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 Ben Cordner: 'I remain in awe of all his wonderful qualities', by Geoff Cordner, Celebration of Life ceremony - 2019

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

First of all could I ask you please to express your thanks to Tim O’Brien, to Nic McInerney, and to everyone here at Epping Boys High School who have made today possible.  The support the School has given us over the past two and a half weeks has been nothing short of extraordinary, and that support has been crucial in getting us through that very difficult period.

This place was such an influential part of Ben’s life that there could be, other than perhaps our home, no more appropriate place to hold this Celebration.  And as I look around at the number of people that have gathered today I feel safe in saying we made a wise choice to come here.

When you become a parent, particular as a father of boys, there is more than a little apprehension that comes with that about the responsibility of setting the right example for them.  What I didn’t anticipate, and what has become one of the great joys of my life, is that as our boys transitioned to young men it was them who would be teaching me lessons.
And on that subject, before I go on to talk about Ben, I would like to take a few moments to mention the tall, very handsome young man who spoke just before me.  From a young age Tim has set a wonderful example to his family, his peers, and the world around him about what it means to be a good person.  I have been, and I remain in awe of all his wonderful qualities – his humility, his empathy, his inner strength, that quiet confidence he carries that not once in his entire life, notwithstanding his many talents, have I ever seen descend into arrogance.  More importantly perhaps than any of those things, Tim has demonstrated to me that it is possible to go through your life without ever making an enemy.  Tim, we are so lucky to have you.

And so to Ben.

Back at Christmas time in 2015, which was the year Ben concluded his time here at Epping Boys, I wrote Linda, Tim and Ben a letter trying to explain, as best I could, how grateful I was to have the three of them in my life, and why.  I’m so grateful to Laura and Tim, who were going through Ben’s room a week or so ago, for their discovery that Ben had kept the letter I gave him back then throughout those three intervening years.  In that letter, amongst other things, I listed, for each of the three of them, the qualities I most loved about them.  For Ben, it was these.

I love your passion for the things that are important to you

If Ben decided he was going to do something, then he was all in.  There were no half measures with Ben.  Although this might sometimes have meant that he was a bit like a bull at a gate, most of the time the result of his efforts were outstanding – whether that was organising the Year 10 formal, or putting together and managing a new soccer team, or arranging a special night out with Laura, he was totally committed to the task at hand.

I love the fact that you see the power of knowledge, and that you genuinely love to learn

I truly believe that Ben was one of the smartest people I’ve ever known.  And not because he could remember stuff and regurgitate it when required.  But because once he learnt something he really knew and understood it.  And that’s such a significant distinction in my book – the difference between remembering something, and really understanding it.  Ben’s results at Macquarie University in the Advanced Science course that he was undertaking I think support what I’m saying.  His Academic Transcript indicates that of 20 completed subjects in which merit grades were awarded he recorded 15 High Distinctions and 5 Distinctions – no Passes, no Credits – leaving him with a Grade Point Average of 4.0, which is the highest GPA possible. I think this also reinforces my first point; if Ben had a passion for something, as he so obviously did for his University studies, then he would perform at a level that most of us can only aspire to.  And if I might digress for just a moment, I’d like to pay tribute to the staff at Macquarie University, and in particular the Department of Molecular Sciences, for the inspiration they provided to Ben these past three years as he sought to make his mark on the world around him, for the compassion and support they’ve shown to us this past fortnight, and for the extraordinary honour they are affording Ben, of which I believe you will be hearing more shortly.

I love your loyalty to your friends

I don’t think I need to tell you guys and girls here who Ben called “friend” – and there are a lot of you – what you meant to Ben.  I know I don’t need to tell you because you’ve shared with us the way Ben approached his friendships with you.  If you called him in the middle of the night needing a lift home he would be there; if no one else would dance with you, he would be there; if you had just broken up with your girlfriend, he would be there; if you were feeling depressed, or worse, Ben would sense that, and he would be there.  There are so many of you out there who know who and what Ben was, and it seems clear from what you have told us that you are so much the better for it.

I love that I can see some of me in you

Ben was the youngest son of a youngest son of a youngest son.  As a young man I think it’s fair to say he was a little self absorbed, and that trouble and disaster were his close companions.  He was cheeky, and he was more than happy to be the centre of attention – in fact at times he insisted on it.  I suspect some, indeed possibly all of these qualities may have been inherited.

Which leads me to the next item

I love that you are far more accomplished and successful in so many areas than I was at your age

Although Ben did indeed present challenges to his teachers and parents alike for many years, the fact is that the last Ben we will ever know was the sort of young man any girlfriend would be happy to bring home to Mum and Dad, any grandparent would be delighted to introduce to their friends, any sibling would be honoured to call brother, and any parent would be proud to call their son.  Ben learnt lessons so fast, much faster than I ever did, about what it takes to be a good man.  And if we feel the need to explain how he did that, we need look no further than the place in which we find ourselves today.  This School has changed the lives of many thousands of boys for more than 50 years now; but nothing I say today can come close to expressing how grateful we are for the young man you delivered back to us after we entrusted him into your care all those years ago.
Don’t get me wrong, that cheekiness, and the tear-arse nature, that were such an integral part of Ben’s personality as a young man, never left him.  But the humanity, the sense of responsibility, and the leadership that made Ben the person we will remember forever with such love and admiration were forged here, I have no doubt about that.

