not fully recognise it now, have been thoroughly blessed to have grown up as the legend of Shane Keith Warne was being written.

Shane, I salute you and everything you stand for.

*Thanks for the free coffee Di – I won’t tell your boss.