The four local women’s clubs give the excuse they’ve got full squads, or won’t give her a reason at all.

In an outback town known for the power of its mining union to isolate and break those who separate from the pack, Kirsti, 51, a local cab driver, and her girlfriend, Nikki Phillips, 37, a born-and-bred local AFL star, know what it means to be blackballed.

It goes back to 2013, when Kirsti, a former prison warden, took to the field for the South Broken Hill Roos. She felt accepted by Souths, until they played the North Broken Hill Bulldogs at Jubilee Oval.

“Things were said on the field,” says Kirsti. “One player in particular kept saying, ‘Show me your c**k’. I kept hearing it in the background. It was, ‘Don’t tackle that thing, you’ll gets AIDs.’ It was coming from both on and off the field.”

Kirsti did a radio interview about the vilification. “The shit hit the fan,” she says.

“Instead of supporting me, I was pulled aside and told, ‘If you open your mouth you won’t play another game of football, and you’re out of this town.’ “I broke down in tears. I couldn’t play that game.”

Her roof was rocked and she was trolled.

Broken Hill is famous for Mad Max and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, which has a scene where the three drag queens wake up to find their bus emblazoned: “AIDS F**KERS GO HOME.”

Kirsti’s sledders were proof positive of the fictional truth of “Priscilla”, perhaps the most emblematic free-to-be film ever made.

OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCE

AS A YOUNG man in Wagga Wagga, Warren Miller travelled the world representing Australia in modern pentathlon, played first grade for Wagga Brothers and was inducted into the Wagga Wagga Sporting Hall of Fame.

At the age of three, Kirsti was put in a yellow dress and held up by her father while people laughed.

“I was thinking, ‘Why are they laughing? I should be in this dress,’” she says. “I had a recurring nightmare that I was wearing a dress and people were laughing at me. Even though it was a nightmare, I didn’t want to wake up from it because at least I was a girl in that dream.”

Warren suppressed his feelings, married and had three daughters.

In the prisons he worked with brutal men, including granny killer Wayne John Glover, the Fernando cousins who killed nurse Sandra Hoare, Anita Cobby killers Michael Murphy and Raymond John Travers, and Ivan Milat (“Nothing behind his eyes — he’s dead inside”).

In Cooma, where Warren lived on-site with his wife and daughters, guarding NSW’s worst paedophiles, he knocked the four front teeth out of a man who taunted him that he was eyeballing on one Warren’s children from a prison workshop.

Warren was a tough screw — but nothing was as hard as revealing his true self to his wife.

He wrote an 11-page letter and sat beside her as she read it. It was shocking news, but she would teach Warren how to apply make-up. His daughters accepted him immediately, and chose his name Kirsti Brooke Miller.

One day she dressed as a woman and went to work, where she felt accepted by prison hierarchy and prisoners. She had gender reassignment therapy, in Thailand, in 2006 and is now a legally acknowledged woman.

Kirsti these days drives a Yellow Cab in Broken Hill, always mindful that some people could take issue with her “trannie” status. But she says people are generally good to her and even the tough guys give her respect.

Then we witness something happen that rattles Kirsti.

Photographer Matt Turner wants to shoot a portrait showing Kirsti as a cab driver. In the Palace Hotel, where we’re staying and scenes from “Priscilla” were shot, I notice three drag queens, decked out in full high-hair regalia after a gig.

I tell them it would be great to do a shot of them getting in Kirsti’s cab. One immediately agrees. Another asks me to leave so they can discuss it. Then they explain they can’t do it.

They say it’s a “small town” and that Kirsti’s story is “too controversial”. One of them gives Kirsti her apologies in person. But she tells Kirsti: “Darling, we’d love to have you in our show.”

Kirsti is not a drag queen. She doesn’t even feel right in women’s clothing.

Her sexuality is not something she can undo; it’s not a performance but a fact of life.

There would be some tears that night.

SMALL TOWN TRIBULATIONS

IT WAS to be expected that some of the women’s teams would be concerned that Kirsti, born a man, would have an unfair advantage on the field.

But having been chemically castrated to kill the testosterone, and then getting oestrogen to increase her female side, she remains agile and deft, but her male characteristics are gone.

“Genetically born girls produce testosterone naturally,” she says. “I don’t. So I am at a disadvantage. I was a strong person as a male. My partner Nikki is far stronger and quicker than me.”

Since 2003, the International Olympic Committee has ruled people such as Kirsti can compete. The NSW-ACT AFL guidelines state clubs “must facilitate the participation by Transgender persons in Australian football with the gender with which they identify”.

“I am a woman,” Kirsti says. “I cannot play as a male — that’s illegal. If I go to jail, I have to go to a female jail. If I marry, it has to be a man. I’m not the biggest or strongest woman in the Broken Hill comp.”

After the 2013 vilification, NSW-ACT AFL’s then general manager, former Geelong captain Tom Harley and former Swans star Craig Bolton ran a confidential mediation session.

Harley issued a statement saying Kirsti had been vilified and demanded she be treated with respect.

Harley stated: “Kirsti Miller is passionate about Australian football and deserves every opportunity to play.” But the AFL could not force any club to accept the registration of a player. She has not played since.

News Corp has sighted the latest round of 2016 rejection letters and SMS messages from the clubs, declining Kirsti’s and Nikki’s memberships.

Peter Nash, chairman of the Broken Hill AFL, did not respond to inquiries. Two of the four clubs gave a “no comment”, while the others told News Corp they had full squads.

So what’s it really about?

Kirsti has heard rumours that “something” happened involving her leering at girls in the locker room; or that she flattened someone during play.

“I never gave away one 50-metre free kick,” she says. “But people think I’ve done something.”

Kirsti’s partner, Nikki, who has stopped playing in solidarity with Kirsti, says the reasons are plain: “It’s definitely vilification. I think at least two teams are looking for players this year.”

The couple is considering moving to another town, and they’d be welcome given the flourishing women’s AFL scene. But they want to play in Broken Hill.

“The social fabric of any country town revolves around its sporting teams,” says Kirsti. “We can’t get married in this f**king country, but we do want to run on to a field together.”

“AFL is not going to reach equality until a gay man goes from the down low to the Brownlow, and somebody says, ‘Gee, his partner looks nice in that suit.’”