For Keith Connolly: 'But he was OUR old codger', by son Rohan Connolly - 2005

23 December 2005, Astor Theatre, St Kilda, Melbourne, Australia

I’m sure it’s pretty obvious to most of you by now, if it wasn’t already, that Keith Connolly was a name that meant very different things to different people.

You’ve had a glimpse of the young man, the political activist, the journalist, film buff. Now, as Keith’s youngest son, it’s my duty to fill you in on Keith Connolly, the Silly Old Bugger.

It’s fair to say Dad wasn’t the world’s most practical man. A towering intellect he most certainly was, a towering handyman, perhaps not. Dad could pop up to his well-stocked reference library and give the answers you needed to practically any question in a flash, but he was never likely any day soon to pop down to the tool shed to whip up a spice rack.

So good was Dad at being impractical, in fact, he might well have “clumsied” for Australia had it been a sport. Check your Commonwealth Games guides. It probably is.

Mind you, it never curbed his attempts to prove otherwise, particularly in the kitchen. In fact, dad was ahead of his time in many ways, especially when it came to culinary enthusiasms. He developed an evangelistic-like fervour about a short-lived eating utensil fad of the 1970s, the splade.

You might remember, it was supposed to be both a fork and spoon, but actually didn’t do either job very well. Perhaps that impracticality was the attraction, but I know for some years you’d get a scornful look from Dad if you ever dared hand him a mere fork!

He was very impressed with the brand new pizza cutter he brought home one day. So impressed that after several weeks constant use, the rest of us felt like we’d been living at Toto’s. There was his obsession for a time with marinading, with an accompanying basting brush. Even Dad realized he’d had gone too far the day, brush in hand, he stood over a large pot of soup looking completely perplexed.

For several years, as the last child left at home, with Mum traveling regularly overseas with her tour groups, Dad and I had just each other for company at 28 The Avenue. They were times which forged the very strong bond between us, much of that bonding done as we labored together to remove the black muck from the bottom of the burnt saucepan, or mopping up the laundry after he’d put a load of washing on and left the plug in the sink again.

By the time I started work on The Sun News-Pictorial, with dad working just 20 metres down the open office floor on The Herald, I knew what to expect. It was shortly after computers had replaced typewriters in the newsroom. Dad would regularly take that familiar-looking walk down the room to Sun sport to ask me how to clear his screen or log-on yet again.

The bloke who passed for an IT department in those days watched this scene repeatedly, both appalled and fascinated. One day he couldn’t take it any more. He sidled over to me as dad shuffled off and asked: “Who is that old codger?” To which my response was: “….. umm, ahh…..oh yeah, that’s my dad.” …. And yes, he is.”

But he was OUR old codger. And we, and anyone else who bothered to know anything of the man, realised the brilliance of the mind and decency of spirit in the heart beneath that obviously cunningly-crafted physical veneer of practical incompetence.

As a teenager, my friends certainly used to think Dad was pretty cool for an old bloke with silver hair and a walking stick. Particularly so after they learned that his role on the Film Censorship Board of Review basically consisted of being flown to Sydney every fortnight to watch porno movies.

He only told them because he’d caught a late flight home one night after another board meeting, stuck his head in the loungeroom door and sprung my mates and I watching the sort of movie that 18-year-old boys watch. If my friends expected outrage, they were sadly disappointed: “Dads weary response was: “Oh god, not again’”.

Of course, I’m most grateful to Dad for having instilled in me a love of both journalism and sport. I can still remember being taken to film previews in the city by dad, and going into The Herald office beforehand, where the exciting atmosphere of a busy newsroom and papers going to press got me well and truly hooked.

Dad never pushed it at me, but was always eager to help me learn what I wanted and needed to know about the industry. He was and remained to the end my own personal sub-editor, his mastery of the language and quick mind giving me that elusive intro with deadline fast approaching more times than I care to remember.

Sport is where Dad, metaphorically speaking, let it all hang out. In five years sharing office space with him, I lost count of the number of times people said to me: “I can’t believe Keith is your father”. To which my response was invariably: “You haven’t watched the football with him.”

Dad loved Essendon, but hated Collingwood with equal ferocity. I still remember coming home from the 1981 grand final to find him looking relieved but somewhat chastened, large pieces of what had once been a coffee mug scattered around the television set.

Sure, Carlton had once again thankfully denied Collingwood a premiership, but the Magpies had been 21 points up late in the third quarter. It was Mark Williams’ right-foot snap which had inflicted the killer blow on the china, dad mumbled apologetically.

Cricket was just as big, if not an even bigger passion, the game’s healthy literary tradition simply allowing him to combine two great loves in one, our bookshelves always jammed with the writings of Neville Cardus and a burgeoning set of Wisden Cricket Almanacs.

Dad took me to some form of cricket, be it a Test match, Shield game or even a district game at the Albert Ground, countless summer weekends in my youth. He took me to my first game of VFL football, many more, and was a regular at Essendon games in his reserved seat until only a few years ago.

I was always amused by dad’s “thing” about Kevin Sheedy. I really do believe that they in fact had plenty in common, namely endurance, and courage under duress. And, yes, each could waffle on at times. I’m really sorry I never got the pair of them together. It might have finished days, several dozen bottles of red and several hundred tangents later, but by Christ it would have been an interesting conversation.

As was any conversation involving Keith Connolly. Yeah, sure, he couldn’t change a washer, or even re-light the pilot on the gas hot water system, for that matter. But he was still the smartest, most thoughtful and decent Silly Old Bugger I’ve come across.

Goodbye Dad. This Silly Younger Bugger wants you to know how much he loved you, how proud he was to have been your son, and like so many of us here today, how privileged he feels simply to have known you.

For Jo Connolly: 'She could do it all, really', by son Rohan Connolly - 2023

16 July 2023, The Avenue, East Malvern, Melbourne, Australia

So you’ve heard about Jo Connolly’s political life and you’ve heard about her travel adventures. It’s my task today to tell you a bit about the other bit of her life, the more domestic part.

But if you thought that was just another way of saying more mundane, you’d be very wrong. Because nothing mum did or anything with which she engaged was ever mundane.

Mum had had to grow up quickly looking after four kids by the time she was 28. By the time I, the youngest, was a little kid, she had the whole motherhood thing down pat. She could do it in her sleep, effortlessly and successfully.

And so the routine that goes with helping little ones grow needed a bit of spicing up to keep both of us interested. And she loved that. She was incredibly resourceful, a legacy of growing up herself in a difficult time when people had to make do with very little.

All manner of household objects could be fashioned into toys by her capable hands. And her very capable mind could come up with all sorts of little games which served not only to educate but to entertain.

I remember vividly the times spent with her at home when I was three or four years old learning to read, to write, and to think. So good a teacher was she that by the time I started kindergarten I already felt ready to take on HSC.

And I reckon even then I could rattle off who’d won the VFL premiership in which year from 1897 onwards. It was mum, and dad of course, who fostered that love of learning for which all four of us Connolly kids remained ever grateful.

And look, let’s be honest, she wasn’t above a little sly indoctrination to go with that education, either.

Like probably became a little clear one day at home here in the early ‘70s, when mum asked a 10 or 11-year-old Linda if she could pop down to the milk bar and pick her up some chocolate, her parting words as her young daughter walked out of the house: “But not Cadbury”.

Linda duly passed this information on to the milk bar owner, who understandably then asked: “Why not Cadbury?” Even at that age, Linda knew instinctively there must be sound political reasoning, so responded with what (to us at least) would have seemed obvious. “Because they exploit the peanut pickers of third world countries”.

Upon arrival at home, almost as an afterthought, Linda checked again that she had the right cause. “So why couldn’t I get Cadbury?” she asked. “It’s too sweet,” said mum without batting an eyelid, clearly thinking wrong reason, right motive.

Mum was so smitten by South America and its culture that when she returned from that first six-month trip she had literally suitcases full of clothes from the region she’d bought for us and wanted us to wear, alpaca jumpers, ponchos, headbands.

I remember being taken along on a visit to some family friends so completely wrapped up in Latin American dress I felt like I was about five seconds away from being called Rafael instead of Rohan and being made to learn the pan flute every day after school. Not for the first or last time, I pushed back. But even then I recognized it was all out of Mum’s enthusiasm for different things, different cultures and different people.

That benefitted all of us, particularly me. Mum’s connection with the local Chilean community led to me playing soccer for South Yarra for several years with a team of Chilean kids. They were all very gifted at the game. I was far less-skilled but the bigger body they needed in defence.

It worked out well. Mum got to mingle with the Chilenos while I played, we had plenty of success, and I also got my first girlfriend, a sister of one our team members. I also nearly got the living suitcase belted out of me one day when were playing a Croatian team and things got willing between groups of spectators.

After we’d won the game and insults were exchanged, my impetuous 15yo sensibilities took over and I rolled down mum’s car window as we drove off to scream: “You’re a pack of fascist pricks”.

I thought mum would be proud of me, but it wasn’t really the case as we were chased up Springvale Rd by two carloads of rather pissed off Croatians who ended up blocking us in in the middle of a busy intersection.

It was about the one time I saw Mum’s sense of self-preservation overtake her maternal instincts as a group of angry young men started hammering on Mum’s car. “It wasn’t me, it was him,” she pleaded. Thanks mum.

Then there was the time in 1989 we were all very anxious when mum had taken a tour group to China and been in Tiananmen Square literally hours before the infamous events which unfolded there. Dad was doing long days at the Melbourne Film Festival in his role as film critic for The Herald, and so had set up an answering machine (this was pre mobile phones of course) as we crossed fingers we’d hear from Mum soon.

Dad, noted for his fierce intellect, but never for his brevity, had recorded a perhaps overly-detailed message for playback in which among other things, he talked about that year’s Ashes series in England, in which we were doing particularly well.

It’s fair to say Mum was a little short on time, money and patience when she was able to finally make contact days later. So when concerned patrons at the Film Festival asked Dad whether Mum was OK, he was able to respond: “Yes, she rang from the deepest recesses of the Mongolian desert to tell me that she was OK, and that I’m a fuckwit.”

Those here who follow football will know that unlike Dad, who had renounced his West Australian football heritage and become an enthusiastic Essendon supporter, something he instilled in all of us, mum resolutely refused to fall in line, waiting instead until the West Coast Eagles entered the competition in 1987 to get on board the football bandwagon.

Like all WA footy fans, mum did a beautiful line in conspiracy theory about the eastern states. Any reversals for West Coast were always obviously a result of biased umpiring or all that travel they had to do.

Mum’s loyalty to her home state was rewarded though, the Eagles having won four AFL flags over the journey. Until this year, anyway when the bottom of the ladder side started to stink it up like few teams previously.

In fact, and I hope this doesn’t sound too macabre, but I think Mum knew what was coming when she checked out, because in the first two games after she died, West Coast lost to Adelaide by 122 points, then Sydney by an incredible 171 points, the fourth highest margin in footy history.

Mum, if you’re listening to this, no, I don’t think with some fairer umpiring they might have cut that losing margin to under three figures, but nice try.

The other perversely serendipitous thing about the timing of Mum’s passing is that it happened so close to the sad loss of her lifelong best friend Liz Milne, whose sons Peter and David are here today, and thanks so much for coming guys.

They’d met when mum took me to kindergarten in 1969 and they simply loved each other’s company, as much at the end as when they’d first met and incredibly, in seven different decades. When Linda rang to tell me mum had had a stroke, only weeks after Liz had one and passed away, the first thing I thought was: “She’s gone out in sympathy”. A very loyal and a very mum thing to do.

I grumbled about how often mum was away when I was a kid, but boy did she step up to the plate when Lucia and I had our own kids, Andrea and David.

My brother Steve died just six months before our daughter Andrea was born 11 weeks prematurely in late 1995, another major trauma to deal with. But Mum’s resilience won the day and her care and support for our baby was something to behold.

It was repeated six or so years later when David was born even more prematurely. I know both of them remember very fondly the very special relationship they shared with their grandma, and the time they spent in this house in her care when either parent was working or otherwise engaged.

I know I lost count of the number of times I’d pick Andrea and David up to be regaled by some fascinating new fact they’d learned from their grandma, be it about history, geography, the arts, music, you name it.

Lucia and I are very proud of our wonderful kids and we know that mum has played a part too in making them the fine young adults they are today.

She could do it all, really. Play the political firebrand, the intrepid traveller, and yes, be a mum and a grandma, all with equal aplomb. Oh yeah, just thought of something, she was pretty damn good at Scrabble, too.

Mum, on behalf of us all, thank you so much. You touched the lives of everyone here in different ways, and we’re all grateful for it. I’m sorry though, no matter how much I love you, you’re never going to see me caught wearing a bloody poncho!

For Amanda Brotchie: 'Goodbye, my beautiful girl', by husband Adam Zwar - 2026

5 January 2026, St Kilda RSL, Melbourne, Australia

On the afternoon of June 2, 2002, I was happy. There was no reason to be, and I’m not usually an optimistic person, so it felt great, but strange. The St Kilda Film Festival Awards were that night, and I’d already been told we hadn’t won because one of the judges had very much hated our short film Wilfred. And yet there I was, bouncing around that apartment.

That night, I arrived at the Palace Cinemas in St Kilda, took my seat, and seconds later, a woman sat down eight seats away. A minute passed. For no real reason, I leaned forward and looked down the row at her at the exact moment she leaned forward and looked back at me. In her memory of the event, she felt it was a serendipitous connection between two people. Whereas all I remember was – “Oh no, I’ve been caught checking her out”.

At the afterparty, the woman came up to me and said she was disappointed that Wilfred hadn’t won Best Comedy. She said her name was Amanda, and I asked her if I could buy her a drink. I was surprised she said “Yes.” A little later, she excused herself to talk to other people, and as she walked away, I remember thinking: That’s her. That’s the one. Dad always said, “Son, when you know, you know.” But Dad also gave Christopher Skase a reference, saying he was a fit and proper person to buy Channel Seven – so I took that rule with a grain of salt. But here I was – I knew. And I knew.

I tracked her down later and asked if I could buy her another drink. Again, she said, “Yes.” Again, I was surprised. There was another guy also interested in her that night. He asked for her number under the guise of organising a card game, which is Amanda’s weakness– she loves games nights. And, as she gave him her number, I was nearby, watching on, thinking – “There’s gonna be no card night, mate. No card night.” There was no card night.

Amanda and I went home to her place to watch the Big Brother finale, which she had taped. After that, we talked and talked. And for some reason, the conversation got onto cricket, and she correctly named the Australian batting order for the 80/81 series against India, which, of course, meant we would have to move in together. Later, she would tell me that when I hugged her goodbye, she said she felt “home”. I felt the same.

We moved in together within six weeks, and I lived to impress her. In those early days, we would lie in bed in the dark, chatting until very late, and I would try to make her laugh. And when one of my jokes didn’t get the requisite vocal response, I would lean over and touch her cheek to see if she was at least smiling. If she wasn’t – that simple act ensured she did. It sounds creepy and manipulative now I’m saying it out loud – but it was lovingly creepy and manipulative.

When I first proposed to her, she said something along the lines of “Wow, that’s a big step.” Now, an emotionally mature person would’ve responded by saying – “That’s completely fine. You take as much time as you want. I’ll be here when you’re ready.” But, I said: “No, don’t worry about it then!! I’m sorry I asked!!!”

I didn’t propose again until there was assurance – probably in writing – and notarised – that she would say “Yes”.

When we got back from our honeymoon, she acknowledged that an unwelcome pattern had emerged in her directing career. She would work with the writer on their scripts. (And by the way, her script editing always made scripts soar beyond their potential.) Then, just as the film was about to be financed, the producers would decide to replace her with a mediocre man, who no one would ever hear from again. And if we did hear from them again, it’s because they were selling duplexes in Parramatta. This was the playing field for Australian female directors in the late ‘90s, early 2000s. Even if they’d won an AFI award, as Amanda had. But she never held grudges. In our household, I ran the office in charge of grudges. It was an efficient operation. Particularly, when it came to anyone who’d wronged her. The receipts were logged and noted.

Sometimes I would bring up the slights others had inflicted on her. And she’d say, “Oh that. I’d forgotten about that. Can’t you let it go?” And I’d say, “No. I’m German, babe. This is what my people do.”

So, with her directing career in a quiet period, Amanda decided to return to Uni to pursue a PhD in linguistics, where she would live on a remote island in Vanuatu, creating a writing system and grammar for a language that had never been written down before, and then analysing its narrative structure.

To do this, she would need to learn Bislama – the lingua franca of Vanuatu – so she could communicate with the people about the language they were trying to preserve – and she would live in a hut in an isolated village for five months with one tap, malaria and 10,000 giant centipedes. If one of the centipedes stung you, the pain sensation was similar to a hot needle repeatedly stabbing you in the arm for three hours.

When Amanda told me of the plan, I remember being confused about why she was doing it. But I was looking at it from my point of view. What I hadn’t quite got my head around was that I’d married an adventurer. This was her métier. She loved it. She loved the challenge, the new experiences, the sleeping in the jungle. Whereas I love a concierge and a turndown service.