I love that you are willing to give honest answers to difficult questions

You would have gathered from Linda’s story earlier that Ben demanded honesty from those around him, especially us.  If he asked a direct question you better believe he expected a direct answer; as a result of which Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, to name just a few, were on borrowed time at our house.  But to his credit he didn’t ask anything of us that he wasn’t prepared to deliver himself.  Ben was a straight-shooter all his life.  There were no hidden agendas with him, no airs or pretences.  In a world where a lot of people are so image-conscious that they sometimes lose track of what is genuine, Ben was, as far as I am concerned, the real deal.  What you saw was what you got; sometimes warts and all of course, but no less lovable for that.

I love that you have been able to form such a deep and genuine relationship with Laura

I have given the School here plenty of credit for forming the man that Ben had become, and rightly so.  But there are aspects to Ben’s personality as we now know it – in particular his ability to look at the world from outside his own bubble – which may never have developed, and certainly not as quickly, or as strongly, without Laura’s influence.
These two were, to my mind, as close as a couple can get.  And Ben was so much a better person because of it.  Unconditional love is a wonderful thing.  Laura loved Ben, loves Ben, for everything that he was, and he felt exactly the same about her.  I don’t believe that he could have become the friend, brother, son that he was without you Laura – and how can we ever thank you for that. Hopefully by telling you and showing you every day from now until forever how much you mean to us, and how lucky we feel to have you in our lives.  And to Laura’s parents, Tim and Maxine, and to Nick and Rachel, and Cam, thank you for making Ben feel so much a part of your family over such a long period of time; so much so that I suspect there were times Ben would gladly have made a full time swap.

And so to the last item that I wrote about Ben those three years ago

I love that your future is so bright

What do I say about that one now?

What I say is that the way Ben met the challenges of life as an adult from 2015 up to now confirms 100% what I sensed about him back then.  That he was going to continue to set an example for all of us to follow.  As far as I’m concerned the fact that Ben’s life has been cut tragically short won’t change that one bit.  Ben packed more into his 21 years, and left more indelible memories for the rest of us, than many people who have lived much longer lives than he.  

I said at Ben’s funeral service on Monday, and I say it again to all of you today; I have never seen Ben happier with all aspects of his life collectively than he was in 2019.  So if we had to lose him, I am so glad I can carry forward the knowledge that his life was an extraordinary gift – to him, and to all of us.

I started off talking about the life lessons my two wonderful sons have given me.  If I look for the biggest lesson that Ben has left me, and there have been many, it’s to make every day count, to make our lives count, because we none of us know how much time we have left ahead of us.

Thank you everyone, from the bottom of our hearts, for joining us here today to honour Ben, and for the incredible support that so many of you have provided to us these past 18 days.  We will never forget it.

And we will never forget you Ben.  I love you with all my heart, and I always will.

Geoff also spoke at Ben’s funeral, and Ben’s mother Linda Cordner also spoke at the Celebration of Life. 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 Father Bob Maguire: by John Safran - 2023

5 May 2023, Melbourne, Australia

I spent so much time with Father Bob over 20 years, I feel I can auto-generate an A.I. chat between him and me, regarding today.

“Bob, you’re dead. Do you want a state funeral?”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“Ooh, I’m not sure about the state and the church colluding in matters spiritual. It worries me… I want a Tibetan sky burial, where they take you up the mountain and you’re eaten by the birds”

“Or I could push you out to sea on an iceberg”

“Oh yes, I’d like that”

“But Bob, a state funeral, because it’s such a rare honour, will really annoy your enemies, so it will be like, ‘needless to say I had the last laugh’”

And he’d go “Hmmm, enticing… but still no!”

And then I’d say “You always said, there’s no you and me, there’s only we. And the great we - all the people who loved you - need a chance to come together and say goodbye. And they’re not going to fit on top of that mountain in Tibet”.

And he’d say “Oh go on, have the state funeral. But no flags!”

Bob was like a reverse Native American. He thought his soul would be taken away if a camera wasn’t pointed at him. But it wasn’t because he was vain, it was because he felt such joy, and he knew it provided others with joy, grappling with the important questions of life in an irreverent way. A funny way of being serious, he would say.

While he might have been ambivalent about a State Funeral, he was always interested, obsessed even, with gauging the success, or otherwise of projects he was involved in. Calling me to ask about podcast download numbers, overnight ratings, book sales, follower counts. So, Bob you’ll be delighted to know that the eulogy I tweeted about you, was a blockbuster, my biggest ever, with 400 thousand views, 12 thousand likes. I’ll read it for you Bob, upload it to the cloud you’re no doubt sitting on now:

What was Father Bob like privately? Somehow kinder and funnier than he was publicly. We somehow ‘fought’ nonstop from the moment the record button was pressed in 2003, through documentaries, radio shows and books, right through to filming this year, but we never once fought. More than being kind in broad brushstrokes, he was kind in small ways. When an elderly congregant couldn’t catch the Collingwood matches, he organised tapes from Channel 7 that he would slip to her, along with the Eucharist wafer, during communion. Bob was wise as Buddha. He attracted all manner of outcasts, not all pleasant, but he was open hearted to those people too. I asked him how he did this and he said, “You don’t have to like people to love them.” When filming, it was an editor’s nightmare to cut from the shot before I’d burst out laughing each time Bob finished a sentence. I never thought Bob would ever stop making me laugh, but with the sad news of today, he finally has.

