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 Aunty Nuala: 'She was a woman painted in vivid colour', by nephew Joe Kelly

In 1973 we moved to the Australian town of Mildura.  If you have never been to Mildura it is hard to explain.  It sits as a desert outpost, marooned in a sea of red dust.  In 1973 it was a frontier town full of frontier people – people looking for a new start or to forget an old life.  By day the sun bleached all color from any life that pressed its way into the desert moonscape, by night the sandstorms stripped whatever was left.  This is where we made our home.

Our years in Mildura made us used to people who existed in shades – people who were polite but reserved.  People who told their stories in pauses, every exchange a trade of trust for detail.  In simple terms, the people we had known were hard to know and hard to please.

In 1983, our father Des died and life’s crazy tide delivered us back to Ireland – to Galway. Nothing in our life to date had prepared us for our Aunty Nuala.  She was a woman painted in vivid colour.  A woman of stories and history and trust and love.  A smoke tinged, brandy wielding character who, to us, looked like she could better Hemmingway in a bar fight and delight in telling you the tale.  Someone who said what she meant and meant every word of what she said. To our mum she was the fearless older sister, to us a protective auntie who helped us navigate a new and unfamiliar town.

Nuala found us in a state of disrepair. We had lost our father and lost the only home we knew.  Nuala was a skilled nurse who had for her entire life selflessly tended to the pain of others.  What is amazing about Nuala is that she did this while holding nothing back. To us, as to countless others, Nuala gave fully and unconditionally.  Intuitively she gave us space when we needed it and was the first to offer a shoulder to cry on.    She had a press that housed an unending supply of sweets and crisps.  She was magic.

Her throaty laugh is probably what we will miss the most.  That and her wild tales of her wilder youth in London, a footloose fancy-free nurse chasing adventure down every street.  She’ll remain in our memories a woman naturally full of vivacity, hilarity and gusto, a woman who loved bigger than anyone we have ever known, who poured that love into those around her. And we’ll be forever grateful that she was part of our family and we were part of hers.  We will be forever grateful that she shared with us her greatest loves – Tom and David.  We will love her and miss her.  But we will never forget her.