Before she left, I gave her a handmade book filled with blank pages for her to write a diary of her adventure. I have that diary at home. About a quarter of the way through, she writes about me visiting the island and describes me getting off the plane and looking “smaller than she remembered.” Which is not the compliment it sounds like.

When she returned home, we wrote the TV show Lowdown while she finished her PhD. I have memories of her sitting at her computer, her whole torso shaking with laughter. That generally meant she wasn’t writing the PhD. She was writing Lowdown, or more particularly, the character of Alex, which she used to exorcise everything that frustrated her about me.

Amanda loved learning. She was always curious. And honoured every challenge with a thoroughness and attention to detail. As Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies said of her: “She was bright and sharp and kind and questioning and always determined to make things better, better, better. Ooh, she could be beady, peering at the script, niggling away at something… until we all realised she was right! God, we adored her.”

Her perfectionism wasn’t pervasive. It was a happy perfectionism that got the job done.

That’s why not getting pregnant confounded her. We went on an Odyssean journey to get pregnant. Miscarriages, IVF, donor eggs. Finally, we decided to move to the US to adopt. We were matched with a birth mother through an agency. Met her in Florida. Flew her to LA. Paid for her medical expenses. Amanda took her under her wing, looked after her cat, and made her life blissful. The woman had the baby. She gave it to us. We were parents for two days, and then the woman decided she wanted the baby back. We were gutted.

But after spending a week on the couch, crying, fate intervened, and Amanda’s directing career took off. First, she directed Girlboss for Kay Cannon, then Picnic at Hanging Rock, A Place to Call Home, How to Stay Married, Squinters, and The Letdown with her friends Sarah and Al. After that, England and Sally Wainwright came calling with Gentleman Jack, Renegade Nell and Riot Women, and then Russell T. Davies tapped her for Doctor Who.

Amanda suffered from depression. She went through a lot of hardship. She pulled herself out of it with meditation, structure, and Wordle. And she was so happy in the final 5 years of her life. She loved her job. She loved her friends and family. She was so proud of her nieces Taylor and Brit. And nephew Cody. She said they were like oxygen to her. And then there was her sister, Rebecca. Rebecca was Amanda’s rock. The Dean Martin to Amanda’s Jerry Lewis. No matter where Amanda flew in her life - physically or emotionally - Bec and her husband, Daryl, were her safety net - they were there with emotional support, a bed, excellent advice, and sometimes a truck to carry stuff.

There was her pharmacist father, Norman, whose precision, sense of style and love of cricket she admired and inherited. And then there was her mother, Joy, actress and director. As a female director, she cracked the glass ceiling so Amanda could soar.

Some quick facts: Amanda had an otherworldly sense of smell – that she could also use to detect bullshit. She never called it out directly. Instead, she’d ask calm, reasonable questions, gently backing liars into a corner like a sweet, five-foot-three Perry Mason, until they either told the truth or burst into tears.

She never put down anyone’s creative output; she’d just refer to things as “not being her cup of tea,” which, coming from her, was devastating. She had a profound sense of justice. She liked things to be symmetrical. And she had an extraordinary ability to make people feel seen.

Amanda smiled at me whenever I walked into any room she was in. A smile that never stopped taking my breath away. Even when she was very sick, she would smile whenever I turned up. A few months ago, I thanked her for doing that and told her how much it meant to me. I’m not sure she was aware she even did it. The honour of having that in your life - the agony of it being taken away.

So here we find ourselves in an Amanda-less physical world. That smile, that laugh, that wit, and that unflappable happiness are no longer here.

And when I say unflappable. Not even dying rocked her. Five days before she took her last breath, the palliative care doctor told her, “Unfortunately, all we can do now is make you comfortable.” Amanda said, “Not unfortunately. I’ve had a great life. And now I’m getting ready for the next adventure.” The author Bradley Trevor Greive said it best when he called Amanda: “A deeply serious thinker. Slight of frame, huge of heart, she bent light with her gaze and held countless worlds inside her mind.”

On her last night of being conscious, she said she was so happy and so grateful. And here we are - so grateful and sad. Sweetheart, if there is an eternity, I will be looking for you throughout it. To find you and hold you again would mean everything to me. Goodbye, my beautiful girl.

For Philippa Ryan: 'Mum valued literature for the window it offered into people', by daughter Kate Ryan - 2024

20 March 2024, Carmelite Monastery, Kew, Melbourne, Australia

It’s no surprise that, as Jo mentioned, one of Mum’s first jobs was a reader’s advisor because she was a wide ranging and extremely open reader. Despite her genteel air, Mum was not put off by challenging subject matter. In the last few years, my son Rory recommended Irish writer Sally Rooney’s Normal People and she consumed this novel of young adult sexuality, depression and family violence with great attention. Only a few months ago she read Richard Flanagan’s Question 7, a memoir about the strands of chance and history that allowed for Flanagan’s birth, including his father’s experience as a slave labourer near Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped. For her 97th birthday my daughter Honor gave her the actor Gabriel Byrne’s Walking With Ghosts, a memoir of growing up poor in rural Ireland and discovering the transcendence of the stage, as well as revealing Byrne’s struggle with alcoholism and depression. Mum discussed the book in some detail with Honor, delighting in Byrne’s distinctive Irish voice, considering his personality, and admiring the lyricism of his language use.

Going back a bit, I remember Mum describing a family holiday at Dromana, where her adolescent protest and ennui was expressed in a sullen refusal to do anything except read War and Peace, even on the beach. She was fond of black humour in a book – a trait she shared with our father Maurice and passed onto all of us. In the last month of her life I lent her a book called O Caledonia by Scottish writer Elspeth Barker and though she did not have the strength to finish it, we talked about its brilliant sentences. And Mum was not bothered by the fact that, in the early pages, we learn that the heroine Janet was disliked by her parents, and fatally stabbed in a mouldering Scottish castle at the age of 16, an event which – believe it or not – is described with comic verve. Mum loved the characterisation of Janet’s nanny, a tough-as-nails Scot who had ‘a face like the north sea’. She was a big fan, too, of the William books by Richmal Crompton, a funny, ironic children’s series about a chaotic 11-year-old, leader of a gang called the Outlaws. Then there was Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, a black comic tale about a reluctant history academic steeped in alcohol and extra marital affairs.

Mum loved the anarchic energy of Edward Lear’s poem The Owl and the Pussycat, with its unlikely lovers dining on quince and slices of mince, which they ate with a runcible spoon.

And I remember her delight in reciting an A A Milne poem for children entitled King John’s Christmas, about a king who longs for Father Christmas to leave him a present, but appears unlikely to get one, because he is – apparently – very unlikeable.

The first line is the following: King John was not a good man, he had his little ways, and sometimes no one spoke to him for days and days and days.

Just what King John’s little ways are, is not illuminated, It is in this gap, but also the fact that Father Christmas does, ultimately, take pity on him and deliver one longed-for present - a great red India rubber ball bouncing through his open window at the eleventh hour - that provided the humour for Mum. Humour bound up with an awareness of human frailty and of our propensity for compassion. Frailty that we all have and compassion that we all try to find within ourselves.

Philippa Ryan was Readers' Advisor at the State Library of Victoria, 1950s

Mum valued literature not for its own sake, though perhaps for this too, but for the window it offered onto people. She liked to analyse and discuss each story I published in some little- read literary journal and each made its way onto the section of her bookshelf dedicated to me.

At the age of 95 she read my novel not once but twice, almost certainly the only reader to do so. She said she would discuss it fully after the second reading as she wanted to consider properly the book’s structure and themes. She also seems to have recommended it to everyone in her circle, including her podiatrist.

For many years she was in a book group with her sister Brenda and her great friends Kaye Cole and Faye Courson. Kaye, who was known for strong opinions, would sometimes dismiss a book with little compunction, but I don’t remember Mum ever doing so.

Such willingness to go where a book took her reflected her curiosity, her compassion, her profound interest in people and how they functioned in the world. Books mattered to her, not as an escape from the world but as a way to understand it and those who inhabited it.

In her last days her book pile included Andre Agassi’s Open (she was a big tennis fan), Edward St Aubyn’s novel Never Mind, Robyn Davidson’s memoir Unfinished Woman and Gabbie Stroud’s The Things that Matter Most, a novel about the trials and tribulations of a modern primary school, probably because she wanted to keep in touch with the day-to-day life of her grandson Finlay, who was embarking on a teaching career.

Just before she died I read Mum Tyger Tyger by William Blake, a poem I remember her reciting to me as a child.

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 
In the forests of the night; 
What immortal hand or eye, 
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

 In what distant deeps or skies. 
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

This seems fitting subject matter. For all her gentle qualities, Mum was a courageous woman who embraced the complexity of life. She was fascinated with the world for what it was – humorous, dark, wondrous, sometimes frightening and often complex – but always interesting.

I will miss her greatly.

For Grigory Kats: 'A long, adventurous and fruitful life', by grandson Alex Kats - 2025

2 September 2025, Melbourne, Australia

Eulogy commences at 4.36 in above video

My grandfather was a man of many contrasts, a complicated man, but also a man of principle, strong-willed, tough yet caring and devoted. He lived according to principles that he created for himself, dedicated the first part of his adulthood to providing for his family after living through episodes that no one should, and spent the second half of his life in a foreign land, but one that he quickly embraced and came to love.

He was also a man of many names. His full Russian name was Gri-gory Yefimovitch Kats, his Hebrew name was Gershon ben Chaim HaKohen, but the name most of his Russian friends and family called him was simply Grisha. In the army he was Officer Kats and later Captain Kats, in the Communist Party he was Comrade Kats, in Australia he was either Gregory or Mr Kats.

In his more than 99 years, he was many things to many people, but deep down he was a family man, the last survivor of his generation and very resilient, in more ways than one. His kids called him Papa, his grandkids called him Grandpa or sometimes the Russian equivalent, Deda, and his great grandkids also called him Grandpa. One example of his devotion to family was when my sister Rachel was just a baby, and we all lived with our grandparents whilst our mother was in hospital. One evening, my dad was working nightshift, grandma and my aunt were out, I was staying over at a friend’s, so it was up to grandpa to babysit the six-month old. But he had the sniffles and as the evening wore on, got significantly sicker. In his old style way, he hadn’t told anyone he was sick and didn’t want to infect the baby, so he didn’t allow himself to enter the baby’s room and had a very miserable few hours trying to comfort the child from another room whilst blowing his own nose and feeling sorry for himself. In spite of everything, he kept to his principles. I suspect his wife and daughter got an earful when they got home, but it is a story he told proudly because it is one that shows the man he had become – a family man of principle.

But it wasn’t always that way. He was born on 10 June 1926 in Uman, Ukraine, a town that has now become synonymous with Jewish pilgrimages. In those days it was mostly populated by pious Jews, and his was one such family. He was the seventh child in his family, though two had died before he was even born. His parents, Chaim and Chaya – whose names are both derived from the Hebrew word for life – were well known in town, with his father acting as the Shamash of their local shule. By the time he was born, his parents were more ready to become grandparents than parents again, and in fact, just months after Grigory was born, the eldest of the family, his sister Roza, gave birth to her own son and also became his wet nurse. For the first few years of his life, he thought his sister was his own mother. Though they walked across the street to visit his parents on a daily basis, he initially thought they were his grandparents.

By the time of Grigory’s birth, the family consisted of Itzhak, who was known at home as Alex and is the one I am named after, who was 11 years older than Grigory; Nakhum, who was 17 years older, Yaakov, who was 19 years older, and Roza, who was 21 at the time of his birth.

In almost every way, Grigory was not only the youngest in his family, but sometimes felt forgotten. He grew up with his nephew Dimitry, who was virtually his twin brother, and life was mostly idyllic in their little hamlet in a very Jewish part of town, but he never quite knew where he fit in or what his place in society was. What he did learn however was that he had to be resilient and fend for himself. As a 6 or 7 year old, he survived a Stalin imposed famine, after which the extended family was split up, and for Jewish life in the shtetls of Ukraine, it was the beginning of the end. His family, like so many others, simply walked out of a house and town they had lived in for generations and only took what they could carry. For his mother, that meant all the family’s Mezuzahs and other mostly Jewish heirlooms, but by the time they arrived in Moscow, Jewish practice for all of them except his mother, also fell by the wayside. So much so that when Grigory turned 13 in 1939, he didn’t even have a Bar Mitzvah because of the impending war.

He was however very adventurous and enterprising. When they first arrived in Moscow, he was still constantly hungry but easily made friends. He was also a natural leader, so one day he led his group of friends to the woods behind their neighbourhood where they found an old farmhouse, though it looked abandoned. They did however find a few large barrels filled with freshly picked mushrooms. For hours, they filled their stomachs with the fungi, and came back for the next few days until all the shrooms were consumed. But from that day on, he developed a lifelong distaste for mushrooms because every time he saw them, they reminded him of famine, starvation and poverty. He vowed then never to be in a situation where he would have to again beg for money or food, and developed his own version of a moral compass.   

Still in high school, he joined a pre-military academy, and one October day in 1941, after arriving at school, all the boys from his school, with just the clothes on their backs and their satchels in hand, were herded onto a train and taken north to Siberia. It would be more than a week before he could call home to tell his family where he was, and a few months before supplies arrived. They stayed there, in an abandoned coalmine till late 1944, undertaking schooling as well as military training, ready to be called up if and when required. But they were never required. Unlike others, in his time in Siberia he never got frostbite and didn’t even get sick. Sometimes he would pray to the god he no longer believed in to get sick, just so that he could end up in the warmth of the sick bay, but his prayers were in vain.

After school and after the war, he stayed in the army and went to Officer’s school, but on a brief visit back to his family home in Moscow in the summer of 1945, he discovered that only his mother, his sister with her family, and his brother Nachum had survived. Two brothers had been killed and his father had died just days earlier when he knew the war was finally over.

Grigory barely even had time to grieve because he literally had to leave the next day. One of his first postings as an Officer was to the town of Stanislav, later renamed Ivano Frankivsk, back in Ukraine. He rented an apartment and the Jewish landlady immediately took a liking to him. Apart from charging him a reduced rate, she kept asking if he was ready for a Shidduch because she was a matchmaker. He eventually agreed, and just weeks before his 20th birthday, he went on a date with Gizella Miller, known to everyone as Nina. She was from the Polish town of Yazlovetz, which is now part of Ukraine, and had come to Stanislav after the war. Within weeks they were living together, but his apartment was too small and she shared with members of her family, so Grigory, using all of his well-honed Chutzpah, negotiated his way to a small but nicely appointed one room apartment in a Jewish neighbourhood.

By April 1947, they were ready to get married, but with rabbis unavailable, synagogues closed and no money, they simply went to the registry office, brought along a Jewish couple from their building as witnesses, signed all the paperwork, had a L’Chaim afterwards, and with no fuss, then went back to work.

In December 1947 they welcomed the arrival of their son Yefim, also known as Chaim, named after Grigory’s father. Five and a bit years later, they had a daughter, whom they named Maya, after Nina’s father, Majer (pronounced Meir). For 17 years, Grigory had a career in the Russian Army, rising to the rank of Captain, and in that time, he and the family were stationed all over the country and even in Hungary for a time, following the revolution in that country. He even had a few near death experiences, but always pulled through unscathed, even when others around him got injured. He rose no higher than captain, in part because of insubordination. Though it wasn’t accidental or inadvertent defiance; he simply decided that some rules didn’t make sense to him so he refused to follow them. But he was very clever and cunning, using his Yiddishe Kop, to decide which rules he could get away with breaking. This was a trait that stayed with him his whole life.

In the army Grigory was briefly a weightlifter and generally very good at sport. He even at one point also coached a basketball team. For someone so short, he was always a big character and everyone obeyed him. This served him well in his next career move as the manager of an elite rowing academy. Part of his role was to arrange their training camps around the country, and to manage their international travel when they went abroad for European competitions. This is when he used his cunning and Chutzpah again, and on many occasions got much better deals for his teams than anyone had before. He sometimes even gave his teams days off to explore the sights of the towns they were in, which was virtually unheard of.

In the 1970s, after Nina’s brother had come to Australia and his son was making plans to also leave mother Russia, Grigory would have none of it because he was still a proud member of the Communist party, though he also know that Jewish life in Russia was not ideal and both he and his son had lost job opportunities because they were Jewish. So although he was very reluctant to leave when his son, daughter in law and baby grandson left Russia, a year later he was also finally convinced to leave.

Grigory, Nina and their daughter Maya arrived in Melbourne in April 1980. Less than half a year later, their second grandchild was born and soon after Grigory found a role as the manager of a poultry shop on Chapel Street owned by the Fleiszig family. It wasn’t a kosher shop and he didn’t care, but working for a Jewish family always gave him comfort. For us as grandkids, it was also fun to visit the shop, to have plenty of chicken and fresh eggs at home, and to see him being in charge. He never shied away from hard work and carried heavy boxes on a daily basis. But he also knew how to have a good time.