Thank you.

For Alexander Wilson: 'A great man died Monday', by son Ken Wilson - 2002

7 July 2002, St Michael’s Catholic Chuch, Ashburton, Melbourne, Australia

A great man died on Monday. He wasn’t a world leader, a famous doctor, a war hero or a sports star. He was no business tycoon and you would never see his name in the financial pages. But he was one of the greatest men who ever lived.

He was my father.

I guess you might say he was a person who was never interested in getting credit or receiving honours. He did things like pay his bills on time, go to church on Sunday and got involved in YCW and footy clubs and fund raising for schools. He helped his kids with their homework, drove his wife to the Vic market on his Tuesday off work. He got a great kick out of hauling his kids and their friends to & from footy games when he could.

He had high values and led by example. He treated all people he came across with equal courtesy and I can never remember him passing a person anywhere without greeting them – usually displaying that sharp wit that was his hallmark.

Dad enjoyed simple pastimes like BBQ picnics at Maroondah dam, a round of golf, mowing the lawn, camping at Lakes Entrance and the Grampians, a game a draughts and a good political argument. He spent his life working and sometimes he just didn’t seem to be around, yet he was always there. He was always there, doing what a man had to do. In retirement he was just a little bit partial towards the Richmond Football Club.

This great man died not some much with a smile on his face, as with fulfilment in his heart. He knew he was a great success as a husband, a father, a brother, a son and most of all as a friend.

There is a saying that when an old person dies a library burns down. There are many stories that go with his death, but there are many that we could relate. A brief tale of his life now follows.

He was born on 14th August, 1914 in Balmain St Richmond. He was the sixth of ten children (the 4th died at 10 months). When Dad was around the age of 8-9 he used to sell sliced oranges to the football crowds attending the games at the Punt Road ground. He was a pretty enterprising young fella and soon found he could double his money. He was meant to sell a slice for a penny but sold two for threepence!

In October 1924, the young wilson family moved from the ghetto of Richmond to the new ghetto of Oakleigh, in Queens Ave. Life was pretty tough in the years leading up to the depression and matters became worse when their father committed suicide in November 1928.

That event had a monumental effect on the young Alex. He commenced work as a full time caddy at Metropolitan Golf Club a short time after, but supplemented this by selling flowers on a street corner in South Yarra. He used to walk from Oakleigh to Burwood to collect two pales full of flowers, tram it to South Yarra and sell them. He again turned a handsome profit by selling them at a marked up price and pocketing the difference. He then trudged home to Oakleigh via Burwood to save the tram and bus fares.

This was the physical effects of his father’s death. The mental effects were much greater. He swore himself off alcohol for life and set forth to be the best the best person he could possibly be.

In September 1934, when barely 20 years old, Alex commenced work as a steward at the golf club. Two years later as circumstances would have it, he was appointed head steward, a position he held, except for the war years, until his retirement in 1979. In a 51 year association with the golf club he never took a sicky!

There was a wee slip of a girl that started work in the dining room at the golf club, whom Alex took a bit of a shine too. He started to walk her home from benediction of a Sunday night and one thing lead to another and in March 1942 they were married at Sacred Heart Church in Oakleigh. Moya & Alex celebrated 60 years of marriage this year.

They lived in Ashburton for 53 years, produced 6 children, 17 grandchildren and 4 great grandchildren. There are many stories that could be related of Alex life in the Ashburton
community where he has been active parishioner and fundraiser, from the very beginning, until only 3 years ago.

My brother Ray described Dad’s life as one of SERVICE, and I believe that sums it up – service to his childhood family, then to his own family, the golf club patrons, his church & parish and his God.

It is what he leaves behind that is important, for it is his spirit, kindness, generosity and love which he engendered into his children, and they in turn into theirs.

For us it has been the most wonderful journey, which not so much ends today as sprouts a few new shoots on the tree of life, as we are the living legacy of Alex Wilson.

So from us all, it’s goodbye husband, father and very special friend. We love you and thank you. God bless.

for Klaus Fincke: 'But the essence of Dad, I think, was adventure', by Michelle Fincke - 2015

22 June 2015, Williamstown, Melbourne, Australia

This location is full of memories for me. Locals would know that where we’re sitting now was the rifle range for the 1956 Olympics. Off the coast here is a reef, good for whiting. Dad would take us to the pylon out there to fish in his boat and when the red light came on, they’d start shooting at the targets and you’d have to up-anchor and get outta there. Hardly a relaxed morning out.

