Labor candidate for Parkes, Nathan Fell, is a big man with a big heart, who chats to you with a relaxed and disarming conversational style that makes you forget you’re talking to a politician.
The 30 year old mining professional has lived in Broken Hill since he was nine years old, but wouldn’t dare claim to be a local.
“Not if you ask the locals… some people say your parents have to be born here.”
Fell says he wants to be the member for Parkes because the people of Parkes are too often forgotten about.
“I’ve lived in this area for most of my life, I’m going to live in this area for the foreseeable future, and I want the area that I live in to be as good as it possibly can be.”
“I feel like the people that have been given the privilege to try and make that happen haven’t done as good a job as I would have liked.”
The humble and affable Fell towers over most people at nearly 6 foot 5, so is not likely to be forgotten about, should he be elected. He’s not easily missed on the campaign trail either, most frequently in his red worker shirt, and doing an awful lot of k’s to many remote centres despite his late start to the campaign.
The red shirt may be for Labor – or it may just be a reference to his nick name: thanks to his imposing size and red hair, for most of his life Fell was called ‘Big Red’.
Well, he was called Big Red, until he met Member for Hunter, Dan Repacholi, at a conference last year.
“I went to this mining and energy union conference last year, and Todd, our organiser out here, introduces me as Big Red,” he said.
“First two days that was great, and then Dan showed up. Suddenly I wasn’t Big Red any more, I was now Medium Red.”
He’s as funny as Repacholi too, making a (joke) pledge of a free Doritos machine for every household. But jokes aside, Medium Red clearly has a very big brain at work, and was unperturbed when put on the spot about the policy issue he personally would most like to fix. Namely, education options for people like him who don’t do so well in traditional education systems.
“That’s why I didn’t finish my university degree, I dropped out after two and a half years because I just don’t learn that way.”
“I think having a more robust education system out here for people like me – who want to learn, and want to do all of these things, but may not learn the way that the schooling system teaches us – having more options for people like us is something sorely needed.”
“Especially in the remote areas. I don’t know if I just see it more because I’m looking for it, or I see it because I’m part of the same group of people, but in the remote areas we seem to have a lot more people who don’t learn by reading a book and regurgitating things.”
“We learn by doing things – getting hands on and doing things.”
Speaking to New England Times from pre-poll at Broken Hill, Nathan tells his back story, starting with his parents deciding to move to Broken Hill almost on chance, through to being pushed to stand for Parkes, seemingly unaware of the clear hand of fate that has brought him to his point.
“They were sick of the rat race in Sydney,” he says of his parents decision to move to the absolute opposite side of the state.
“Dad was a supervisor for a bar in the Blue Mountains, mum worked in a bank in Strathfield, and they were just sick of living in the city.”
His father had family in Tasmania, and his mother had family in Broken Hill, so they decided they would move to one of those two places, wherever they got a job first.
“Dad got a job at the TAFE here first. We were supposed to stay here for two years and then go somewhere else, and 22 years later we’ve never left.”
“I think we’re pretty well stuck here for a while now,” he says with a smile.
He got into mining initially as a labourer when he was 17, but his life was changed when his father had a serious accident, and he decided to take himself to university so he could transition to the safety side of mining.
“Most people in Broken Hill are trying to get into mining.”
“I wanted to get into safety because dad had quite a serious accident when he was working, and it was a bit rough for a couple of years.”
Working to keep people safe at work is also how he got drawn to the union movement.
“I wasn’t totally aware of the union movement when I started in mining, it was just sort of thing that people spoke about in darkened corners and quiet rooms.”
“So I got involved in the union movement in 2012, and have been as involved as I can.”
And, just as his Dad’s accident drew him to safety, and safety drew him to the union, the union drew him to an unexpected path in politics, one that began by being the last candidate on a local election ticket “just to help out”.
“I was interested in politics but I never thought about running, because I thought it’s not for me. You know, these politicians are all wealthy, or born into political families, or very polished public speakers.”
“That’s everything I’m not, so I thought, ‘yeah I’ll just get involved and help out where I can’,” he said.
As the local government election was wrapping up last year the local party branch turned its mind to the federal election, and it was suggested to Nathan that he should consider running for Parkes.
“I thought it would be something I wouldn’t mind doing, meaning something I might work towards in an election or two…” but his friends pushed him to run this time.
“The main reason I wanted to think about it for the future, which turned out to be sooner than I thought, was because I felt the elected representatives I had seen my entire life never really represented me, or my friends, or the people that I live with.”
“As I said, they are normally born wealthier than I was, normally born into politically minded families, almost always born as close to a major centre as possible or at least lives as close to a major city as possible.”
“I just felt they didn’t represent the average everyday worker as well as I would have liked.”
Fell believes that the remote areas of Parkes are particularly under-represented. He says that people often forget that the major centres on the eastern edge of the massive electorate like Dubbo, Parkes, and Gunnedah, only make up about half the population of the electorate.
“It may be a massive electorate and there may be a lot of empty space in the middle, but there are still a lot of people out here, and we still deserve the best that we can have.”
The election is being held on May 3.
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See more about the race in Parkes here