Using his Chutzpah again, with almost no money and broken English, he managed to convince a bank manager to grant him a home loan without a deposit, and that apartment in Elwood was the site of very many Russian Jewish gatherings. In fact, Grigory and Nina became known as the Russian Jewish matchmakers of Melbourne, whilst their home was sometimes called the little restaurant on Avoca Avenue, such were grandma’s cooking skills and grandpa’s hosting skills. We had many adventures there as kids, including most of our Jewish festival celebrations growing up. Grandpa wasn’t always too keen about them, but grandma insisted and he mostly knew when to keep his mouth shut. It also became the place where grandma especially doted on all her grandkids, including her new granddaughter who was born in late 1989. For all of us grandkids, our grandparents were always loving, supportive and very generous. I even lived at my grandparents’ home for some months in the early 90s.

Grigory meanwhile became a fan of nice cars, and every few years he bought a new one. They used that car, together with other couples, to travel around most of Australia, with their favourite destination being the Gold Coast. Grigory could do that drive from Melbourne in a day and a half, and loved soaking up the sunshine and the playing the pokies with friends. They often also drove to Echuca just for the day to play the pokies across the border in NSW. They never won too much, but the adventure of it always excited Grigory.

By the time they arrived in Australia, Grigory had completely forsaken his commitment to Communism. Their one and only overseas trip was to Israel in 1993. It was a dream come true for Nina and an eye opening experience for Grigory. Both of them loved the place but didn’t understand it. But for Grigory especially, that trip cemented his anti-Communism stance, so much so that he became a conservative voter.

He retired in 1998, just months before his beloved wife died. It is probably not a coincidence that she died on 27 August, and he died on 29 August, both within the Hebrew month of Elul. After her passing, he was never quite the same. On many occasions, he would say that he wished she was with him to enjoy their retirement together. He had two short-lived relationships in his later years, but it was clear he still missed his wife. He would also say, whenever we called and asked him how he was, now that he was alone, that he was “Still Alive.” That became his catchphrase, and even he would sometimes joke about it.

In many ways, although he retired from the army, the army never left him. He was always a pedant, extremely punctual, a resilient, determined and stubborn man, who said what he thought and usually didn’t concern himself with the repercussions of his words. As he aged, these traits became even more obvious. He didn’t have a lot of hobbies, but meeting his friends was one, and together they settled into a well-honed routine of going to his favourite coffee shop on Centre Road and having coffee and cake there every day at 11am. He was also a pessimistic optimist who believed he would survive to the next day, but just in case, went shopping every day whilst on Centre Rd and only bought what he need for tomorrow. One time, ahead of a public holiday, Rachel and I called him to ask if we could join him the following day for coffee. He loved the idea, but when we said we could be free from 10, he said, “Why 10? Coffee time is at 11.” 

The beginning of his own demise started with the death of his wife and increased significantly after the death of his daughter eight years ago. Just before that point he stopped driving and started to walk with a stick. He was physically and mentally much older, but remained fiercely independent, and even when we found carers for him to look after him at home, he rejected some of them – unsurprisingly all the male ones – because they didn’t conform to his standards. Even in the last few years, as his dementia increased and so did his falls, he still didn’t want to go into care and continued to have very strong views about the world. He also wanted to ensure that when the apartment he bought after grandma died was finally sold, that we would get the best value for it. Thinking about his family legacy was never far from his mind. At this point I want to publicly thank the carers and staff at Jewish Care who looked after him.

The family members that he liked and still recognised were the ones that he cared about right up to his final days. And those final days, though they came quickly in the end, there were at least five occasions between Covid and last week, when there were calls to say that he was on his final legs, but somehow his will to live was strong. Even just a couple of months ago, he repeated his commonly articulated phrase, that ‘It’s very hard to die.” And in his case it was certainly true. But in the end, once the palliative treatment began last Wednesday, on 27 August – the same date that grandma died – it only took two days. Now he has been reunited with his dear wife and they will be buried together in the double plot that he bought many years ago.

We were all blessed to have him in our lives for as long as we did, and he certainly led a long, adventurous and fruitful life, one that we will never forget and one that we will take great appreciation from.

Yehi Zichron Baruch – May his memory be a blessing

For Ian Mason: 'The funniest man I ever met', by John Allen - 2024

4 September 2024, Camberwell Grammar School, Melbourne, Australia

In preparing these reflections, a colleague said to me: 'Mase seemed to know everyone, and everyone knew Mase'.

That led me to recall a tale told by John Stafford, whose long life we celebrated recently. Staff loved this story, so as he is no longer here to tell it, shall narrate it in his memory.

Many years ago Staff was taking a Year 9 excursion to the Port of Melbourne. The plan was for the boys to board a cargo ship but this apparently was disallowed. Staff and his fellow teacher were immersed in discussion with the Port Authority while the boys were waiting, standing on the pier.

A boom came over their heads, Sitting on top of it was a wharfie (sporting a tattoo; something CGS boys would never have seen, as they were the precinct of seamen, wharfies and criminals which often constituted the same identity), singlet in the of colour blue, fag in the corner corner of his mouth. The boom stopped just over the boys' heads.

The wharfie called out, 'G'day boys. You're schoolboys aren't you? I was a schoolboy once. What youse doin' here?

The class nodded at this chap, a world away from Mont Albert  Road Canterbury, One lad apparently explaining that they were schoolboys and apparently not allowed on the boat, and teacher was discussing matters with the captain of the cargo ship.

'School boys', mused the grarled figure on the beam. ‘I  know a teacher. 'Funny  bloke. Likes a sip or two. His name’s Mason. Do you know Mason.’

‘Sure’ replied a boy , ‘He's a teacher at our school'.

'Bloody hell! Mason!'

The Wharfie stood up on his boom and cried out, "Hey Captain. Let the kids on board or we're all out!'

What we all appreciate is that that tale could not be told of any person here... but no-one here would for a moment doubt the veracity of that story, or be surprised that its subject was that magnetic personality, lan Mason.

Only once, during his student years at CGS, did my son, Andrew, ask if I could place him in a particular class. Having had !an as his Year 10 English teacher, he asked if he could go into his class in Year 12.

'Why?' I asked.

'Well, Andrew replied, 'He'll make me work really hard with no excuses... and he's the funniest man I've ever met.'

These two qualities exemplified lan. With the minimum of fuss, no-one worked harder than lan —there at his table in the common room, later at his desk when we have had offices, by 7.20 each morning. School holidays didn’t exist for Ian. He was there every day – assiduously correcting student work, which was always returned for the next class, writing text studies, preparing exercises and tests, tabulating results, editing Spectemur and The Camberwell Grammarian. Yes he worked hard and demanded others, whether they be students or staff, to do the same.

Following Tony Brown, I was Head of English for 26 years. I simply could not have managed that unwavering task without the support of lan. The English classrooms in the M block are duly named in his honour.

Yet it wasn't simply work that made Ian such an important figure in the school. Once in my early years as a teacher I was struggling sa to know how best to maange a difficult situation. ‘Ask Mase’  advised a colleague. ‘He knows more about boys than anyone else here.’ 

As for 'the funniest man I've ever met'. Well, where does one start? At times one recalls almost incidental moments. While lan would not allow anyone other than his students to enter his classroom, I was able to sneak in occasionally. Some of you will  remember, prior to the advent of photocopies we had a gestetnor machine, where one ran-off light yellow copies of faintly printed material which smelt of methylated spirits. I recall one occasion in my early years going into lan's classroom where the boys were busy doing a test.

One boy came out was a very faintly printed question paper and said, 'Mr. Mason, I'm having trouble reading this'.
'Well, replied, his teacher, with tongue-in-cheek, it is after all a comprehension test.'

We were teaching the Ancient Greek play Antigone, by Sophocles, I came into Ian’s classroom as he was giving the class a spelling test of Ancient Greek names. ‘Oedipus, Creon, Jocasta. Now the playwrights. Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Ponyrides.’

'Excuse me Mr Mason', queried one perplexed student. ‘Who was Ponyrides?'
"Oh,  hang on,"  said the teacher. I'm getting muddled. I looked at the
wrong list. These are the things I have to do with my daughter on the weekend, she likes horse riding. Pony Rides!’ Testing. Always testing, and creating hilarity in doing so. All of us here will have a catalogue of stories.

Together, lan and I were teachers of English at Camberwell Grammar School for 110 years. Hence I had the privilege of getting to know that veritable dynamo very well indeed. During that time he deeply enriched my life, as he did that of all present here this afternoon, together with thousands of students, staff and the extended family of Camberwell Grammar School and, yes, even the odd Wharfie.

Vale lan, dear friend.

.

For Rosalinda Wearne: 'She was never without a "plan"', by Suzette Wearne - 2023

6 September 2023, Mornington, Australia

While everyone who knew Mum knew she was a force of nature, few understand how she became that. So I want to tell you a bit about how Mum grew up.   

Rosalinda was born in 1948 in Dumaguete, a small city in the central islands of the Philippines. She wasn’t born in a hospital with doctors and midwives, but on a makeshift bed on the dirt floor of a bamboo shack that was her parents’ home. Valeriana, her mother, gave birth to 10 children that same way, including two sets of twins.  

When she was four, Valeriana sent Rose to live with her grandparents in the jungle outskirts of Dumaguete. This was so that Valeriana could cope with her other children, and newborn twins one of whom didn’t survive infancy.  

Mum loved telling us how she traipsed many miles of perilous mountain landscape to and from elementary school every weekday.  

Rosalinda is in the centre of frame

By her own account, Mum was a mischievous little girl. The childhood stories she told had the flavour of a Looney Toons episode set in the Third World. Let me give you an example:  

When she was seven years old, Mum was sitting atop a large carabao (water buffalo) in her grandfather’s rice field, by her own account shouting bossily at her cousins from a great height. Eventually one of Mum’s cousins had enough, and kicked the carabao hard on its rear, causing it to bolt. Mum fell off, landed on her head and passed out. 

On regaining consciousness, little Rose found herself alone in a vast rice patty, with no way to tell how long she had been unconscious other than the fact of the sun setting where it wasn’t before. In a brain scan Mum had in 2017, an area of damage consistent with this accident was discovered. Still it was a story Mum loved to tell, and it finished as all these stories did, with her rambunctious: ‘HA!’ 

Though Mum’s early life was one of great poverty, she never said a bad word of it. She didn’t once complain about the starvation, violence and grief that coloured her early years, and that left an indelible mark on her personality. The one thing Mum exaggerated was her good fortune. Despite being sent away from her mother several times in her formative years, or maybe because of this, she thought Valeriana hung the moon.  

Mum’s father Daniel was a complicated man who died very young in circumstances shocking enough to justify a memoir. Mum used to recall how he would sing to her when he came home drunk of an afternoon ‘Rosalinda, Rosalinda, you are my darling.’ Mum named her accidental third child after her Dad. 

It isn’t fashionable to say this but the religious fervour that has a stranglehold on the poorest parts of the Philippines gave Mum her fortitude, optimism and extremely generous nature. Mum’s Catholic faith shaped her very straightforward worldview. She loved God heaps. All of her life, In any argument, on any subject with any opponent, Mum believed she could establish dominance by citing from memory the books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, First and Second Samuel and so on. It was her ‘Checkmate’. 

In 1975, Mum was a seamstress altering clothes from the window of a rented dwelling in Davao when she first clapped eyes on a skinny 30-year-old Australian with a motorbike and a guitar and more than a passing resemblance to John Lennon. In Mum’s eyes this guy occupied a category above that of the world’s most famous rockstar: he was a catholic priest. 

However complicated their union was from the start, Mum and Dad cared for each other deeply. Their love knew no boundaries and it never went away. The first chapter of this love story was passionate and exciting, but also, because of Dad’s commitment to the church and the gossipy milieu in which they found each other, it was a secret. No one knew could know about Peter and Rose but Peter and Rose. 

In 1976 Mum and Dad’s romance was punctured by a pregnancy scare. It was bad timing because Peter had shortly beforehand arranged to return to Australia to convalesce after a stomach bug caused him to lose a huge amount of weight. Before leaving Mum’s side, Dad had asked her to please, when her period came, let him know that she wasn’t pregnant with a Telegram message only the two of them would understand, that wouldn’t give away their illicit love affair. That code was: ‘The Eagle has landed.’ 

 In 1976 Rose’s only way of communicating to Peter across the oceans was via Telegram. A Telegram was a message from one party to another typed out by a third party, that could be read by any number of postal workers. Like a Whatsapp message but with a total absence of privacy and a three-week delay. 

Three weeks went by before Peter received the Telegram, much anticipated albeit with an unexpected message: ‘Peter. The Eagle has not landed. I am PREGNANT. Rose.’ 

Perfect golden-skinned baby Philip Jerome Wearne was born in Cebu in October 1977. Peter and Rose married the following February.  In conversations about their future, Peter asked Rose if she would consider relocating permanently to Australia. He had not finished the question before Rose was zipping up her suitcase and marching to the consulate office, Visa application in hand.  

Always, Mum was on a forward trajectory that makes Bill Gates look lazy.  She was never without a—and this is a word I will forever associate with Mum—‘plan’. Most of her plans were realised because, let’s face it, most involved paving. When we arrived at Gascoyne Court, Frankston in 1990, our new home was a rustic, mid-century cedar-roofed house, embedded in dense native flora and glorious Eucalypts, at the end of a crushed rock driveway. Mum thought it was pangit ka-ayo. Ugly as fuck.  

She achieved dominion by paving every square inch of the front and back yard. To this day it is a monument to one woman’s belief in the potential of the humble brick.  

To save up for this, and of course to send material financial support to her beloved family in the Philippines, she worked like a trojan. She produced a range of products for her market stall and also incredibly well-made bespoke items. If Betty wanted her husband’s recliner re-upholstered by the following weekend, Mum could deliver. Ironing board cover blown out and needing one to match the living room curtains? Rosalinda to the rescue. At the peak of her career, the whole of Victoria knew who to call for any of their manchester needs. How else to account for Mum’s proudest claim that she once sold six chair cushions to Nick Riewoldt’s brother’s wife.  

Mum worked strange hours. Before a weekend craft market she sewed through the night, and at dawn would depart for Shepperton, Dingley, Frankston or Main Street Mornington. On setting up she would put one of her children in charge of serving customers while she slept hidden under decorated card-tables for an hour or two. Occasionally one of her limbs would take the opportunity to flop into public view. A thin brown forearm, or a leg in a parachute tracksuit, a little bare foot with a cracked heel. To be one of Mum’s children was to often feel like Polly or Manuel from Fawlty Towers trying to conceal from a hotel guest something absurd and very funny.  

Wednesday evenings after the Main Street Mornington market we’d share a meal of lumpia and fish and rice, Mum excitedly recounting customer orders, her husband and three kids roasting her and each other without mercy, our laughter spilling into the court.  

Mum was so proud that she could rise to any sewing-related challenge. We thought there was not enough return on investment, and too little recognition of her excellence. But Mum’s sewing gave her joy and purpose until the end.  

Mum endured a lot of racial prejudice over the course of her life. The accent that somehow grew stronger with every passing year made her a target. But she was no one’s fool. Mum thought it was hilarious when a stranger would speak to her slowly and carefully as if she were 5 years old. A true eccentric, one of the weird things Mum used to do in public, at Coles or at the bank, was pretend be (in her words) ‘fresh off the boat’. Why? I don’t know for sure, but it might have to do with the fact that in her later years, more than once, Mum would have a cashier scan all her grocery items before realising she didn’t have her bank card with her. Here, a stranger would step in, offering $30 or to pay for her shopping completely. Mum was awed by the generosity of the average Joe, to people like her.  

In 2017 I got a phone call from Mum. 

‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’ 

‘The good?’ I said. 

She said ‘There is no good news, only bad. Vic Roads has cancelled my drivers license.’ 

From then on, Mum caught the bus into Frankston and home again often. But she didn’t own a Seniors MYKI and never paid for a ticket. One day I said to her, ‘I don’t understand how this works. How do you get away with not paying for public transport?’ That incredible smile widened across her face and she said: ‘The bus drivers think I am a ding-a-ling and can’t speak English.’  

Good on you Mum, stickin’ it to the man. 

We create the meaning of our lives through the stories we tell. Rosalinda’s life was no walk in the park but the way she told it, it was a triumph. And it was a triumph. We will continue to share stories that celebrate her character and keep her indomitable spirit alive, as long as there is air in our lungs. 

Mum, I know you got your licence back and are driving around in a van delivering chair pillows, fried rice and pancit. I know you’re beaming with pride about the obstacles you overcame; all your many successes; and what Dad, Phil, Dan and I could only achieve because of the person you were.  