And in those same waters, back in the early 1960s, Klaus and his brother Jock and a few Jacques Cousteau-loving mates went diving with their dicey home-made SCUBA gear. One day, there was a problem with Dad’s tank, he blacked out and, with weight belt on, went straight to the bottom. Luckily Jock was there to drag him to the surface.

It was a life full of near misses. But more on that later.

Klaus Dieter Fincke was born in Berlin on June 28, 1938. Berlin. 1938. That was quite a time and place to be born. Klaus’s father Paul was a machine-whisperer – an engineer and mechanic who maintained aircraft. He married Lissi and they lived on a good-sized block in Berlin until he was sent, as an aircraft mechanic, to Norway for much of the war. Lissi managed alone in Berlin with young Klaus and a daughter who died, and Jock, born in 1942. She grew vegetables to feed the family and bombs fell.

When the Russians entered Berlin, she ran, pushing her children and treasured belongings in a handcart. Returning to defeated Berlin, the only work Paul could find was hard labour, lugging briquettes. But then then he saw the newspaper ad that changed so many lives: skilled workers wanted for the Snowy hydro project in Australia. Lissi hated the idea but eventually let him go: after all, he’d be home in a couple of years.

So, Klaus was on the loose in bombed out, blockaded Berlin. Lissi was a tough, fiery mum, I gather, but there was still a load of mischief to get into for the resourceful Fincke boys. Kids skated on the frozen lakes, scrounged up goodies brought by the US aircraft constantly overhead. The rubble of bombed buildings was turned into a mountain by bulldozers and, in winter, was a great tobogganing run on which, predictably, Klaus broke his arm.

Imagine how Lissi must have felt when Paul wrote to say that he’d worked and saved hard, bought a farm in the Snowy. ‘Bring the boys to Australia,’ he said. Dad said she was deeply unhappy, leaving her home for a spot on the other side of the world, but the three set sail in April 1953. I asked Dad if he was scared, leaving his home and travelling half-way around the globe. He told me that a margarine company had picture cards to collect, to stick into albums, and he had one about Australia. It had images of strange landscapes, of kangaroos and crocodiles and sharks and everything looked vast and dangerous and exciting.

Was he scared? He couldn’t wait.

On a spring afternoon, 15-year-old Klaus stepped off the boat in Melbourne and into the back of the Holden ute his dad borrowed for the journey. They drove north all night. It was dusty and bitterly cold in the back: Paul stopped by the roadside and made a fire for hot drinks. At around 6.30 the next morning, probably as the sun was rising, they arrived at the farm near Jindabyne. Lissi hated it the land drab, muddy and brown after winter. But Klaus loved it at first sight. He jumped out of the ute and never looked back.

My brother Dale and I spent a beautiful couple of evening hours in hospital with Dad late last week and he told the story of his first car; one of probably a hundred he owned through his life. It was a Land Rover, so clapped out that a farmer had dumped it in the creek. Klaus handed over 50 pounds earned as a kitchen hand and winched it out with some mates. He wanted to learn his father’s craft and over two years they dismantled and rebuilt the beast, with Klaus inhaling Paul’s vast mechanical experience.

By now, Klaus had begun a coachbuilder’s apprenticeship, making snowmobiles in Jindabyne. He’s also fallen in love with motor bikes and made a useful discovery: Snowy workers had money and bikes, but no clue about maintaining them. So Klaus serviced and fixed them, bought and sold them, all the while living the Australian adventure to the max: fishing, shooting, riding fast on icy mountain roads, all sorts of life-threatening hijinks.

Lissi turned the dismal brown land into a farm and grew food. Life was pretty good. Klaus and Paul started a mechanic and towing business and in about 1960, decided to come to Melbourne and bring the business name. I always thought it wonderfully romantic: Snowy River Motor Body Works, opposite the cemetery in industrial West Footscray, next to a radiator repairer and a milk bar.

Dad, who really mustn’t have had a whole lot to do with the sea until the voyage to Australia, become entranced by the water. He fished, mucked about with boats, took to skin-diving and spearfishing. At the Altona Squash Club he met the shy, raven-haired Lynelda, the only child of local small businesspeople Lindsay and Joy. They absolutely adored Klaus. My cheeky little grandfather was in awe of his mechanical knowledge and Joy loved him, despite the terrible tricks he played on her. Visiting the native enclosure at the zoo when we were kids, Dad secretly opened the pack of sandwiches. When Nana turned around, three emus had their heads in her shoulder bag! She took off, trying to outrun them. They chased her! For Dad, that was worth the price of admission.

To digress for a moment, many great Dad stories were about animals. Lion Park visits were a family favourite in the 1970s. Well, for other families. We dreaded them. Dad couldn’t help himself, he had to open the car windows! Klaus and Lynelda married in 1965 and went on a romantic honeymoon to Hayman Island. Dad hunted for cowrie shells by sifting through the sand with his pocket knife; an activity regarded as dangerous. He wore only thongs on the reef; again, against all sensible advice. The knife disturbed a stingray and he was slashed across the arm, soon blacking out from pain and blood loss. My then-pregnant mother had to drag him a couple of kilometres over the reef for life-saving medical attention. His feet were cut to shreds and he got coral poisoning.

