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.