For Margaret Wilson - 'The bells of St Stephen's, tolling for Mum', by Tony Wilson - 2025

8 May 2025, Leonda, Hawthorn, Melbourne, Australia

Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I’ve wondered where I might be when the terrible day arrived. I would never have guessed 16000 kilometres away in an Airbnb in Budapest, barely awake but already trying to share a Dave Barry article about his prostate on the family group chat. It was Dad who called, dialing my phone number that has and always will end with Mum’s birthday 10.06.45, and I could tell by the tremor in his breathing that this was it. This was the day. I was cold all over before he started speaking: ‘Tony, I’m so sorry I have to tell you this but your mother, your beautiful mum who we’ve all loved so much, died today.’

Two hours later, Polly and I were in the square in front of St Stephens when the bells started ringing. We stepped into the middle of the square, and the bells just rang and rang and rang. We stood shoulder to shoulder, gazing up at this glorious cathedral, and the deafening cacophony didn’t let up. On and on it went. People began to assemble on the church steps, hundreds of people, but Polly and I didn’t move, squinting into the sun and the spires, faces flushed, tears streaming, and it all continued for nearly an hour. The bells of St Stephens, tolling for Mum.

Look it’s possible they were also tolling for the Pope, who died an hour earlier, but I’m going to say they were for Mum. And although none of us Wilsons are particularly religious, I did picture her at the gates of heaven, and I imagined a carnival atmosphere up there, just a great day to be at the pearly gates. And I thought two things. I thought firstly, there’s absolutely no way my beautiful, kind, generous mother isn’t getting into heaven. And secondly, I really hope she doesn’t let the Pope queue jump.

Of course Mum wouldn’t want me dwelling for too long at the gates of heaven in this eulogy. There’s a reason we’re at a reception centre and not a church. She was raised a North Balwyn Methodist, the eldest of five girls, and lived the tearaway social life you’d expect from North Balwyn Methodists in the 50s and early 60s. Even now, if an organist strays into this place and leans on the opening notes of ‘All People Who on Earth Do Dwell’, the three remaining Voutier girls will leap to their feet, ready for choral action. I’m not even ruling Mum out.

She was so smart, such an academic talent. In Year 7, she won a scholarship to MLC, but her father didn’t let her take it up because with four girls following, it might not be fair on everyone. Later, she graduated near the top of her class at Balwyn High, and went to Melbourne Uni to study Science and a Dip Ed. Teaching wasn’t her first choice, but her father again had strong views, this time that his daughters choose either nursing or teaching. These were the good jobs for girls, he reckoned, and that’s where the Commonwealth funded scholarships were too. Mum actually loved science, loved her science friends, although teaching not so much. A lot of the Year 12 boys at Benalla High asked her out during her teaching training year and she wasn’t a fan of that. She did courses throughout her life — computing courses in the early days of the Logo programming language, horticultural courses at Burnley, somehow fitting it all in between parenting four children. When she thought Sam’s Year 12 biology teacher was missing the mark, she purchased the first year uni text book and taught her the course herself. They got 100%. They got into medicine. Pippa did the same a few years later. Sam gave an amazing speech at Mum’s 75th birthday about women of Mum’s generation and the sacrifices they made. So much of her talent, her phenomenal talent, was lavished on us.

She was a spectacular beauty, and it’s been a running joke amongst her four children that her puny, pretty genes were no match for dad’s pale balding genetic headkickers. We don’t care though. Who wants to be a nine or a ten anyway? It’s character building down in the sixes and sevens. I for one can walk past any building site and nobody ever hassles me.

It also gave Mum things to work on. It was impossible to enter a room without her commenting on my appearance. ‘Do you want me to shave your neck, darling?’ ‘What are you taking for your face rash? Do you think it’s because you’re drinking milk? I think it might be the dairy. Look at your nails! You can’t let them get like that? Do you want me to cut them? Does Tam cut them for you?’

When I applied for Race Around the World in 1998, and made it to the finals, Mum had one of her greatest grooming masterstrokes. ‘I think you should tint your eyelashes’ she said. ‘It’ll work, I promise you, make your eyes seem bigger.’ A day or two later, I was in a salon — yes, we Wilson kids are nothing if not compliant — getting my lashes done. Six months later, me and my long irresistible lashes won Race Around the World. Was it all because of the eyelashes? Well we’ll never know, but, yes, yes Mum, it was.

Mum had her own television moment three decades earlier. In 1969, Dad was playing league footy at Hawthorn and the Sporting Globe and Channel 7 had a Miss Footy competition. The idea was that wives and girlfriends were circled in the paper, and for that glory alone you won you $5, some Dr Scholl’s orthopaedic sandals, a Volutis perm styled by Lillian and Antonio, and dinner at the Southern Cross Hotel. It was also an entry ticket to the Miss Footy Trivia Quiz on Channel 7s World of Sport. Mum’s face got circled but she was initially indifferent. The truth was she already had a pair of orthopaedic sandals and knew absolutely nothing about footy — also, the prize the previous year had been a trip to Mildura.

It all changed though when details of the 1969 prize were released. It was an all-expenses trip to Japan and Hong Kong, staying at the five star Mandarin hotels. The total value of the trip was more than Dad’s annual salary as a teacher. They’d been married two years and neither of them had ever been overseas before.

And so Mum rote learned the history of football, basically the whole lot, from Brownlow Medallists to club theme songs, club presidents, everything. Dad was her tutor and put lists all over the house. I can’t imagine how exciting this must have been for him. His young, beautiful bride whispering John Coleman’s career goalkicking stats into his ear. Mum learned it all, of course she did, and breezed into the last eight, then the last four, only to play out two tense grand final draws with Lyn Grinlington, a young teenage Hawks fan who, unlike Mum, actually liked football. Their rivalry captured the sporting world in the spring of 1969. ‘Beauty and Brains too!’ is one article we have clipped from the Herald. Another went with ‘Quiz Cuties at it Again’. In the end, Mum was simply too good. The winning question was ‘Which Richmond premiership player before the war coached a different team to a premiership after the war?’ The answer I hear you screaming is — Checker Hughes. Mum knew it, Lyn didn’t, and finally, gloriously, they were off to Japan and Hong Kong. Second prize was $50 worth of hair care products.

Between 1971 and 1979 she had the four of us, and she lavished so much love in our direction, it’s really difficult to describe. But she was demanding too. I only have to say words like Suzuki method, and Montessori technique for you to get a bit of an idea. She also convinced pre school Samantha that frozen peas were lollies. Imagine Sam’s surprise when she went to her first birthday party in prep. When Mum picked her up, the host mum said to our Mum, ‘I’m worried she’s going to be sick. She’s had nine chocolate crackles’. Ah Sam. What a moment. It’s hard to go back to frozen peas after copher.

She was also fanatical about restricting television, ‘half an hour a day, that’s it, then homework or reading.’ It was an ongoing espionage battle. Ned was our sentry, listening for the crunch of tyres on gravel when she was coming back from the shops. Sometimes, like a secret agent, she’d attempt surprise attacks, parking down the street and then sprinting in to place hand or cheek again the back of the box to feel if it was warm. If the Stasi caught us watching more than Get Smart, we’d be banned from Get Smart the following night. There were no real winners in this war. When I think about it, it’s an utter disgrace how many series she binged over the last few years. I should at least once have hid outside in the bushes and then jumped out. ‘Mum, no more Bridgeton! Go read your novel!’

Mum didn’t need any motivation to read novels. She was such a prolific reader, the east Melbourne library was a favourite place of hers. Ticking as it did two crucial Margaret Wilson boxes – the ones marked ‘books’ and ‘thrift’.

As a child, she read us everything from Seven Little Australians to The Wind in the Willows to Tolkien. As a teen, she put me onto John Wyndham, Aldous Huxley, JD Salinger, Margaret Atwood, Eli Wiesel, Toni Morrison and Clive James. As an adult she fed me Kate Atkinson, Cormac McCarthy, Kate Grenville, Ann Pratchett, Geraldine Brooks, Christopher Koch, Jennifer Egan and David Mitchell. And so many more, of course. She was never without a book or a reading recommendation. It was the same with the other kids, and the grandkids. She was Margaret Wilson, Mother of Readers. I said in a post this week, my father gave me sport, but my mother gave me words. It’s been difficult to find the right ones now. It’s unbelievable that she’s gone.

She’d even tolerate Macdonalds if it meant we’d read more books. In the eighties, she had a bribery deal going with us. If we went to Balwyn Library to choose new books, she’d allow us the fast food extravagance of a trip to the Maccas that shared the same carpark. One day, we were settling in for the rare treat of a junior burger, when out of nowhere she produced Tupperware containers. And what devilry was this?

They were filled with fresh lettuce, sliced tomatoes, cucumber, sliced cheese. ‘Mum, what are those!’ we hissed. ‘Well — ‘ she said, ‘I think my chopped salad is a fair bit healthier than their chopped salad. And I’ve got a nifty name for the burgers! We can call them Big Mags!

Big Mags. It’s mum’s Abbey Road in her discography of over-parenting.

There are some things I’ll always associate with Mum:

• Stylish clothes

• Fine art

• Bead necklaces

• A mastery of DIY dress ups

• Half finished coffees

• Cross word puzzles

• Tuna mornay

• Chops

• Inadequate sunscreening

• A VTAC insiders knowledge of which VCE subjects get standardised up and which go down;

• Reedy hymn singing

• 3MBS and ABC Classic FM

• Replacement swear words like ‘sheeba’, ‘ruddy’, and ‘blow me down’;

• Apologetic phone calls, ‘I’m sorry are you at work?’;

• Nervous gasps of ‘oh god’ from the passenger seat;

• A love of bargains;

• A desire for two for one surgery – go in for your hip replacement, get your varicose veins done at the same time! It brought untold joy when Harry had his lens columboma and herniated belly button fixed under the same anaesthetic;

• Fine interior decorating and an obsession with things looking stylish. Let’s never forget that Mum made this tasteful grey lid cover for her recycling bin, because she thought the yellow lid was spoiling the ambience of her front yard;

• Hairbrained schemes;

• Scrabble;

• Her hugs at the end of each visit;

• The sense that when I was growing up, I had the best mum – the smartest mum, the most beautiful mum. And it went for dad too. The sense we had the best parents.

None of us were ready for this.

One of the sentences I love most in the eulogy section of Speakola is from Stephen Colbert, whose mother Lorna had eleven children, lost three, lived to 92, and was a supermum on par with our own. In the week of her death he said on his show:

I know it may sound greedy to want more days with a person who lived so long, but the fact that my mother was 92 does not diminish, it only magnifies the enormity of the room whose doors have quietly shut.

The fact is our own Mum’s room could have been so much smaller. I remember I was in the Clyde when I called her in 1993 and she told me that she had bowel cancer with lymphatic involvement. The pub was noisy and it was surreal — a 50-50 chance of survival, a coin toss. I remember feeling numb and sick. We had to face up to the possibility of losing her when she was just 48. Pippa said to me the other day, ‘I couldn’t have handled losing her then. We don’t get more time now, but imagine if we’d lost her then.’ The fact she did that year of chemo, and she did it so bravely and without a ‘why me’, or a word of complaint — and the fact we were lucky — so many people get cancer and just aren’t lucky.

I’m so grateful my beautiful mum got to enjoy old age, got to meet her amazing, talented grandchildren, see then all get to double figures. I couldn’t have handled losing her then either.

I stood alone with Mum’s body on Tuesday and thanked her for everything. I thanked her for giving me life, and for giving me THIS life. She gave all of us her natural intelligence, which is part of the genetic pot luck, but she did everything else with such unbelievable energy and effort. She read to us, she put endless time into every interest or hobby, and she conquered the everyday mayhem of having four children, and Tam and I know, it’s a bloody mountain. Washing, bathing, shopping, medicating, comforting, disciplining, feeding, cleaning up, driving, counselling, in her case, a lot of optometry, just endless, thankless, mothering. Mum did it year after year, and she did it at A+ level.

Mum, I think of you at the end, alone, and it’s heartbreaking. I wish I’d been there to tell you I love you, to thank you for all that you’ve given us. I hope there wasn’t any pain, or if there was, that it was brief, I hope you weren’t too afraid, and that you felt our embrace — of Dad and us kids and your grandkids and your sisters and your friends. I really hope you felt that. We’re your boats that you set free upon the water. I know that you were proud of us. Your last words to me were on the phone at the airport were ‘have a great trip, you’ve earned it’. Well I’ll say the same back to you Mum. Have a great trip. You’ve earned it.

So long, Mum. We’ll miss you and think of you always.

For Jan Deane: 'I just loved to hear her voice' , 'Our Fiery One' by Joel Deane - 2024

5 September 2024, St Brendan’s, Shepparton, Victoria, Australia

Memories.
Like the corners of my mind.
Misty watercolour memories
Of the way we were.

Those are the opening lyrics of Barbra Streisand’s signature song, ‘The Way We Were’.

Jan loved Babs… And she loved that song… And she sang it more than once… And, believe me, she could sing.

Jan had such a powerful voice. She really did.

The first time I remember hearing Jan’s voice was in a production in the 1970s.

I’m pretty sure it was Oklahoma… but don’t quote me on that.

I was just a kid and there was my aunt – up on stage, up in lights – burning the house down with that voice of hers.

The image and the sound of her up there is emblazoned in my memory.

From 1978 to 2014 – opening with Carousel and taking a final curtain call with A Month of Sundays – Jan worked on a string of highly-professional productions for Shepparton Theatre Arts Group, Bendigo Community Theatre, and the Albury Wodonga Theatre Company.

Over those 36 years, she won multiple Georgy Awards and Victorian Music Theatre Guild Awards.

Out of all those stellar productions – too many to list – two stand out because they demonstrate Jan’s versatility – and longevity.

In 1979, Jan played Maria in STAG’s production of The Sound of Music.

Thirty-four years later – in 2013 – she returned to The Sound of Music… but this time played the Mother Abbess in an Albury-Wodonga production – and, according to reliable reports, brought the house down every night.

As I said, Jan had a powerful voice – but she didn’t just use her voice to sing.

As a TV star on GMV6 in the 1980s – she used her voice as the host of The Morning Show to inform and entertain thousands of people across regional Victoria and New South Wales.

As a co-host on 3SR’s morning radio show – she kept using her voice to entertain and sang live in the studio every Friday.

But – professionally speaking – I feel Jan really found her voice when she moved to Bendigo to work as a journalist at 3BO, then the ABC.

I may be biased there. Jan and I both started working in the fourth estate around the same time – in the 1980s.

And, for the uninitiated let me explain, newsrooms can be a bit like a large, dysfunctional family – except your journo siblings are a collection of pirates and bleeding hearts and broken toys… and they play indoor cricket in the office and have the cheek to call your desk the Jan Deane Stand.

The point I’m trying to make is this: journalism is more a way of life than a job – and Jan loved it and excelled at it.

Speaking as a fellow journo – I know my aunt particularly loved her time at Aunty.

She worked in the ABC’s Bendigo, Ballarat and Melbourne newsrooms – before finishing up back at home in Shepparton.

And I was always so proud when I heard her read the news on 774.

Proud because I knew she’d sweated over every fact and figure – not to mention the syntax – and I just loved to hear her voice.

That doesn’t mean I always agreed with what that voice was saying.

You see, I worked as a press secretary for the Labor Party for many of those years.

Interactions between press secs and journos are often antagonistic, but – I have to say – the ABC journos treated me very well back then.

I suspect they were kind to me because I was Jan’s nephew.

I suspect some of the politicians I worked with also put up with me because I was Jan’s nephew.

One of those politicians – Premier Jacinta Allan – called me shortly after Jan’s death.

It wasn’t a perfunctory phone call.

Jacinta remembered Jan very well and very fondly – particularly from her days at 3BO – and was upset that she’d died too soon.

In the interests of editorial balance – which Jan was a stickler for – I should add that Wendy Lovell, the Liberal Member for Northern Victoria Region, also posted a heartfelt message honouring Jan as her friend.

Jan certainly made her voice heard in public – but what about her private voice?

Born on October 31, 1953, …

daughter of Patrick and Jean Deane, both of whom she adored, …

sister of Barry, Peter, Ann, Paul, Patrick, Denis, Kay and Margo, …

the second of four daughters and seventh of nine children, …

Jan grew up just around the corner from here – at 15 Oram Street.

Castle Deane is gone now but its front verandah was Jan’s first stage.

You see, 15 Oram Street was a drop punt from Deakin Reserve. That meant hundreds of footy fans walked past the Deane’s front yard after a Saturday game.

Twelve-year-old Jan – with Kay and Margo singing backup – made the most of this captive audience, belting out a medley of Beatles tunes.

Jan was also a diligent student at St Brendan’s Primary and Sacred Heart College – she loved French poetry – but she and Kay did cause a minor scandal when they sang the Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’ during a lunchtime concert.

Apparently, the nuns thought the line about ‘Mother Mary’ unsuitable.

But what was Jan really like with her family behind closed doors?

I think Margo put it best. She called Jan ‘our fiery one’ and ‘a tower of strength’.

Growing up, I saw Jan’s fiery side more than once – but here’s the thing: Jan’s anger was never directed at her many nieces and nephews.

Jan’s anger was almost always about some injustice – some wrong that should be put right – rather than some annoying kid.

