One of my best friends died this week. I suppose it’s not that unusual a thing – we’re all getting old, and this whole thing only ever has one ending. But I’ve never been a big “long term friends” bloke – my fault, mainly, because I don’t keep up with people, and I’ve moved around a lot. I know a lot of people, and have many former colleagues and acquaintances. But not many people I’d comfortably call a good friend.
Greg Mashford & I have been mates for just short of 40 years. His wife Denise was Maid of Honour at our wedding – Greg was my stand-by Best Man if my brother hadn’t been available. My wife Jeanine had known Greg a lot longer – they grew up together in Broken Hill, where Greg did his apprenticeship underground as a Mechanical Fitter. They came to WA with a group of friends to try their luck in the mining industry here.
They all ended up in Paraburdoo, and I turned up a couple of years later. Greg was, honestly, only an average fitter by technical skill. But he was smart and thoughtful, an organiser, a leader - and unfailingly reliable, honest and tireless. Famously taciturn and grim faced (one of my crew referred to him as “misery-guts Mashford”), people listened when he spoke. It didn’t take his boss, Peter Clements, long to decide who should be his successor when he was promoted.
I first met him as that recently appointed Maintenance Supervisor in Shovels & Drills, and we had occasional contacts at work. He suggested to me that I should “run Hash” with the local Harriers on a Saturday afternoon – so a couple of friends and I did just that.
The Hash House Harriers are famously “a running club with a drinking problem, or a drinking club with a running problem”. We’d pay out $10, then run a course out in the scrub around town, finishing in an accessible spot and then have a BBQ and a couple of coldies. Well, generally quite a lot of coldies. The course was set by a couple of “volunteers” using flour markings, and took us all around the countryside outside of town. It really was fun – more so in the winter than in the 45 degree summer days. I met Jeanine, and the rest was history. Greg was the “Grand Master” of the Para Pigs, and we had a great group.
Greg became Superintendent, and a couple of years later moved to Carnarvon to be Maintenance Manager at Lake Macleod – he’s shown up in some previous episodes of my story. They were there for the birth of our children (we were first), and us for theirs, and they grew up together. They are still “Uncle Greg & Auntie Denise” to our kids, a relic of the days when that’s what you called good friends - and we were all away from our “real” families out in the bush. The Mashford family are still “cousins” to ours, and vice-versa.
After Carnarvon they moved to Tarong Coal at Kingaroy in Queensland – he semi-retired when that nearly went belly up in about 2012, and took up a nice little line in Health & Safety consulting, mainly in the community Council at Cherbourg. One of the side benefits of working in senior maintenance roles in Rio was the subsidiary skillsets you pick up along the way, H&S being a big one of them.
He went down with something in his lower gut early last year, which was eventually diagnosed as stomach/bowel cancer. Though they thought it’d been found early, it never really responded to treatment. We caught up with them for a holiday in April, and he was doing it tough. But those who knew him would know “tough” was what he was. They had time to “get their affairs in order”, but never enough time.
A strong, honest & wise man, a good man, a faithful husband and a loving, caring father - and a great mate. Survived by Denise and Hayden, Kate and Eloise, and their recent grandson, Marshall. May he rest in peace.