This disregard for rules became a familiar theme for her. Klaus was his own man, for better, worse or near-catastrophic. Our family lived in Altona West, overlooking the refineries, and our grandparents lived nearby. Dad worked six days a week, running the busy panel beating business. He took his rye bread open sandwiches every day and the workshop was a hub for a collection of eccentric and interesting local characters. When I think of Klaus at this time, I think of him leaning over an engine, the absolute picture of concentration, the air whistling through the Escort ciggie always hanging off his top lip.

We had a passing parade of cars – I remember a pair of huge, ridiculous Dodges especially. He wasn’t an enthusiast or show off; his interest was entirely practical.

Weekends and holidays were spent on the water, somewhere. He fished the Murray, spearfished amidst waving kelp beds and always had a boat. He water-skied with mates – some of my most terrifying moments were spent watching them compete to get closest to the bank and spray water on the grazing sheep. That was the key to being with Dad. You had to go to him. He did his own thing; you were welcome to join in – if you could keep up!

We went mushrooming with him, the eternal hunter-gatherer, in the nearby fields, always worried because he really just wanted to catch tiger snakes in his bare hands. And he did! It’s hardly surprising that he produced three rather risk averse children. When Dad was 52, a twinge that started on the squash court during his regular weekly game became a heart attack on the golf course days later. I have thought about that time a lot lately, when I’ve felt overwhelmed by the cruel hand dealt him in the last three months. It could have all ended back in 1991. He was lucky, and we’re grateful for the medical technology – and for mum’s tender care - that kept him with us.

But then, it was his turn to provide tender support through mum’s long cancer ordeal. After she died, we wondered how he would manage, but he forged on pretty well alone. He loved cooking for himself and he had many friends. For 20 years, Dad delivered Meals On Wheels, and he loved it. A gregarious, decent bloke, he helped out his clients and relieved them of the fruit on their trees – my father was a champion fruit scrumper, no unclaimed fig or apple was safe.

Klaus was a complex man. He’d come from half a world away yet lived in just three houses, a kilometre apart, for 50 years. Gregarious, friendly and funny, he was also happy alone; company very often had to be on his own terms. A freewheeling, exuberant prankster, he was frustratingly inflexible at times. Authoritarian, yet with scant regard for rules, conventions or authority. He was a quintessential working class man, who applied himself and became a successful stock market trader. He made money by careful study, analysis and calculated action. He also made, it, as many of you would know, by simply not spending it. Crummy coffee, bargain bin snags at Coles …. he hated to part with his hard-earned. But the essence of Dad, I think, was adventure.

He lived for it. He wanted to be moving, active, alive ... The bush camp at Lake Eppalock was legendary. There was sailing, yabbying, fishing, boating and at times it all got a bit tribal. He roamed the outback when he could, and when he couldn’t, there were more sedate trips to the Kimberley and New Zealand – he refused to wear a breathing mask flying over an active volcano, contaminated his airways and was sick for days.

Of course. My Klaus …. knew geography, the weather and had a feeling for tides. He caught crayfish that we ate with white Sunnycrust bread when I was a kid. He loved Johnny Cash and the National Geographic documentary theme, and we polka-ed together at the Eltham Barrel. But he could be a tough parent. Set in his ways. And of course we clashed when I was a teenager. He scared away my friends with the stinky cheese he’d eat for breakfast. His soft heart was exposed around animals and he put away his guns many years ago. I have watched him with the grandchildren he thought might never come…watched him morph into fun, game-playing gentle Opa who will be missed.

We had a new routine, he and I. He wasn’t a café man and I couldn’t stand his horrible coffee, so we’d meet each week at the Altona dog beach. He’d buy real coffee from the cart at Cherry Lake and we’d watch my kelpie chase seagulls. We’d note the weather and tide, watch the pelicans and the fishing boats head out on calm mornings, as we had done together 40 years earlier. Once, I turned around to find him gently holding a seagull I had mistakenly thought dead – Klaus saw it moving and now cradled it in his big hands. Should we take it to the vet, I wondered out loud. No, it’s only a seagull but, he said, he didn’t want it attacked by the dogs. I watched him find it a sanctuary in the soft sand and saltbush, and I marvelled at the tender man he had become.

Auf wiedersehen Klaus.

For Ruby Carter: 'To call Ruby Carter larger than life would be to give life too much credit', by Jane Clifton - 2015

19 December 2014, The Memo, St Kilda, Melbourne, Australia

In Melbourne, Glasgow born singer Ruby Carter was known as the 'Godmother of Jazz'. Another great singer, Jane Clifton, was celebrant at her colourful, traffic-stopping funeral. There is no video or audio of the speech.

This is a sad day. Usually I would say that we are here to celebrate a life – and there will be a celebration of Ruby’s life here today – but it is a sad day.

Because it has come as such a shock. Ruby’s passing was so sudden. It’s almost impossible for us to imagine our lives without her presence in it. The streets outside are resounding with the silence of her absence. It’s eerie. It feels wrong.

We knew she was ill.

She’d been battling illness, been in and out of cancer, for a year or so now. Long hard years of debilitating treatment that saw her in and out of hospital, but still managing to crack hardy, still managing to do gigs, still managing to belt out the odd song or three.