I’m not saying Jan was perfect – after all, she barracked for Essendon; which might explain her gift for ballistic profanity – what I am saying is that, within the Deane clan, she was a voice of reason.

I spoke with Jan often in the years after the death of my father, her brother Barry, and she helped me come to terms with that loss – and, in those conversations, she was, as Margo said, a tower of strength.

I know I’m not the only person – within and without the family – to have benefited from Jan’s fiery strength.

And I will never forget something Jan said in our penultimate conversation – after her wonderful 70th birthday bash, before the July funeral of her brother Paul.

We were discussing the factional dynamics of large families when I asked Jan how she dealt with, let’s say, disagreements – and she said to me:

‘You don’t have to agree with someone to love them.’

Wise words from a strong woman.

Perhaps that’s why there’s been such a huge outpouring of love for Jan since she died.

ABC Shepparton and Albury-Wodonga ran on-air tributes. There were articles in The Shepparton News, The Australian and Radio Today. And I’ve spent hours reading wonderful social media posts from dozens of colleagues and friends.

On behalf of Jan’s surviving siblings – Peter, Patrick, Denis, Kay, and Margo – I want to thank everyone for your kind thoughts – and prayers.

Jan Deane had a fierce voice … a funny voice … a forgiving voice … a beautiful voice.

Hers is a voice we will not hear again on this temporal stage – but I believe it is now singing on the spiritual plane.

God bless you, Jan.

For Norman Harris: 'I’m either out dancing, playing golf or chasing rainbows', by daughter Michelle Sammann - 2024

“Hi, you’ve reached Norm. I’m not home at the moment. I’m either out dancing, playing golf or chasing rainbows. So please leave a message and I’ll get back to you soon.”

This was Dad’s answering machine message for many years. Chances are that if you rang him at home, you would get this message. He was really difficult to contact because he was never home. Even if you did leave a message, he never listened to it anyway. He made the most out of every day. There was always somewhere to go or someone to visit. His interests were many and varied. His life was like a jigsaw puzzle with many pieces, but few of us knew the entire picture. And that’s just the way he liked it.

Born into a working- class family, he and his younger sister Margaret grew up in inner city Melbourne. His early life was influenced by two defining events. His mother contracted tuberculosis and had to leave the family for an extended length of time. He was also sent a Catholic boys boarding school called St Patricks College in Ballarat. He later described this as an all-male concentration camp that he survived by thinking on his feet and excelling at sport. His sporting skills saved him from expulsion when he was caught shredding the leather straps used for punishment with a razor blade. No doubt this was where his lifelong quality of resilience originated from.

After surviving boarding school, he left early and worked as a trainee Industrial Chemist in the tanning industry. This was followed by Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital, and then The Department of Microbiology at Melbourne University. It was here where things started getting interesting. He excelled at the extracurricular activities of University life including running BBQ’s, organising Christmas parties, tapping beer barrels and running Melbourne Cup sweeps. He mixed with students, academics and professors, enjoyed long lunches in Lygon Street and frequented Jimmy Watson’s wine bar. During his time there he assisted two Nobel Prize winners. As a side hustle, he was the projectionist at an Italian cinema in Carlton. Looking towards his future career, he completed a part time diploma at RMIT where he studied Medical Laboratory Technology.

RMIT was also where he spend the majority of his career and worked as the Laboratory Manager in the Department of Applied Biology for over 25 years. He made lifelong friends at RMIT and once again enjoyed extended lunches, social gatherings, weekend outings and trips away. Many great times were spent at the pubs around Carlton drinking Guinness with his work friends. He attended several National and International scientific conferences and sometimes he hosted visiting academics. At these times, he revelled in his job as chief tour guide and self-appointed Australian ambassador.

Saturdays were spent playing football for Alphington followed by dancing at the Heidelberg town Hall where he met his future wife Beryl. Always competitive, he and Beryl entered dance competitions and in 1961, won at the Moomba Dancing Championships at Melbourne Town Hall. They married in 1962 and set about building a life together, a new home in Lower Templestowe and starting a family.

Tragedy struck our family twice is a short space of time. Dad was left a widower at age 33 when his wife Beryl suddenly died leaving him with 3 young children including a newborn baby. He made the heartbreaking decision to give up his youngest son Trevor to his sister Margaret and her first husband Ron to raise. He became a single Dad doing his best. Home life was pretty messy. He was working full time and raising two small children. He was flying by the seat of his pants. There was no guidebook to follow. He wrote it as he went along. He couldn’t have done it without the help of the extended family and neighbours. Once he hired a live in housekeeper, only to return home from work one day with various items stolen, the housekeeper gone and my brother and I home alone. He excelled at cooking burnt lamb chops under the grill with Deb packet mashed potato and Surprise peas. He gourmet meal go to was apricot chicken in the Crock Pot.

Several year later his oldest son Stephen tragically died of an asthma attack at home when he was just 13 years old. Dad put the trauma and emotions of these two tragedies in a sealed box in his heart and labelled it Never to be Opened Again. But, with much support from family, friends and neighbours, he prevailed, and life went on. His indomitable spirit, resilience and optimistic attitude allowed him to overcome unimaginable adversity.

He played football, cricket, volleyball and squash. He tried his hand at rat breeding and chicken farming. He build three gardens from scratch. Country drives got exciting when he would stop to pick up road-kill. Koalas, foxes and possums were stuffed and mounted at his work and later found their way to show and tell at my Primary school. He joined a group called Parents without Partners. Together they build a raft and rowed it down the Yarra River in Templestowe in what was The Great Raft Race of 1979. Later he became the only Dad at my Calisthenics competitions; but he did have to outsource the costume making. He supported my teenage horse obsession and learnt how to tow a horse float, construct a jump and was elected as district commissioner of the Eltham Pony Club.

He had a habit of bending the rules to suit his needs. This consisted of what we termed “Doing a Norm” which entailed gaining free or discount entry somewhere, or talking his way into somewhere he shouldn’t be. Often it was the full VIP package. As a child I remember being highly embarrassed when he insisted I was years younger than my actual age in order to get into the movies at a cheaper price. He would talk to anyone and everyone. Most embarrassingly he would often introduce us to his new-found friend which might include a waiter at a restaurant, a nurse in hospital or any other random person he met when out and about.

He was King of the big day out and often headed off somewhere for the day, destination unknown, with little planning, no food or water and not enough petrol. I have many memories as a child of us running out of petrol or him losing his car keys. We would return home after dark, hungry, dirty, exhausted but happy. When his grandchildren were young, he took them to the MCG one day and lost the car in the carpark. The kids ran around for hours after the match trying to find his car, which was finally located as darkness set in. Meanwhile I waited at home anxiously hoping they would eventually arrive back before bedtime. History was repeating itself.

Our family would often return home from being out to find a present from him at the front door. These gems included animal skulls and bones, old books, newspaper articles, opp shop curios or hard rubbish junk. Anything he thought we might be remotely interested in.

Sometimes this was a whole dead fish in a plastic bag hanging on the front doorknob. This was from the Buxton Trout farm which he has bought after a visit to his sister Margaret. We never knew how long it had been there. Should we be grateful for a free dinner or risk a bout of family food poisoning? Our decision often depended on the daytime temperature. Sometimes it was lamb shanks. For a man who rarely cooked, he certainly had lots of recipe ideas.

Sometimes I would be at home and hear whistling near the side gate. This was quickly followed by the pattering of the dog’s feet down the side path and I knew that Dad was out there pushing a dog bone through the bars in the side gate. The dog would return to the backyard with a juicy bone and shortly thereafter the doorbell would ring. Dad had a habit of dropping in unannounced which usually happened around either lunch or dinnertime. I’m sure he had a well-worn route amongst family and friends in the Easters Suburbs. If the doorbell rang around a meal- time, we instantly knew who it was. He always tried to secretly feed our dog under the dinner table, but we all knew about it.

He loved to travel. He has ridden a mule down into the Grand Canyon, a camel in Egypt, hot air ballooned over the Serengeti in Tanzania, attended The Japan Cup with race caller Bill Collins and hiked from coast to coast across Britain. On this last trip, a search party was called out when he took a wrong turn. On a trip to Morocco he lost his watch, lost track of time and missed his flight to Austria where we were waiting to catch up with him. Two days later he resurfaced and surprised us at a Bavarian castle in Germany. On a trip through India, he befriended the tour guide and soon declared himself the assistant guide for the rest of the trip. Before a trip to Ireland, he wrote to Guinness and told them he was president of The Australian Guinness Club which earned him a VIP tour of the factory. He once sailed around Australia on the Queen Mary 2, where he gained a free passage in exchange for being a “distinguished gentleman”, dancing every night with the unaccompanied ladies. And recently, I found a photo of Dad in Indonesia posing with a couple of orang utangs. On the back he had written ‘My family’.

Retirement gave him time to focus on playing golf (where his maths let him down), Genealogy (where he proudly traced his family back to the 1850’s in London) and Bushwalking (where he enjoyed leading walks at The Maroondah Bushwalking Club). The Dandenong Ranges was like a second home to him. He loved walking the many trails, visiting cafes and enjoying the scenery. For fun one year, he worked in one of the cattle pavilions at The Royal Melbourne Show. There he organised a competition to see which one of the bulls had the biggest testicles.

He was a member of the Melbourne Racing Club for over 30 years. He also became a co-owner of several syndicate racehorses, and a few times enjoyed going into the owners’ room after his horse won where he enjoyed a free feed and a drink. He was always good for a tip on Cup Day.

He faced Prostate Cancer head on and beat it, without much fuss.

Later in life, he went back to ballroom dancing at The Mitcham Dance group where he made many new friends, organised social outings and enjoyed running The Monte Carlo. I have heard that this has now been renamed the Normie Carlo in his honour.

He fancied himself as a bit of a writer. He wrote and published an article about a walking safari he did in Kenya. And who can forget his historical piece he wrote about the history of Olinda. For months and months all we heard about was the history of Olinda. He loved going to the cinema and was always quick with a review of the latest movie. He was a life-long Carlton supporter and his eyes would fill with tears when his beloved Carlton hit the front.

I can’t remember the number of times that he lost his wallet.

Dad was many things;

• Stubborn

• Haphazard

• Messy

• Unreliable

• Frustrating

• NOT a style icon

• Tardy

• Secretive

• An enigma

He was also;

• Thoughtful

• Optimistic

• Irrepressible

• Unique

• Cheeky

• A teller of jokes

• A happy crier

• An excellent grandfather

• He had a heart of gold.

He was always coy about his age and loved people thinking he was 10 years younger than he was. For the record he would have turned 88 next Thursday. He lived his later life in complete denial of his age, his medical conditions or need for any support. In recent years he had home help and a nurse checking on him every morning to help him with his daily medications. He hated it. He would often get impatient waiting for the nurse and abscond to his local café before they arrived. This would trigger frantic calls to me at work or in one instance, a call to police for a welfare check. He refused to use a Webster Pack for his medications. This resulted in Baptcare putting his medications into a steel box with a combination lock so they could keep track of them. He went on strike over this, refusing to take any medication until they told him the combination, which of course defeated the purpose of the whole system. He won. The weekly cleaner was lucky to make it through the front door. Recently during a lengthy stay at The Austin Hospital, when a nurse asked “Do you know where are you Norm?” His reply was “Alcatraz!”

He never dwelt on the negatives. He rarely talked about the adversity that he had faced in life. He overcame great tragedy and always saw the glass as half full. He marched to the beat of his own drum. He lived life his way. On his terms. And that’s just the way he liked it.

The answering machine has now fallen silent. The doorbell will no longer ring around dinner time. The car has stopped driving and has no need for petrol. His passport is gathering dust. The dancing music has stopped. His hiking boots are packed away.

But I encourage you to follow in his footstep. One day go on a day trip and drive up into The Dandenongs. Walk one of the many lovely trails. Enjoy the trees and the birdlife. Stop and chat to random people you pass. Afterwards go to Olinda and get a coffee. Read the newspaper at the café and secretly tear out an interesting article. Pass it onto a family member or friend. Think of Norm and smile.

If the aim of life is to make the most out of every day, Dad, you get a gold star.

Congratulations Dad, for yours was a life well lived.

For Gladys Hammond: 'Happy birthday, my lovely mother', by Joan Cavanagh - 2019

16 March 2019, Frankston, Victoria

This was delivered by daughter Joan on what would have been Gladys Hammond’s 102nd birthday. It was the day of her funeral.

Dearest Mother I thank you for many things

I thank you firstly for the gift of life and for giving me over 70 years of unconditional love .

I thank you for all those good wholesome meals while growing up including the rissoles- done to a frazzle wiith mountains of cabbage supplemented by tonics like Parish’s Food, Saunders Malt and Cod Liver Oil. (while on the other side teaching the neighbours the intricaticies of choux pastry.)

Thank you for dancing the Charleston down the passageway in our house. The image of your skirt flapping, lovely legs flying, imaginary beads twirling and the fancy footwork will remain with me forever..

Thankyou for the memory of the goodnight kiss smelling of humble Three Flowers Face Powder in early life and fine French perfume in later years.

Thank you for protecting us from the savage goat which was attacking our glass doors when we and you were all ill with measles I thank you for telling us we were beautiful.

Thankyou for teaching me that education is important for women.

I thank you for the enormous personal sacrifices you made to raise and educate us.

I thank you eeking out the few shillings from that tightest of tight budget for my piano lessons.

Thank you for understanding my separation anxiety and taking me (and only me) on what was to be your child-free holiday to Queensland with Dad.

Thank you for the times you shepherded four small children onto public transport to visit the Museum, Art Gallery or Botanical Gardens but perhaps not for the time you put us in the train carriage then dashed to the loo and the train went without you. Thankfully our screams were heard.

I owe to you my love of flowers and gardening, of animals and of nature, of music, literature, theatre,and film. (Just as you had the experience as a child of seeing Anna Pavlova dance, so you took me as a young girl to see Dame Margot Fonteyn)

I thank you for the experience of having a mother who always saw the best in people and who had the ability to rise above adversity. You could easily have despaired at your lot and perhaps you did this privately at times.

I thank you for mirroring my joy when receiving the news of my pregnancies and at the birth of my children and for being a loving grandmother to them. I laugh when I recall my phone call to tell you that Adam was on the way after a couple of years of marriage and you saying ” Oh Joan, thank goodness. I thought you were too thin”.

I smile when I think of your trips to Melbourne having the pleasure of the purchase but returning it when reality hit. This was much to the chagrin of our father.

I thank you for the example of friendship. You had friendships that spanned more than 65 years – with Wynne, Ethel and Betty Knight. I watched your friendship with Betty Thompson nurtured through letters that went back and forth between Brim and Ferntree Gully, chatty epistles that outlined the daily rhythms of both your lives.

Thank you for teaching me the importance of community- you lived this example until you could physically no longer do it. Always participating in events including the local flower show ( where you won first prize for your floral arrangement), to being an active member of the Ladies Guild and church community and many other community activities in FTG and Frankston.

I thank you for your generosity- not just to me but to everybody including every charity that sent a self addressed envelope! I recall you saying that Mr Grey from the Cancer Council had written to appeal to you personally for help.

I have in my wardrobe the jacket from your favourite outfit, your Fletcher Jones suit. It fits. I will wear it knowing I will continue to be enveloped in your love. What I hope is that I can also fill your shoes and walk the rest of my life with the same grace and dignity that you did.

Today is your birthday. Happy Birthday, my lovely Mother.

Joan

for Lawrence Moran: 'My dad, he knew everything and could do anything', by Andrew Moran - 2023

9 November 2023, Surrey Hills, Melbourne, Australia

My Dad - he knew everything, and could do anything. Just the way it’s supposed to be. We knew about the footy, the cricket, the athletics. We knew about the brilliant medical physician. We had everything - good education, big house, summer holidays at Sorrento, footy games, tennis coaching.

I was the only kid in school with stationery sponsored by an antacid company! Enormous Christmas celebrations with dozens of cousins. A few times we even got to go to Ireland to see Mum’s family - what an adventure! Even more cousins!

Beneath it all, though, lurked an awkward, unspoken truth: fathers don’t actually know everything.

My children will soon learn this the hard way, but as a child, you’re sometimes forced to confront some uncomfortable realities:

Despite Laurie’s protestations, occasionally Hawthorn do, in fact, want to win.

In 2008, Luke Hodge himself proved Dad wrong, that what Hawthorn really needed was a few more “Gary Ayres” type players.

The well-known Tasmanian brewery that supplied Dad’s favoured drop is not actually pronounced “James BO-AGS”.

And it turns out that some things actually DO happen in the first five minutes of an appointment.

There were the things that neither of us really figured out, like how to bring down your golf handicap, or what’s the point of tapas.

And then there are the things I learned:

I learned how to be nice, no matter what.

I learned how to be a good host, whoever is in your house.

I learned how to BBQ sausages and chicken, under his watch as he enjoyed a quiet beer after work.

I learned how to catch a wave in the surf. “I got dumped”, I cried. “Don’t,” he replied. Here endeth the lesson.

