It's a scorching hot day at the tail-end of the 1970s in a Queensland mining town.
A skinny young Pat Rafter hurtles barefoot along the molten asphalt without even a wince.
He's led a remarkably unshod existence up to this point, and the soles of his feet are ensconced within a protective layer of heat-hardened skin.
The half-pint human dynamo is beating a well-worn path to the tennis courts down the road, and a bit of liquefied tar is not going to stand in his way.
Life in Mount Isa is simple for the future grand slam champion, even if his tenure there is short-lived.
"I do remember running along the bitumen … in bare feet, no worries," Rafter says.
"I remember being able to walk across bindies no worries as well.
"Everything got pretty tough there."
Home sweet home
These days, Mount Isa is the mining capital of north-west Queensland, with 20,000 or so residents perched on the banks of the Leichhardt River.
The temperature regularly peaks into the 40s, and a denture-rattling blast is detonated in the underground copper mine twice a day when the clock strikes eight, or thereabouts.
Residents frequently get their blood tested for lead exposure due to the smoke belching from the smelter stack, and it's home to the country's biggest, baddest rodeo.
The Isa has become a bona fide city in the hundred years since prospector John Campbell Miles discovered one of the world's richest zinc-lead seams, staked out a hunk of dirt and named it after his dear sister, Isabelle.
It used to claim the title of the world's biggest city in terms of geography — larger than Belgium and Lebanon combined, with a mighty 43,310 square-kilometre span of mineral-rich land mass — although Sermersooq in Greenland now wears that crown.
For a young Pat Rafter, it was just home.
"We just ran around and played sport every weekend," he recalls.
"The courts were a couple of hundred metres down the road from the house, and I'd often go run down and look for someone to [have a] hit.
"Some older brothers all played, my father used to help sponsor the tennis tournament there.
"Tennis was part of our lives, but tennis was a part of a lot of country people's lives."
His parents Jim and Jocelyn shifted to Mount Isa in 1964 after Jim found work as an accountant for the mines.
It took 17 years and almost a footy team of offspring before the Rafters set off for the comparative razzle and dazzle of the Sunshine Coast, leaving Mount Isa in the rear-vision mirror just before Rafter's eighth birthday.
But there was already a family connection to the region long before this latest batch of Rafters started scuffing up from the red dirt.
Patrick was named after his paternal grandfather, a police constable at the neighbouring town of Cloncurry — and Jim was a 'Curry boy as well.
Cramped but content
Life in Mount Isa was a free-range existence by today's standards, which makes sense given Rafter was one of 10 children — including his younger brother James, who was stillborn in 1979.
Carving out space for the whole platoon was a task in itself, and Rafter says there was something of a rotational system at play.
As one older sibling flew the coop for schooling in Brisbane, another would invariably be born to fill the vacancy.
Rafter recalls seven kids living together under one roof.
"I think we had a three-bedroom house," he says.
"Four brothers in one room … and three sisters in the other room."
They were cramped, but content.
"I think with most children, it is what it is in front of you, and you don't really second-guess it," Rafter says.
"You get about your business and you do your thing regardless of where you live.
"My first plane trip might not have been until I was 12 or 13 — very different to our children these days.
"But that's the way it was and it didn't matter."
The two-time US Open winner has rarely returned to Mount Isa since childhood.
He rolled back into town once for an Australian of the Year campaign in 2002, and again in 2016.
"My younger brother was buried [in Mount Isa], so I went and visited the site," he says.
"I hadn't been back since he was buried there when I was five years old."
The prodigal son
Rafter was just a primary-schooler when his family left Mount Isa in pursuit of sporting opportunities in the big smoke down south.
Tennis had been an important part of life up to that point, but so had soccer, and he was still of that magical age when chucking skids on pushbikes, skimming rocks and devouring lollies are usually a boy's top priorities.
His brothers were die-hard rugby league players — and Rafter says the whole town went hog wild when the bandy-legged bull riders swaggered in from the stations for the rodeo.
"Mount Isa always had something going on, or it felt like it anyway," he says.
"Maybe it was just because I was one of 10 kids, maybe it was always chaotic."
Rafter still remembers the rough location of his childhood home when he came back to the Isa in 2002, tracing his way to the front door via the local tennis courts.
The awkwardness of that encounter speaks to Rafter's humility.
"I went and knocked on the door," he says.
"There were a few parts of the house and the property that I remember, and I would have been interested to have a look around, but I didn't know how to ask."
Rafter wound up leaving without getting a tour of his old home, although one would almost certainly have been granted had he only asked – and a pang of embarrassment is still evident two decades later.
"I don't know what I was doing actually … I don't know why I knocked on the door," he says.
Birthplace of champions
Anyone who drives into Mount Isa these days is greeted by a welcome sign declaring it the "birthplace of champions".
A photo of acclaimed didgeridoo player William Barton is up there alongside former NRL halfback Scotty Prince, actor Deborah Mailman, retired AFL midfielder Simon Black and golfing great Greg "The Shark" Norman.
Rafter rounds out the parochial brag board — and that pride of place and person is a two-way street.
The soft-spoken sportsman got a kick out of seeing "Mount Isa" plastered after his name on the big screen at tournaments like the US Open.
"I actually used to enjoy that, it was pretty funny," he says.
"It was great, I had a big family, I had a lot of friends.
"We just ran around and did what we had to do, and I didn't know much about the outside world.
"Things were definitely different back in those days."
Bricks, mortar and memories
Rafter starts to chuckle as an old memory springs back to life.
"I do remember getting chucked out of the movie cinema once too," he starts.
"We all used to throw the tops off our drinks around.
"Anyway, I was a little fella, I got pulled out of Empire Strikes Back – Star Wars."
The seven-year-old was frogmarched out of the biggest film of the year with tears streaming down his cheeks.
He sat in utter anguish until the projector was paused for intermission and the audience started ambling out of the cinema.
"My brother saw me … he said, 'What are you doing out here?'" Rafter says.
"I was just crying outside so he picked me up and said, 'Come on, back in with me.'
"That's just the way it rolled."
It's a land of big characters and even bigger sunsets, and it will always be Rafter's first home.
"I have great memories of Mount Isa, it was a big part of my life," he says.
"Whether it toughened me up or not I don' t know.
"But it still has memories that I look back very fondly on."
