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.