I learned to finish what you said you’d do.

I learned to be fair, even when the world is not.

I learned to keep going until I finished, even if it seemed futile at the time.

Above all, I learned how to be a father. If I can do half of what my father did for me and my siblings, I’ll achieve something special.

My parents had a lot to confront when they found out their son was born with a major disability. They spent the next 30 years raising an incredible son, all the while not neglecting any of their other children for a second.

What a lesson! What a gift we’ve been granted! Empathy! My parents never spoke about how difficult it was. They only ever encouraged us to think of others, and how we could help.

I’ll always remember my Dad taught me this lesson.

Another lesson Dad taught me was about singing. When I grew up, kids who stood up in public to sing, or dance, or speak, were routinely called some pretty ordinary names in this country. But at my house, I had the ultimate role model.

This family man, this gifted doctor and footy star, would host family and friends with beautiful wines, delicious food, and a song! This guy made it cool to sing in public. People loved it, and I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know other dads like this. To a boy who could sing, and who loved music, a dad who had a beautiful voice and made singing cool meant everything. He gave me the confidence to sing in public, and now that’s the career I love.

My Dad. Greatest man I ever knew.

for Jade Young: 'Our lives have been fractured, there will be no back to normal', by mother Elizabeth Young - 2024

23 April 2024, Sydney Australia

Support the GoFundMe set up for Jade’s family here.

I was once a high school English teacher. I particularly enjoyed encouraging my students to write. "Write from your life experience," I would tell them.

You are about to hear something I have written from my life experience.

I would like you to listen, I want Australia to listen. I warn you there are references to brutal facts.

My glorious, loving, soft-hearted, hardworking daughter was murdered on April 13 while shopping for a birthday present for a child’s party the next day. How ordinary.

This is Westfield Bondi Junction, in Sydney, Australia, on a Saturday afternoon amongst hundreds of other people.

My youngest granddaughter, aged 9, would have been skipping alongside her, chatting about this and that and nothing. I know because I have shopped with her many times.

And then at 3.20ish Jade Young was attacked and killed outright, in front of her daughter.

Her daughter knew something bad had happened because Mummy had the twisted ugly face she made when she didn’t like something, uttered "Ooof" and was gone.

In an instant, gone from a nine-year-old’s life, from a near 14-year-old’s life, from the life Jade and her husband Noel had slowly and carefully built for their girls over the last 15 or so years. Gone from my life, my husband’s, her beloved brother Peter’s life, her aunts', uncles', cousins', friends', work colleagues'.

Jade was not a centre-of-attention girl. She did well at school, was a wonderful swimmer, a hopeless T-baller. Like me she didn’t like sand. Sadly Premier Minns, respectfully, she never patrolled Bronte beach on a January morning. Perhaps the cafe for a cappuccino? She was a splendid architect, a loving friend, a gentle, soft-hearted mother, a fabulous generous daughter, a sucker for a newly acquired schnoodle, Teddy, who, might I add, behaved perfectly at the vigil.

In a matter of moments on a sunny Wollongong Saturday afternoon, my husband and I were wrenched out of a quiet retirement after 40 years of working, uprooted into a world of co-parenting two beloved, vulnerable, traumatised girls.

We are so lucky that Jade and Noel were already surrounded by wonderful wonderful family, friends and neighbours who have embraced us, are supporting us; hugging, laughing, howling, feeding us, driving us, playing with the children, building Lego, persuading the youngest to eat, checking the oldest daughter has actually eaten something other than sour lollies and grapes.

Our lives have been fractured, there will be no back to normal. There is no normal for us now.

Solace was spoken of at Sunday’s vigil. Believe me, there is no solace.

I want to thank the NSW police who have helped and supported us; they have been impressive, particularly Leah Collins.

I also thank Westfield Bondi Junction for allowing me to kneel sobbing and incoherent with grief, where my beautiful Jade died.

I thank the magnificent Bronte Surf Club members who have been holding us close and weeping with us.

I thank a teacher, Leanne, who took my granddaughter who was with her mother in the moments after.

I thank those who have generously responded to this murderous attack on my daughter, through donations to Jade's GoFundMe page.

I thank Frog and Ben whose particular skills have left me and our son PJ with a permanent, beautiful reminder of my child, his Gehgeh.

I thank those who attended the vigil. I found a moment of wonderful spirituality In the haunting and ancient notes of the didgeridoo.

I thank the Sydney and Australia-wide well-wishers for their condolences, their flowers, and their tears. But, I want more.

My husband and I are old, we have health problems, but we will dedicate the remainder of our lives to our grandchildren and to our magnificent son-in-law. He has us alongside, Grammy and Grampy, alongside, for better, for worse but the reality is, HE is now responsible for raising two girls without the support of a partner. He will somehow have to weave into an already busy work life, the needs of the girls, school lunches, parent meetings at school, ballet, swimming lessons, shopping for birthday presents. Ordinary things.

Never again do I want to read the words 'tragic' or 'tragedy' associated with the perpetrator of the murder of my daughter.

He came prepared. He had intention. He was a killer who slipped past Westfield security, making a shopping centre the most dangerous place on earth for Jade.

I want to know that my glorious granddaughters never go without as a result of this catastrophic attack.

I want society, neighbourhoods, individuals, clubs, businesses, local, state and federal governments to step up and ensure the family are financially secure.

The flowers are beautiful; I appreciated the sombre faces in the mall when I visited on Monday; I love the meals, the hugs, the lowered flags, even Karen the giraffe. I truly appreciate the genuine responses from the police and Westfield powers-that be.

I will never again laugh and chat with my beautiful Jade, a superb young woman whose only flaw was that she was softhearted and couldn’t always decide what sandwich to order at Julian’s or which of JPs delicious ice cream flavours to try this time.

I am heart fractured and angry; I am exhausted and scared of the future.

I want more than five minutes of disingenuous, anodyne words from politicians, I want more than the three days of news coverage, before something else made the headlines.

On a personal level, I want Jade’s girls to grow up believing there is security, goodness and love in the world.

But also, on another level, I want politicians, both federal and state, to address the gaps in mental healthcare to make it a safer world, for our girls and all Australians.

I was born in 1950, the Chinese year of the Tiger. I promise you I am going to show that creature’s ferocity and tenacity. I am a mother tiger and I will not let this terrible attack on my precious daughter simply become short-term fodder for politicians or the media.

This is not about Australians feeling sad and sorrowful for the brief period of a news cycle — this tragic week will never end for us, this murder of a mother, wife, daughter, friend, business partner, has changed the trajectory of so many people for the REST OF THEIR LIVES.

For Giovanna Manna: 'The plain evidence, in those hands, of a long life', by son Santo Manna - 2024

2 February 2024, Montreal, Canada

Giovanna’s son Santo delivered the following eulogy in Italian and English. We will post an all-English version first, and then the bilingual speech below that.

12 years ago I stood before you in this church, on the occasion of my father Pasquale’s funeral.

Today I do the same, on the occasion of my mother Giovanna’s. Their life together was a love story, an immigrant love story, at that.

 You cannot tell his story without telling hers, and vice versa. 

 Their lives were intertwined.

***

They met in Sicily in the mid 1950s – in Santa Lucia del Mela, near where they were born, she in 1931 and he a year later.

She had already rejected several suitors – one of them, as she relayed to my sister, because he wasn’t nice to his mother.

Pasquale was smitten – he proposed to her, and she accepted, but there was one problem – his family was so large, and so poor, that there was no way his parents could afford a proper wedding. 

So, as was his character, he did what he thought was best for his family – he asked her to elope, and leave together for Switzerland to start a new life together.

She was devastated – she had looked forward to a traditional Sicilian wedding, and her bridal dress was ready. 

Yet, she accepted. 

All it took was his beaming smile, his gentle and kind demeanor, and his beautiful blue eyes, for her to take the leap. 

That, and how nicely he treated his mother.

They were married in December 1959, and from then on, they were inseparable.

They lived in Vevey for 7 years, where my sisters were born.  And in 1967 they crossed the ocean to settle here in Montreal, and welcomed me into the world.

And here is where they built their lives and family.

It was not without hardship. 

Soon after arriving in Montreal, they found themselves in dire straits and my dad, disillusioned, starting planning to return to Europe. 

They were saved by the kindness of the Sciotto family, and of my late godmother Biagina, who took all of us in until my parents could get back on their feet, and in whose home on Hurteau I was born in 1968. 

I mentioned it in 2012, and I’ll say it here again, that was an act of selfless love if there ever was one – 10 of us, including 6 kids ranging from newborn to 19-year old, all crammed into that duplex apartment for close to a year.

Tony is here with us today, the last surviving family member, and his presence is a comfort to us.

***

With the rest of my parents’ immediate families still back in Sicily, the Sciottos would  become our family in Montreal. 

And so did the rest of our paesani from Santa Lucia – the Amicos, with whom we spent so many Christmases together,  the Liparis and Salvadores, the Andaloros, Giannones and Boggias, the Rapazzos and Siracusas.

This Messinese community, our comare and compare, were a source of support for my parents and helped them get through the hard times – while creating a loving extended family for me and my sisters.

And my parents reciprocated, always striving to maintain and strengthen the bonds formed within that community, and offering its members support whenever needed.

***

My parents lives were defined by an intense LOVE for their family, and a stubborn resolve to make our lives better no matter what it took. 

And that was obvious, in the way that my mother lived her life.

There was her WORK ETHIC.  To put food on the table, she worked HARD – as a cleaning lady at Place Ville Marie in the 70s, at the button factory in Ville Emard, or later on at El Pro in Cote St Paul making leather purses. 

She worked tirelessly, and they saved every penny, for us.

She was ASSERTIVE.  My dad was a softie, but Giovanna was a tough cookie, fiercely protective of her family and children, and didn’t suffer fools. 

On one occasion, some mean kid down the block hit my sister Nancy – my mom found out and confronted him, and he never dared bother any of us again. 

She was STRONG.  That came from her mother Anna, who would walk miles with heavy sticks on her back in the old country. 

Then there was her sharp intellect and wit, and SENSE OF HUMOR, which she inherited from her father Domenico, who was jovial as can be.  He didn’t just ask my grandmother for dinner, he would say “Piripi Piripo, pesce stoccu vodiu io”.  She had that same gift, and often left us in stitches.

And last but not least, she expressed her love through her CUISINE. 

There were the Sicilian arancini – rice balls, with the mozzarella, Bolognese sauce, carrot and pea filling.

But especially, her famous and delicious meatballs – somehow, she managed it so that the very center of each meatball was juicy and moist.

As a first-born Sicilian son, I was shall we say just a tad spoiled, and my mother doted on me.

At the age of 15, I attended a sweet 16 birthday party, and succumbed to peer pressure and drank beer.  A bit too much unfortunately.  I was brought home and stumbled into the house, with my parents and my sister Anna, now awake, watching.  As I somehow made my way to my room and collapsed on the bed, my mom was next to me the whole way, and she sat down next to me on the bed, with grave concern.  A bucket was nearby for obvious reasons, some retching took place. 

Now my mom was very religious.  And at that moment, I said probably the worst words I should have said to her… “Pregge per me, mamma” – “Pray for me, mom”.

***

 She always had the support of our compare and compare in the close-knit Santa Lucia expat community.

But her rock, the constant in her life, was Pasquale.  They were a team.

Until 2012, when he was no longer there.

My father passed away on April 5th that year, and by September my mother had withered away. 

Not eating, suffering from depression, doubting her ability to go on without him, she had lost her will to live.

Until later that fall, when a little kitten, white with black spots, came into her life thanks to my sister Anna – she named him Bianco, and he gave her a reason to go on.

And she did.  She never went a day without missing my dad, but she managed, kept in touch with family and friends, and enjoyed family gatherings.

For more than a decade she lived alone in the house on Giguere, until the age of 92.

But she was never truly alone.

It was the constant devotion and attention of my sisters, Anna and Nancy, that sustained her, especially as old age started to take its toll. 

I want to recognize them here, along with our eldest niece Sabrina – for all that they did to ensure our mother felt cherished and loved – they acted selflessly, and so often at the expense of their own lives and families.

Now you can start to reclaim your lives, comforted in knowing that you made hers so much better.  You can let go now.

***

Santo with his mother Giovanna

 My mother’s decline slowly set in – starting with Covid, which was so difficult for everyone. 

Then her Alzheimer’s began to take root, and her memory, always sharp and precise, began to suffer. 

Her physical strength, always a point of pride for her, began to desert her.

She suffered from anxiety, and fear set in, including of being alone at night.

When your strengths become weaknesses, when the independence you have known your whole life is gone, you cease being you. 

And that’s what happened to Giovanna – and it led to her no longer being able to stay in her home – she spent the last 10 months of her life in a nursing home. 

It was a nice suburban home in Beaconsfield, and she had all the comforts she needed, but it signaled the beginning of the end.

Her health deteriorated over the last month or so, to the point where she wasn’t even able to walk without great difficulty. 

We brought her to the hospital on Sunday and were given the sobering news that she didn’t have long to live.

We caressed and comforted her, but looking into her eyes, it felt like she was already somewhere else.

I held her hands, and examined them closely – I had done the same with my father shortly before his death, in the palliative care ward at the Montreal General.

There were the creases and wrinkles, the callouses and moles, the scars, all accumulated over the years. 

The plain evidence, in those hands, of a long life – a life of hard work, and sacrifice. 

And the ring they each wore, a reminder of their bond of love. 

A love that endured long after my father’s passing, long after she could no longer clasp his hand, though she prayed for that moment when it would happen again.

Now, her prayers are answered. 

As my niece Sabrina envisioned, they are walking together, hand in hand, on their new journey.

They are in God’s hands now. 

 You can read Santo’s 2012 eulogy for his father, Pasquale Manna here

Here is the bilingual version of the eulogy for Giovanna Manna, 27 January 1931 - 29 January 2024

For Bill Maher: 'Man of the Mallee', by daughter Louise Schaap - 2021

16 July 2021, Swan Hill Catholic Church, Victoria, Australia

The title is a play on words to honour the family ancestry of Thomas Francis Meagher’s speech ‘Meagher of the Sword’ (Dublin, 1846) and my father’s one true love, the Mallee. The speech was to be delivered to a full church of 200 people. However the evening prior saw a Victorian lockdown announced. Only ten people were able to attend in person.

We are here to honour Bill Maher, born 3rd May 1941 in Swan Hill, The second child to Thomas Francis Maher and his wife Theresa, brother to Bernie, Garry, Peter and Jimmy,  The husband of Lesley, The father to Myself, Michelle, Phillip and Hayden, father in law for  David, Greg, Kelly and Amanda. Grandfather to Michael, Bridie, Archer, Percy, Elroy, Barnaby, Ruby, Cleo and Matilda.

This is an opportunity to pay tribute to Bill. We are joined together for this one time to share what we know about Bill, and it is a privilege to be able to lean on each other for a single day, being supported in the common thread of knowing this man.

Bill was a Man of the Mallee. We all know one. They don’t talk much, in between hard work, they stand around in the shade, contemplate conservative politics, whistle at a dog, lean on some machinery, swish away the flies and observe the horizon. A man not out for extensive conversations yet he was willing to toil, hammer, weld, thread, drive, tinker, lift, push, pull, dig, lug, wait, fix, wrench, sort, move = many vital farm tasks that generate content. Nothing is wasted in the Mallee, the resourcefulness is ingrained.

He was a man that was born into the love of his life, the Mallee. A life long relationship with a land, that offers more than the occasional dust storm. It began for Bill with a pioneering spirit, clearing Mallee scrub by hand, bare back horse rides to the dirt floor Pira Primary School, where at lunch times he fed the horse before himself and killed snakes at the classroom door.  He earned his stripes with learning the Mallee landscape, a country that does not produce “easy” whereby you couldn’t shy away from enduring all the challenges, a land that looked impossible to farm to anyone who doesn’t understand how to calculate its seasons and soil. He took it from teams of Clydesdales pulling stump jump ploughs to GPS tractors and headers.

This Man of the Mallee was resourceful. To the point of being an unqualified mechanical engineer. He knew how to make things for his beloved country. No CAD drawings, just a plan inside his head of what was needed, some tools and materials and away he would go.

Amongst his curated objects were trailers, field bins, incinerator, sheds, ploughs, gates, fences, tanks

Any Man of the Mallee welcomes rain. They watch the sky daily for it. A network of channels and dams drip fed what rain could be collected. And Bill’s leadership, as with so many key community initiatives, paved the way for the Mallee pipeline. Those tanks and taps networked across the Mallee we see today are just part of his legacy.  Strangely as a Man of the Mallee who yearned for and  thrived when water was abundant, he was not big on swimming, which meant he had only one pair of togs for his whole life. Once he outgrew them, his swimming days were over.

Farming lived with him 24/7 and a comfy chair for a nap, a black tea and a bit of cake gave him the occasional spell from it. The ultimate treat would be a steaming plate of well cooked tripe. His love for the Mallee gave him the greatest return on his sweat, time and energy. This meant he always seemed to be doing something, somewhere.