This recent round with brain cancer did seem very serious indeed and she’d started to ask me about doing her funeral.

Never an easy conversation to have.

So, a couple of weeks ago I managed to steer her away from the harsh reality of the topic by saying,

‘You know what we should do, Ruby? We should hold a living wake – where we can all get to say what we’d say at your funeral, only you’d get to hear it all.’

She loved that idea.

‘But,’ said Jex, ‘you won’t be allowed to speak. You’d just have to sit there and listen.’

Not so keen on that idea. (Shitpot, Jex!)

But we swung into action, started organising it anyway.

Bernard Galbally managed to book the Espy for Feb 3rd next year, so, that we could do one last, magnificent Ruby Tuesday in honour of her long residency.

I felt absolutely confident she would hang in for the gig.

And, who knows, maybe we could keep that booking and hold a tribute for Ruby….

Even when I went to visit her on the day before she died and saw for myself how things weren’t going so well – she was really having a hard time – I somehow thought that this was a crisis she would pull through.

Such was the size of her spirit, her indomitable presence.

To say she was larger than life is to give life too much credit.

Ruby Carter was unique.

She was born in Glasgow, and I’m not going to say what year she was born in or she might just jump out of that coffin and give me a Glasgow kiss.

Ruby Carter was, is and always will be 45.

Ruby was the daughter of Robina, known as Ruby, and Peter Waterson. They divorced and Ruby’s Mum went on to marry Sandy, when Ruby was 8 years-old. And it was Sandy who was really Ruby’s main father throughout her life.

Sister of Bobby, Alex, Johnny and Joe – we are recording this for the family back in Glasgow, so, best wishes to all of you back there.

Big sister to Geraldine – who is here today.

Auntie to Aisha and Kirsty,

Great-aunt to all the little ones –

Tijana, Gabriella, Molly and James

Mother to Jerry …many of us here today were at her side at Jerry’s funeral in 1995 when he sadly passed away. She took that loss hard - but there was joy to be found as Granny to Jerry’s daughter, Jacqueline – Ruby’s grand-daughter – who is also here today. As is Jerry’s partner, Caroline.

The family grew up in the area of Glasgow known as the Gorbles where they breed ‘em tough. Geraldine told me they were familiar with tinned spaghetti but she’d never seen real spaghetti until she the age of 5 when she saw Ruby, then aged 16, clock someone over the head with a packet of the stuff. The guy had put his hand where it should not to have been and he paid the price.

Ruby attended St John’s Catholic school and later St Margaret’s Catholic School.

She left school at 15 and worked in cafés and in the family fish ‘n chip shop, where she was given the responsibility of closing for the night.

And when she did - she’d shut the doors, turn up the volume on the jukebox, and she and her friends would jive the night away.

Back in those days folks all over the UK would spend their seaside holidays at Butlins Holiday Camps.

Sports, swimming, beauty parades, bingo and live music were part of a great variety of activities on offer and the Camps employed huge numbers of staff.

Ruby’s Dad worked at Butlins on the Ayreshire Coast and managed to get Ruby a job there, too, as a supervisor.

When the singer with the live big band fell ill it was Ruby who stepped up to the mic, effortlessly singing standards with the band like she’d been doing it all her life.

She sang at clubs around Glasgow including The Locarno Ballroom and The Stuart Hotel.

She travelled back and forth to London, appearing as a support act to Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey among others.

Geraldine remembers being one of only two audience members when Ruby did a first gig at the Lorne Hotel at the top end of Sauchiehall Street in downtown Glasgow. The audience built slowly over the next few weeks until a month later you couldn’t get in the door – the place was packed.

She married Nicky Carter in 1957 and Jerry was born in 1958. But times were hard, the marriage didn’t last, and Jerry grew up at home with Ruby’s family.

In 1972 Geraldine came out to Australia with husband Alex who was here to play soccer. They were going to head back home in a couple of years but the weather and the lifestyle out here won them both over – and Geraldine’s lived here ever since.

Ruby came out to visit, nursing a broken heart – courtesy of ‘Big Robert’.

She backed and forthed between here and Glasgow before also making the permanent move in December 1973.

But despite all her experience she didn’t start singing here straightaway when she first arrived. Her head wasn’t in the right place and she didn’t really know any of the local musicians.

She worked at the Chevron and the Fawkner Park Hotels, until little by little, she did get to know people – musicians gravitate towards each other like bees to honey and Ruby never had any difficulty making friends, starting conversations -- and, luckily for all of us, she did begin to sing again.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

I didn’t really know anything about Ruby’s family or her early life -

and I’m grateful to Geraldine and her family for filling me in on the details - she seems to have sprung, fully formed, into my life as a singer of great note, maybe 30 years ago.

I am part of her other family.

This great bunch of people here today who knew her and loved her.

The city of St Kilda where she lived and worked for the past 4 decades. Where she was a familiar and greatly loved local identity. Even before the arrival of the lethal mobility scooter she was a familiar sight on her bicycle.

Always with a kind word or a ‘hello son’ ‘hello hen’ or a quick tongue lashing for all and sundry.

