Former Queensland Reds player Peter Fleming lost everything in a bushfire that ravaged the area around his township of Einasleigh (380km west of Townsville) in North Queensland last year.<\/p>\n
Amongst the lost possessions in the house fire was his prized rugby blazer representing his honours as an Australian Schoolboys forward to South Africa in 1969 and a 1972 appearance in the backrow for Queensland.<\/p>\n
Member for Traeger Robbie Katter discovered these details chatting to Fleming on the porch at the famous Einasleigh Hotel when checking in on people in his electorate last year.<\/p>\n
This set in motion a call to the Queensland Rugby Union who connected with supportive partner Ringers Western.<\/p>\n
The culmination has been Katter being able to present the 73-year-old Fleming with a new blue blazer, with QRU emblem, courtesy of Ringers Western co-founder Matteo Salerno. A new honour cap, as Reds player #868, was also presented by current Reds lock Josh Canham at Parliament House in Brisbane this week.<\/p>\n
Australian Schoolboys player Peter Fleming was billeted with then-South African Prime Minister John Vorster and wife Tini in Pretoria on the 1969 tour<\/p>\n
“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 said.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
Fleming was delighted: “I’m very grateful.\u00a0The house, car, quad bike, old jerseys, everything…it all went in the fire.<\/p>\n
Fleming was unperturbed he’d be overdressed on his next visit to the Einasleigh races: “I’m right for Fashions on the Field.”<\/p>\n
Fleming was a boarder at Marist College Ashgrove when selected for the first Australian Schoolboys to tour and, remarkably, was billeted in Pretoria by the then-Prime Minister of South Africa John Vorster.<\/p>\n
He played for Brothers in the 1972 first grade side beside internationals Chris Handy, David Dunworth, Dick Cocks and Jeff McLean.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Queensland Reds player Peter Fleming lost everything in a bushfire that ravaged the area around his township…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,12061,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-624587","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-queensland-reds","11":"tag-rugby","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}