Up the shed

On the tractor

In the Ute

Down the paddock

Working on the truck

Rounding up the sheep

On the header

Driving the truck

Loading up the truck

Getting a load to the Saleyards

At the silo

Fixing a plough

Bogging the tractor

Out the back paddock

Digging a hole

Fixing the driveway

Welding up a new idea

At the dam

Near the gate

Sorting out a vehicle

Marking lambs

Transporting grain

Spraying crops

Baling wool

Dipping the sheep

Sewing a crop

Checking the rain gauge

Fixing a fence

For a farmer, he had his ways of talking. He would do any Aussie proud with

“Wig Whom for a Gooses Bridle”

“Same age as my tongue, a little older than my teeth”

“3 on the tree”

“4 on the floor”

“out whoop whoop”

“pull the wool over your eyes”

“burn a hole in your pocket”

“hit the frog and toad”

“don’t know him from a bar of soap”

“put a sock in it”

“ya got buckleys”

“wrap your laughing gear around that”

“flat out like a lizard drinking water”

“that’s the way the cookie crumbles”

“carrying on like a pork chop”

“fair crack of the whip”

“hold ya horses”

“not the sharpest tool in the shed”

“See you later alligator”

“fitter than a Mallee Bull"

"go easy"

“call me whatever you like, just dont call me late for dinner”

For a Dad he also nailed the obligatory Dad jokes on cue.

●        "I'm so good at sleeping, I can do it with my eyes closed!"

●        "How do you make a tissue dance? You put a little boogie in it."

●        What time did the man go to the dentist? Tooth hurt-y.

●        "Why did Johnny get fired from the banana factory? He kept throwing away the bent ones."

●        "What did the zero say to the eight?" "That belt looks good on you.

●        Kid: I'm hungry. Dad: Hi hungry, I'm Dad!

When he did venture beyond the farm gate he would drive some style of Holden (or perhaps a mustard Ute) to go play footy, or perhaps tennis in his younger days, fight fires (where every time I witnessed him silently gather himself at the call of someone else’s emergency, take the esky of water and go without any resistance or complaining towards an unknown danger so as to help others in need and return covered in soot and dust without a word to say), fly planes, put kids on a bus, check the mail in Nyah West, go to a meeting, usually as Chair, anywhere or any time.

Also beyond the farm gate, this Man of the Mallee took action with kindness and effort to show the world what he cared about. For his community and the Mallee he sought ways to make it better, so others could benefit. He gained personal fulfilment by being prepared to be a leader who aimed to have the best for what he cared about the most. There are many here who know these benefits, and I encourage you to share these rich achievements, on this day, so they are not lost. Let me share some examples

The highest leadership you could have is to be a leader of your Mallee. As Mayor, he represented the Mallee in China, France and Japan. He heavily invested time, energy and money to take any opportunity to promote the Mallee as Councillor and Mayor. His ambitions went beyond the Mallee boundaries, where he stretched his leadership up to a state political level, as a national party and independent candidate for the region and studying at Churchill University, Gippsland.

Dad knew how important rail transport was to the Mallee. He had significant conversations to save the swan hill train line from closure. By going to Melbourne to meet with the then Labor Transport Minister, whom he referred to as Snappy Tom, @ 1987, whereby he overturned plans to close the Swan Hill line. You know the train lines weren’t just transport to Bill. Dad loved flying, his pilot’s licence and involvement at the Mid Murray Flying Club took him over the Mallee and interstate, he used the trainline to navigate, moreso than a map, which was fine until flood waters covered the tracks. The saved vline service still runs in and out of the Mallee.

So lets celebrate this Man of the Mallee. He shaped his life around it and for it.  I encourage you to share your own stories of what you know of this Man from the Mallee. Talk about the Mallee’s hidden blueprint on it’s men, express the care for this place in the world, muster as much kindness as you can so as to show off your love for where you belong.

So Dad as a Man of the Mallee, who mastered this world with passion and strength, it is fitting you will be returned to its soil where The Mallee will have the man.

For John Cordner: 'My father was a VERY good man', by Geoff Cordner - 2017

January 2017, Rowville Golf Club, Melbourne, Australia

If I was to tell you today that my father was a great man I suspect – in fact I’m certain – he would be uncomfortable with that. Apart from his natural humility, I think he would suggest greatness is a term that ought be reserved for those who’ve saved thousands of lives, or changed the course of history in some important field of human endeavour.

So today, of all days, I guess I should defer to my father's view. I hope Dad that makes up, at least to some extent, for all of those many occasions in the past when I didn’t.

But if the next best thing to being a great man is being a good man, and if the measure of a good man is his ability to positively influence the overwhelming majority of the people he comes into contact with throughout the course of his life, then I feel very confident in saying that my father was a VERY good man.

How do we do that? How do we have a positive influence on those we come into contact with? What was it that Dad did to qualify him so clearly in my mind as a very good man.

One of the most significant things was his ability to make the people around him feel that they were important; that their lives and their opinions mattered.

You’ve already heard from my sister Diedre about how Dad was able to do this with his own family. I’d just add one further recollection to what has been said to you so far on that subject. My father was a very gifted storyteller. And what a difference it makes as a child to have stories told to you that don’t come from a book, that have never been told to anyone else before, and that are therefore accompanied by the pictures we create in our own imaginations. My father's most popular stories, told to his children and grandchildren over many decades, centred around the characters of Woggie the Snoggie, Wiggy the baby Snoggie, their faithful off‑sider Flip Flap, and the unspeakably evil Gremlin Goblin. Not only were these characters vivid, and wonderfully conceived, but whenever a "Woggie the Snoggie" story was told, the listener would himself or herself be a character in it, and that story would be custom-tailored to their age and interests.

What better way for a sports-mad young boy to fall asleep than with visions of having been selected from obscurity to represent Australia at the SCG, only to hit the winning runs in the deciding Ashes Test match, or to be plucked from the crowd during the ¾ time huddle to kick the match-winning goal for the Melbourne Demons at the MCG in the Grand Final.

Nothing was improbable, let alone impossible, when Dad was telling bedtime stories.

And my father's ability to make people feel important wasn’t confined to members of his own family. So many of you here wrote and spoke to us of this very quality in the days following his death, and about how good he was at giving you his undivided attention, and taking a genuine interest in your lives.

At the peak of his powers my father knew a lot about a lot of things. And if you were prepared to listen, he was more than willing to give you an extract from that vast library of accumulated knowledge and wisdom.

That said, conversation with Dad was never a one-way street.

Unless of course you were a teenager who'd drunk considerably more than was good for him. But more about that later

Dad was always interested to hear what the other person had to say, and to find out what was important in their life.

The photo you see here emphasises this point. Dad worked for many years in an office building in Walker St, North Sydney. As my brother Ian has told you, he was the Managing Director of an international company whose Australian management team were based in those offices. The man with the moustache, whose name was Arthur, was the car parking attendant in the building where my father worked. When Arthur got married he invited my Dad, and my Mum, to attend his wedding. Was the wedding full of business people who worked in that office building? Almost certainly not. Did Arthur invite Dad out of some sense of gratitude towards his biggest tipper? Definitely not. Arthur asked Dad to share one of the most important events in his life because Dad had made a real and genuine connection with a man with whom, looking from the outside, you might think he had absolutely nothing in common.

But Dad didn’t care who you were, how much money you had, what school you went to, or what you did for a living. He didn’t care whether you were male or female, Australian or foreign-born, straight or gay, sporty, arty or neither.

He would listen to you, and treat you with the respect you deserved, regardless of any of those things.

This is a photo of the attendees at a Senior Management course conducted at The Australian Administrative Staff College just outside of Melbourne in the latter part of 1968. Most of the 55 participants were Australians, but there were some overseas delegates. Towards the end of the course Dad invited one of those international visitors to our house to meet our family, and for a day’s outing to the Healesville Sanctuary, a couple of hours drive out of Melbourne. That man’s name was Frank Nkhoma. Frank worked for the Zambian Government, and you can see him in the 2nd row from the front, 5th from the left.

I was 5½ years old at the time, and Frank looked different to anyone I’d ever seen. Indeed I suspect most of the attendees at that Management Course had never met an African man before. Even though Frank and Dad were not in the same group at the Staff College they became friends. Looking back, it is not hard to see why. Frank radiated an extraordinarily warm and generous spirit. When he smiled, and said to me in that deep charismatic voice of his “You are a very good reader Geoffrey” I felt ten feet tall. I still occasionally try to emulate that voice of Frank’s today when praising my own boys. I have never forgotten him, and I hope I never will. Dad extending the hand of friendship to Frank, and Frank extending the hand of friendship to me: I now realise these were life–defining events for that 5-year old boy.

Not too many years ago I asked my father about Frank. He confessed that they had not kept in contact after Frank returned to Zambia, although Dad had written a letter to him which went unanswered. We didn’t have Facebook or email back then of course, and I suspect the mail system in Zambia may have been less than ideal at that time. But as we talked about Frank, and I asked Dad, through an adult’s eyes, about their friendship, he confessed to me that part of the reason he was so determined to make Frank feel welcome in this country, and into his home, was an experience my father had had some years before when he attended MIT in the United States as part of the Foreign Student Summer Project he had been accepted into after receiving the Fulbright Scholarship Ian mentioned earlier.

The Official Report from that Summer Project confirms there were 67 participants from 35 different countries – countries that, remarkably, included India and Pakistan, Iran and Iraq, Israel and Egypt, South Africa and Kenya, Greece and Turkey, as well as Japan, Germany, Italy, France, the UK, and many others.

And this was in 1956, when the state of diplomatic relations between many of these nations was tenuous to say the least.

During the course of the Project the delegates, all of whom were engineers and/or scientists, were taken on visits to factories and laboratories in various parts of the US. On such visits they would travel by bus. On one such occasion the buses transporting the group stopped at a roadside diner to have lunch. However the staff at the diner refused to serve the Asian and African delegates. They didn’t ask the group to leave, they just told those in charge that they would not be serving those members of the group who were not Caucasian.

There was nothing preventing the majority of white-skinned delegates from eating, or getting something to drink. But they chose not to be fed, or watered. Instead, in what was an extraordinary show of solidarity amongst people from all corners of the globe, people of different colours, different cultures, different religions and backgrounds, the entire group rose from their seats and they left the diner together.

Just think for a second about seeing that moment as a scene in a movie – what an incredibly powerful image that would make. And what an inspiring message that group sent that day to those who had allowed prejudice to overshadow their humanity.

Now I don’t want to suggest for a second that my father was solely, or even principally responsible for orchestrating that walk-out all those years ago. But what I do know with certainty is that he wouldn’t have hesitated for a second to be a part of it. Because that’s the kind of man he was.

Which leads me to the second significant way that a good man can positively influence those around him – and that is through the example he sets.

You’ve seen lots of photos today, and you’re going to see plenty more. In many of those photos you’ll see my father holding a drink of some kind, often a glass of wine. He loved his wine – indeed he bottled wine purchased in bulk direct from the vineyard many, many times throughout the second half of his life. He also brewed his own beer, somewhat less successfully, on a number of occasions. So alcohol was always a part of our lives as a family. And yet in the 50 years that I am able to recall I don’t believe I ever saw my father adversely affected by drink.

Not once.

Which is why the conversation I am going to tell you about now resonated so strongly with me at the time.

It's a Sunday morning. I am 17 years of age, and I have awoken at about 7.30am to discover that my bed has not just been slept in, but it has been vomited in. Upon surveying the scene I ascertain there is a conspicuous absence of other likely perpetrators. Albeit gingerly, I determine to accept responsibility. I gather the remnants of my last meal in a bundle of bed linen, and head for the washing machine, confident that I will be able to dispose of the unsavoury evidence before my parents appear.

Unfortunately my mother has chosen this Sunday, of all Sundays, to rise earlier than usual to collect and read the newspaper. She asks me, as I pass her en route to the laundry, what is in my knapsack; which I now notice is dripping ever so slightly onto the kitchen floor. I confess my sins. Mum offers to clean the sheets for me. As a parent of a son in his late teens I now understand why she did that. I wonder however, as she takes my parcel from me, whether she will feel inclined keep this little secret between us.

She does not.

Later that day Dad comes a calling to my room, where I am feigning studious dedication whilst in truth simply nursing a ferocious hangover.

His first serve is moderately paced, but it has some spin on it.

“I hear you had a bit of a problem last night” he says.

I return the serve gently into mid-court.

“Yes” I reply.

Dad places his approach shot deep into my backhand corner.

“Is this the first time this has happened?” he asks.

I am unsure whether he means “Is this the first time you have vomited from drinking too much?”, or “Is this the first time you have vomited in your bed from drinking too much?”

I choose to answer the second question.

“Yes” I say truthfully.

Dad is now at the net, ready to put away the easy volley.

“Right” he says. “Well – the first time it happens that’s an experience. The second time it happens you’re a fool. And the third time – well, if it happens a third time you’ve got a problem”.

It is now clear to me that I have answered the second question, but that Dad was asking the first one. I do some quick calculations in my head. They lead me to the inescapable conclusion that I am a full-fledged alcoholic.

It is game, set and match for me it seems.

Thankfully the passage of time, and a relatively small number of subsequent indiscretions, have allowed me to re-calibrate that initial assessment. But the point is that what Dad said had such an impact upon me because he practiced what he preached. Whatever the issue, he never asked more of us in our lives than he demonstrated in his own.

And although I didn’t appreciate it at the time, what I now realise he was doing was giving me a road map to follow if I wanted to be a good man too.

Now it’s safe to say there have been many times I left that road map in the glovebox. But at the times in my life when I’ve been forced to admit that I am well and truly lost, Dad’s road map has been there for me to refer to. And I’m sure I will refer to it many more times in the years ahead.

There are a couple of other stories I’d like to briefly share that will hopefully reinforce what I have said about the kind of man my father was.

When I was 10 years old Dad put his hand up to coach my team at the Lindfield Cricket Club. We were a rag-tag bunch, without much idea, at least half of us a year too young to be playing in the Under 12 competition. But by season’s end, as much to our own amazement as anyone else’s, we found ourselves semi-finalists. Dad was a big part of that. In his team no-one was more important than anyone else. Everyone was entitled to an opportunity. Those of you who are my age or older will remember that was not the way things were back then. In those days the talented kids did all the batting and bowling, and the rest made up the numbers. But Dad was ahead of his time.

We had a wonderful season. I remember still Dad piling the entire team - yes, the whole 11 of us - into his Ford Fairlane at the end of the last game before Christmas, and taking us down to the local milk bar so he could buy us all an ice cream. If we'd have played the All Blacks that afternoon we'd have had a fair crack at winning back the Bledisloe I reckon. Dad knew full well that if you don't have a team of champions, you're gonna need to build a champion team.

But of course talking the talk is just one part of the equation isn't it?

When I was 17 my father and I played cricket together with the Mosman Vets. Our team sometimes included four players with first-class cricket experience - Dad being one of them, albeit more than 50 years of age by then – along with Allan Border’s future father-in-law. One of my fondest memories from that time is a match in which Dad bowled the final over to the Nawab of Pataudi – a former captain of India with six Test centuries to his credit – with the batting side needing a run a ball to win. As wicketkeeper I had the best seat in the house, watching the two aging champions going toe to toe, with the game coming down to the last ball, and ending in bizarre circumstances. Although on the losing side, Dad shared a beer and a laugh with his opponent afterwards. Like the Nawab, I came away with even greater respect for Dad as a cricketer, and as a man, that afternoon.

When I was about 19 I suffered my first flat tyre. Now I know many of you may find this hard to believe, but I was not always as handy as I am today. When I called Dad at about 1.45am that particular night to ask him for help, there was not a moment of hesitation. I wonder now if he realised when he took the call what a fantastic bonding experience that episode would prove to be – the two of us tripping over one another in the dark on Lane Cove Road, roughly where it now joins the M2. As we sat on the kerb, about 3am by this stage, with the spare tyre securely in place, I remember finally expressing sincere gratitude to my father ‑ for probably the first time during my teenage years, which by then were nearly over.

Dad and I had quite a few things in common. We were both the youngest of four children. In each case our oldest sibling was born in England, 10 years and 2 months before we were born in Melbourne. The siblings closest to us in age – Denis in Dad’s case, Diedre for me ‑ were roughly 5½ years older than us. At his full height Dad was 6 feet 1½ inches, virtually identical to my 187 cm. Dad’s playing weight of 14 stone, which equates to about 89 kilograms, was almost exactly the same as my own. Those happy coincidences have allowed me to wear one of Dad’s suits today, which I am very proud to do. I think it’s also fair to say we were both accident-prone, which goes some way to explaining how I managed to split a substantial hole in the seam of Dad's suit pants just minutes before entering this room today.

Dad and I both married strong, beautiful women who would prove to be our life-long partners and best friends. We both became a father for the final time at the age of 34 years and 3 months. We both appeared on TV quiz shows – twice each. We both saved our very worst golf for those occasions when we played together. We both loved cricket, so much so that we played it into our 50s. And we both had the good fortune to play that wonderful game with our sons – something that has given us immense pleasure.