Some people weren’t even aware that she was a singer, they just knew she was special. She ate at the finest restaurants on the block – Cicciolina’s, Lau’s Kitchen and, of course, Claypots – and they were so generous to her with their food and their love because they recognised a good soul.

Then there were her sons, her Number One Sons.

The title of Number One Son was a hotly contested honour and not bestowed lightly. You had to earn it. By – fixing a computer or tuning a TV, driving her to the shops or hospital, or simply playing your instrument like a god.

On a technicality the Number One Son in perpetuity was awarded to Jex Saareladt. But Barney McAll is in fierce litigation over this claim. As is John McAll and don’t even start Stephen Hadley or Paul Williamson or Julien Wilson. Not to mention Bobbie Valentine, wee Dougie de Vries, Ben Robertson, Nick Haywood, Sam Lemann and….the list of 20 or so goes on.

But I believe there is a special category for Russell Smith.

I feel for the Number One Sons, no one will replace Ruby in their lives.

And then there are the girls – all of us jazz girls, living in fear of the Godmother of Jazz, living in hope of her praise.

Rebecca and Nichaud, Shelley, Tanya-Lee, Kate, Margie-Lou, Julie --

How lucky we were, girls, to have Ruby in our lives to show us that you don’t stop singing. Age may weary us and fashion shift but while there’s breath and the sniff of a gig, you just get up and do it.

She was the supreme performer, the supreme entertainer.

When Ruby stepped up to the mic – and in recent years that would be a struggle – people would stop in their tracks.

Who was this strange looking, incomprehensible woman in the red leather coat, beanie and headphones telling us all to ‘have a bit of shoosh!’?

But bemused smiles would disappear when she began to sing and they realised they were in the presence of something, someone, special – that rare creature – a real singer.

Music was her life. She lived and breathed music.

Musicians loved to play with her – and she adored them. It was true sympatico. Although she did have her moods….

Ruby would be the first to admit she was no angel.

I’ve spoken to a few people in the past week who are devastated to learn of her passing because they were in the middle of a fight with her.

Who wasn’t? We’ve all had our run-ins with Ruby. I didn’t speak to her for a whole year – over some stupid, pointless thing. But it never lasted forever. They were just flash fires.

She was bigger than that.

Ruby Carter was a passionate, opinionated, tender, crabby, adorable, infuriating, talented, loving woman – who never forgot your birthday, or your kids’ birthdays, or to call you on Hogmanay or to yell out praise for your solo.

I can’t believe she’s gone, but she will not be forgotten.

This is the video of the jazz parade send off to Ruby's hearse in Acland street after the ceremony.

for John Pinder: 'The Last Laugh was a whole alternate world of wonder and whacked-out whimsy', by Brian Nankervis - 2015

12 June 2015, John Pinder celebration, Circus Oz Spiegeltent, Melbourne, Australia

I’m sure I heard about John Pinder before I met him. I think that was probably par for the course for someone like John. I was a little young for the TF Much Ballroom, but I loved Daddy Cool and knew they’d played there and besides … how cool was that name? T F Much … too fucking much!

In 1980 I was teaching at Wesley in Glen Waverly and my friend Deborah Hoare was managing the Last Laugh … front of house, in the booth, assigning duties. She rang at 5.15 pm on a Friday afternoon and asked if I wanted to work as a waiter. Sure, that would be great, when? Tonight! Be here at 6 pm, wear something weird and be prepared to be yelled at by Andre in the kitchen. I could carry a tray couldn’t I? Write down orders? Could I spell Osso Bucco? If I was any good I could DJ from the record booth after the show and we’d probably go to L’Alba café in Carlton when we finished and I’d be home by daybreak.

I was playing a staff v student cricket match and I was just about to bat. I was torn -- play a heroic innings (against 11 year olds) or throw my wicket away and enter a mysterious, seductive world in Smith Street, Collingwood; a world I’d witnessed from the outside but wanted to know more about. I was caught on the boundary and in the Wolseley by twenty past and looking for a park in Langridge street by 6 (ish) -- always late!

I wore runners, blue and red tights, a medieval cape, make up applied by Rinski Ginsberg, a fish mask that Dave Swann had made for a Swinburne film and an ice cream container with a revolving propeller in honour of Ross Hannaford. The show was Mommas Little Horror Show, directed by the great Nigel Triffet and it blew my tiny, primary school teaching mind. I met Roger Evans who was charming, well dressed, friendly and welcoming and at some point I met John who was not necessarily any of those. John was slightly scary … a big unit … an unmissable flamboyant figure, all untucked shirts and bad trousers, standing up the back of the main room in front of those heavy, swinging double doors, smoking and clapping, laughing uproariously and encouraging, urging, willing the whole room to embrace the craziness …

And so began a decade of being a waiter and a performer and seeing shows like Fairground Snaps, The Brass Band, the Whittle Family, The Bouncing Cheques and Los Trios Ringbarkus downstairs and Shane Bourne, Rachel Berger, Wendy Harmer, Found Objects, Tony Rickards, Blind Billy Polkinghorn and a tiny, crazy, elderly woman who played piano and sang show tunes from the 40s called Elsa Davis. Roger asked me to drive her home one night and a week later she sent me a handkerchief in the mail as a thank you.