Over the years, and especially the last three years, Dad and I spoke long and often about each others’ lives. I told him many times in different ways what he meant to me and, right up to the last time I saw him, his pleasure at having me visit him was wholehearted and unreserved. The knowledge that there was nothing left unsaid between us is, as you can imagine, of enormous importance to me now.

One of my father's favourite pieces of verse is a poem called If, by Rudyard Kipling. Having re‑read the poem recently, I understand why Dad rated it so highly. It is all about what it takes to be a good man.

Much as I like Kipling's version, it was not written for my father, or about him. So today, as a final tribute to you Dad, I would like to read an amended version of If; a version composed especially for you.

If you can keep your hair when all about you are losing theirs, and blaming it on stress;

If you can justify your Scrabble word when all men doubt you, and so achieve a triple letter score for your X;

If you can keep off weight without the need for dieting, and confess your age without the need for lies;

If you can just be envied without ever being hated, despite always looking good, and always talking wise;

If you can paint your dreams – and paint them like a master ‑ and still, with all your gifts, avoid the vanities of fame;

If you can meet with a Nawab, or with a Collingwood supporter, and treat those two extremes of humankind one and the same;

If you can bear to see the well-placed, kicking serve that you’ve delivered returned between the tramlines past your partner at the net;

Or watch the two-foot putt you need to end the match all square slide past the hole without a sign of petulant regret;

If you can, with either bat or ball in hand, with equal sureness, make a yorker of what seemed to all and sundry a full toss;

And if indeed, in any game, no matter what the stakes are, you can lose with grace and never make excuses for your loss;

If of the ones you love you ask no more than you bestow, and in their times of need provide a sympathetic ear;

If loyalty and integrity mean more to you than wealth, and compassion and encouragement are words that hold no fear;

If you have lived a life that’s both constructive and creative; if all this has been your oyster, and if you have glimpsed its pearl;

If when you speak your mind you know that those who hear you listen, you can be sure your time has left its impact on this world;

For more than four score years Dad you led us by example, your guidance and your love has made us stronger, every one;

And if I can be half the man you were while you were with us, then I hope you’ll be as proud a Dad as I am proud a son.

For Abigail and Lara Hoy: 'We want to nurture our little babies', by father Aidan Hoy - 2021

29 August 2021, Singapore

Thank you all for joining us in-person or online to celebrate the lives of our daughters, Abigail and Lara. If it was not for the pandemic, we would love to have everyone here with us today.

About two weeks ago, Mandy and I both mentioned to each other that the moment we had been preparing for over the past 8 months was starting to feel… real. That feeling was tinged with some anxiety, but overwhelmingly, it was excitement. Excitement about the two new lives who were about to enter our family.

However, just under seven days ago our lives were turned upside down. The excitement was replaced by shock and grief. The anxiety now threatened to overwhelm us.

We prepared for an unplanned labour 48 hours after our babies’ hearts stopped beating. We were also having to arrange their funerals.

Normally, the beginning of life and its end are separated by decades. And the significance of these events evokes different emotions. Yet Mandy, myself and everyone here, are trying to understand how life and death can overlap so closely, and what it all means.

I have delivered eulogies in the past, but for people much older than Abigail and Lara. I find it a great honour to be asked to reflect on someone’s life, distil down their character and understand the impact they made. But we do not have decades of memories for Abigail and Lara. Fate did not give them a chance to enter the world. Instead, we, everyone here, are left with unfulfilled hopes and dreams for Abigail and Lara.

We are only able to contemplate what kind of people they would be, by sewing together tiny insights into their character. Abigail was cheeky, always restless in the womb. Lara, the more relaxed one of the pair.

And their names. Abigail, which means a father’s joy. Lara, which means protector.

Originally I thought it was a complete, wholesale tragedy that Abigail and Lara would not be able to receive the hopes and dreams of Mandy, myself, our family and our friends. The dreams Mandy had for them to become gold medal athletes, as we watched the Tokyo Olympics. The excitement our families felt about two new granddaughters, in families dominated by grandsons. Likewise, our niece, Ellie, looking forward to playing with girl cousins when she’s currently surrounded by boys.

And all the thought, both practical and emotional, Mandy and I put into preparing for Abigail and Lara’s arrival.

Although this week has been utterly heartbreaking, I can also acknowledge there is another angle to the passing of our little girls. It is incredible that Abigail and Lara were the cause of so much happiness in their short lives.

The outpouring of love and support from our family and friends over the past 7 days, because of Abigail and Lara, is humbling. This is the love and support that Mandy and I receive on behalf of Abigail and Lara.

Make no mistake, Mandy and I are hurting deeply. Even when we seem composed on the surface.

We feel robbed.

This is not fair for our daughters.

We want to nurture our little babies.

But alongside my grief of losing what could have been, I can also cherish what we had, thanks to Abigail and Lara.

A few weeks ago, I said to Mandy that we would look back, and see the time we spent preparing for our daughters’ arrival as one of the happiest of our lives. This remains absolutely true, despite the past seven days.

My little girls, we miss you so much.

We love you so much.

For what you have done, and what you could have been.

We’re so happy we got to hold you.

And be with you for a short time.

We're so happy you got to visit home once.

But we now need to let you rest.

You'll always be our daughters.

You'll never be forgotten.

For James Hoy: 'I still expect to see Dad walk through the front door again', by son Aidan Hoy - 2016

16 May 2016, Pinnaroo Valley Memorial Park, Perth, Western Australia

When a loved one passes away, it’s inevitable that you may never have had the opportunity to tell them some things. This must be particularly so, between father and son.

Over the past week, many people have told me about how proud my father was of me. But what Dad doesn’t know, is how proud I was of him.

I’m proud that Dad was Chinese in Australia during a time when Australia was not necessarily so welcoming. He was born in 1946, around the same time his parents received a letter from the government requesting that they depart. But Dad’s birth meant his parents could stay, and he would laugh and boast that he was the saviour of the family’s future in Australia.

These early years are mostly a mystery to me. However, as a child, Dad remembered sitting around warehouses watching his father and other Chinese men while they smoked opium. And up until a few years ago, a Northbridge history website had pictures from the late 1940s of young Jimmy, and his sister, outside of the Chinese furniture factory where their father worked.

But I’m also proud that Dad was staunchly Australian. His first car was an FJ Holden. Someone once said he was one of only a few Chinese playing football and cricket in Perth in the 1960s.

When I accompanied him to the East Perth Football Club rooms after a grand final victory in 2002, one-by-one several gentlemen, of similar vintage to Dad, came over to shake his hand and reminisce about East Perth’s good old days.

I asked him who these blokes were. He laughed and said, “I have no idea”. I can only conclude that the Chinese fellow that frequented the Inglewood and East Perth football scene in the 1960s was probably a novelty at the time.

Dad also cared about Australia in a more sophisticated sense. His grasp of politics was impressive. He read the newspaper every day from cover to cover and watched hours of TV news and current affairs every night. His vintage tight fit t-shirt celebrating Bob Hawke’s 1983 election victory would be the envy of many hip political advisors today. And I’m not sure many brickies bought a copy of former prime minister Paul Keating’s book on Australia’s international relations in the 1990s. But Dad did.

I’m proud that Dad was resilient. For decades he was up at 5am and off to the building site, and rarely did I see him visit a doctor. I once had to pick him up from work Christmas drinks at a bar. After Dad had bought all of his colleagues a round of shots, a young apprentice bricklayer turned to me and said: “I don’t know how your Dad has been doing this every day for 30 years; I’m already over it after 12 months”.

The ultimate test of his resilience was his battle with cancer. Yet he never let it affect his outlook on life, and he calmly shrugged off any concern from others. He was determined to not let his illness get in the way of so many things he wanted to do.

Never did I hear him complain about the medical treatment he received over the years.

Yet, for all of Dad’s strength, he wouldn’t have gotten through the final chapter without the love and support of Linda. And she helped to soften his tough exterior, just a little bit, for which I am very grateful.

I still expect to see Dad walk through the front door again at any moment.

For Ben Cordner: 'I will miss your uncontainable zest for life', by Geoff Cordner - 2019

11 February 2019, Macquarie Park, Sydney, Australia

I remember vividly at Ben’s 21st birthday party just a few short months ago, as the speeches concluded, and Linda, Ben, Tim and I, were standing arm in arm facing the crowd, I felt a wave of happiness wash over me that was like something I had never ever felt before.  At that moment I truly believed our life as a family was perfect.  We literally had all that we could ever reasonably have asked for.

Then just over two weeks ago our world changed forever.

But it has changed in ways we could never have predicted.  If you read or watch the news, which we haven’t for more than a fortnight, it is tempting to think the world is going to hell in a handcart.  But our experience over this past couple of weeks has been completely the opposite; there is so much goodness in the world it is impossible not to still have hope.  The support we have received from all of you, and from the wider community around us, has made us realise we are not alone in this – we are all in it together.  And there is enormous comfort in that knowledge, and strength too.

The second very important thing we have learned is that, no matter how much we might have loved and admired Ben while he was here - and we loved him with all our hearts – we never actually gave him all the credit he deserved for the person he had become.

The stories we have been told this past fortnight by so many people about aspects of Ben’s life that we didn’t already know about have swelled our hearts even further with pride, and helped us to more fully understand that the pain we are feeling is shared by so many others.  Because Ben touched so many lives while he was here.

It seemed to me that Ben was as happy this year as I have ever seen him.  All aspects of his life seemed to be giving him so much pleasure.  His relationship with Laura, his relationships with us, with his friends, his University course, his work, his sport.  He was saving money, he was planning for the future, he was looking at the entire world around him with that captivating, infectious smile on his face, and it was smiling back at him from all sides.

I am indescribably sad that Ben has died.  But if we had to lose him, then I am so glad I can carry forward with me the knowledge that he was truly truly happy when that happened, and that his life, cruelly short as it was, really meant something to him, and to all of us.

A few memories that I will always treasure:

The way Ben’s tongue, when he was small, seemed too big for his mouth, so that every word spoken was accompanied by a healthy spray of saliva.

Ben’s laugh as a young boy: now I know I might be accused of bias, but I would argue this was the most joyful sound in the history of the world.

Standing in the kitchen at our house about six years ago in tears after something on the TV had triggered a memory of my nephew Daniel, and having Ben come and hug me long and hard until the tears finally ended, and then a bit longer again, without either of us needing to say anything.

The many wonderful hours Ben and I spent putting together the slideshow for my Dad’s Celebration of Life.

The night we spent at the Big Bash just four days before Ben died.  Tim was away on his bus trip, and Ben and I decided at the last minute to go out to Spotless Stadium to watch the Sydney Thunder play.  I remember sitting with Ben that night at the game and feeling like we were just a couple of mates on a night out; like it was the most natural and comfortable thing in the world to be hanging out with your 21-year old son, completely relaxed in each other’s company. 

Ben I am so glad you got your hair cut very short recently, because I will never ever forget the feeling of stroking it as you lay on that hospital bed during the final hours of your extraordinary life, and the love I felt for you as I did that will never leave me.

Ben I will miss you so much.

I already miss seeing you walk out through the kitchen to the bathroom in the morning, one hand on your phone, and the other hand on your junk

I miss the way you called me Papa Bear

I miss the way you filled in the missing answers for me in the cryptic crossword

I miss your razor-sharp wit, and the cut and thrust of our regular repartee

I miss the way when I used a word you hadn’t heard before – like repartee for example – you would repeat the word, and say “Who says that?”

I will miss standing at first slip while you kept wicket, and having you calm me down when some poor unfortunate misfielded, or dropped a catch

I will miss calming you down when you misfielded or dropped a catch

I will miss hearing you say “How Good’s Cricket”

I will miss the fact that we can never play Fambrose again

I will even miss that permanently messy bedroom

I will miss your uncontainable zest for life

And most of all I will miss that beautiful beautiful smile

I love you Ben, and I always will

Geoff also spoke at Ben’s Celebration of Life event, as did Ben’s mother Linda Cordner. Both speeches are on Speakola.

Geoff writes regularly about his son at his blog The Beniverse, You can check out a post like ‘Batting with Ben’

For Ben Cordner: 'He wished he could be an astronaut', by Linda Cordner - 2019

13 February 2019, Epping Boys High School, Sydney, Australia

Where do I begin to tell you the story of my gorgeous son, Ben?  At the beginning. 

He was born two weeks early by caesarean section and was taken to the ICU because of difficulty with his breathing.  After having the operation I was taken to the ward where I was bedridden.  I didn’t see him for nearly two days, and was only given a photo of him by Geoff.  Despite the reassurances from everyone that he was fine, I became paranoid that something dreadful had happened and I was being kept out of the loop.  When he was finally brought down to be with me, I fell in love and bonded immediately, and right then I knew this kid would be something special. 

He was an extremely cheeky and outgoing toddler, always engaging people to look and talk to him.  I met so many people in the aisles of the grocery store, just because he wanted to talk to everyone.  He could go to a McDonalds playground for five minutes and make new friends.  It was always awkward when he would tell me he’d invited them back to our house to continue playing. 

Once both boys started at school the teachers would always comment on how different my two sons were.  At first I thought they were talking about their looks … until the notes started coming home!  I think most of the teachers in primary school loved Ben’s humour and intelligence, but secretly wished he was in a different class. 

Early in Year 6 we were requested to attend a meeting with Ben’s teacher.  He had had the same teacher since the beginning of Year 5.  Ben wasn’t present at the meeting, so as diplomatically as possible, Mrs Schlager told us she liked Ben but he pushed her buttons.  She told us she was a little disappointed that the note she sent home at the end of Year 5, suggesting Ben move to the extension class for his final year, was not taken up.  Geoff and I looked at each other, then back at her.  Both of us at the same time said “What note?”  Ben had read it on the way home and decided then and there we were never getting it.  None of Ben’s closest mates would be in the extension class, so there was no way in hell he was going to be. 

Just backing up a little, when Ben was 9 and Tim was 11 we had dinner at my Mum’s house.  Geoff was at cricket training so it was just the kids, my Mum and myself.  The four of us sat down and started eating at the dining table.  Ben, always such a curious little boy, asked me a question.  The question was “Mum, what’s a blow job?”  While clearing the food from my throat, I looked up at my Mum for support.  My mum placed her knife and fork on the plate, crossed her arms and said to me “This’ll be good”. Thanks Mum!  A million things were going through my head, but I realised the truth might just shock this kid enough to stop him asking such direct questions in the future.  So after a very long pause I told him exactly what it is – to the best of my recollection anyway.  Ben screwed up his face and said “Eww, who’d want a job like that?” 

Twelve months ago Ben asked if I could arrange for him to get a part-time job at my work.  I did question whether he would be an appropriate fit, but then I figured if they didn’t want him they didn’t have to hire him.  He got the job.  Ben and I worked together a lot over the last 12 months – something for which I am now extremely grateful.  We travelled to work in the city on the train, or in the car to Rozelle.  I told him in advance there were some guys his age who worked with me, and they seemed quite nice. Needless to say within a few weeks of working there, Ben was tight with all of them.  Soon after he had a hand in organising a pub crawl, and various themed dress-up nights, with the young guys and girls.  I noticed the other day his Facebook background page shows him on one of those nights out. 

This last year I have been able to watch Ben at close quarters, dealing with work colleagues and passengers of all different ages, and from many walks of life.  I am so proud to say he has exceeded all my expectations.  So much so that I feel a little guilty that I ever doubted him! 

A few days after his death, I got a message from a girl who was in primary school with Ben.  She told me she wasn’t close with Ben, but he was always lovely to be around, and was one of the ONLY kids to stand up for her against bullies.  I am so grateful to have received that message and I am so immensely proud of that little 10 year old boy. 

Our son, Tim has been amazing throughout this whole time, and we are so proud of him.  He has been a tower of strength (literally) and we love him very much.  We’re all suffering at the moment, but the bond he and his brother shared, although understated, was indisputable and unbreakable. 

Tim’s girlfriend, Audrey, has offered endless emotional support to us all.  She has such a gentle, unassuming calmness that has helped us cope with this unimaginable situation, and we thank you Audrey for that. 

Laura, we all love you.  Your relationship with our son was something to behold.  Your bond with Ben was so intense, and his capacity to love you was second to none.  I would always tell people you came as a pair, you never saw one without the other.  The love they shared in the five years of their relationship was so beautiful, and I know Laura that it will live with you forever.

Geoff, you are my rock and I know we will find our way through this.  I must admit I’m not looking forward to a future without Ben, and I know our lives have changed forever.  I love you so much, and know we can do this together, and we will continue to treasure the time we had with Ben forever. 

Ben told us not that long ago, quite seriously, that he wished he could be an astronaut.  He has always been fascinated with planets, galaxies and all that is beyond this world.  I truly believe he has got his wish.  Ben is now up above us, travelling through space, exploring the universe.  The brightest stars shine to remind us that the special people we lose are always with us.