John and Roger and Tory McBride produced Let The Blood Run Free upstairs at Le Joke and they gave us complete freedom and total support and not very much money but we loved it and ended up downstairs on that hallowed stage, then in Adelaide at the Fringe Festival where John arrived out of the blue and helped with the bump in … putting up Phil Pinder’s beautifully painted sets (with Lynda Gibson’s Matron Dorothy Conniving Bitch running up the hallway into infinity) … John on his hands and knees. Smoking, telling stories, pontificating, laughing, telling more stories, urging us on. Make it big! Make it loud … and then, make it bigger and louder!”

The Last Laugh was a whole alternate world of wonder and whacked-out whimsy … created, nurtured and set free by John and Roger. A starting place for so many ideas, acts and possibilities. I loved working there. I made so many friends, so many life long friendships and I learned so much about doing shows … and I met the love of my life, Sue Thomson, at the Last Laugh and I’ll thank John (and Roger) until I too go to that great green room in the sky.

After the Last Laugh I saw John occasionally and it was always a pleasure, always exciting to hear his grand plans and check out the colour of his glasses. Sitting on milk crates at a café in Bondi … or one slightly bleary night in Adelaide where we talked for ten minutes and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that in fact I wasn’t Warren Coleman from The Castanet Club.

The last time I saw John was a few years ago at Roger Evan’s funeral and he, like all of us, was a little shell shocked. There was a vulnerability … a sense of loss about how they had drifted apart, but finally a sense of fierce pride in what they’d achieved. John cried and laughed and showed a heart as big and as significant as the personality we saw when he was on fire at The Laugh … doing deals, schmoozing the press, throwing an osso bucco over his shoulder when someone had the cheek to suggest that it was completely and utterly inedible, standing up the back in front of those doors, laughing outrageously and encouraging, urging and willing all of us on. We will go on!

Thank you John Pinder … you changed our lives!

For John Pinder: 'His was a lifelong struggle against the boring, the complacent, the mundane, the ordinary' by Jane Clifton - 2015

12 June 2015, Circus Oz Spielgeltent, Melbourne, Australia

Jane was the MC of the Melbourne memorial event for friend and theatrical colleague John Pinder. She introduced other speakers, in between her own thoughts and memories.

We’ve come to say goodbye to John. To tip our collective hat to his many qualities and give thanks for how fortunate we all were to have known him.

John has already been given a spectacular send-off in Sydney.

Shot out of a canon. Well, of course, he was.

We wouldn’t have expected anything less.

It was a great farewell and there are many of us here tonight who wish we could have been there too, to wave goodbye.

Because we feel a great sense of ownership of John, here in Melbourne - even if he was originally a Kiwi. He’s inextricably woven into the cultural fabric of this city, into our comic and theatrical DNA.

Many of us owe him a huge debt of thanks, not only career-wise, but also for the bloody ol’ good time we had of knowing him.

So, tonight, Melbourne, in, where else, but a great big tent, we extend the wake, in a way, we enlarge the tribute, we rack up the testimonials and share our stories of John Pinder.

So, to start with, let me say…

It is good to die without enemies. A glance around this room is testament to the fact that John Pinder had only one -- and that was boredom.

To hear the word ‘Boring!’ issue from his mouth was to send a chill down the spine of any performer. His was a lifelong struggle against the boring, the complacent, the mundane, the ordinary.

In the late 60s Melbourne – musically speaking - was a boring town.

Boring with a capital B, and that stands for Blues.

Yes, brothers and sisters, the heavy hand of the Blues was upon us. We had it bad and that was not good.

The Blues – in the key of either E or C - in 2 distinct forms, fast or slow – was one, long endless hompa-bompa, 12’y, featuring guitar solos so long that some of them are still being played today, posthumously.

The Blues - delivered to us by squadrons of grim-faced men in, flared jeans, pony tails and grimy t-shirts, and blasted through Marshall stacks so high and wide they were visible from the moon, and at an ear-shattering volume that could be heard on Jupiter.

If there was more than one band on the bill the changeover time between acts was longer than Michael Gudinski’s face on pay day.

The Blues - was a chick-free area because, ‘my baby done left me this morning, man, and I forgot to look in the mirror and ask myself why’.

So, when young Pinder rocked into town he started a band agency.

Well, of course he did.

Let It Be was an agency for bands who did not have the Blues. Bands who were as far from Boring as Tony Abbott’s speech patterns are from conventional English.

A newly graduated from the Pink Finks, Ross Wilson, was currently at the helm of the Sons of the Vegetal Mothers but he was about to strap a foxtail to his arse and plonk a set of furry ears above his curly locks. His buddy, Ross Hannaford had an Archie ‘n Jughead-style helicopter cap at the ready. Daddy Cool was about to bring back the bop, the doo-wop and the sweet harmonies of the 50s to our town.

Mike Rudd and Bill Putt had an ethereal, hard driving unit called Spectrum which featured not only the first Hammond Organ I’d ever heard played live but also - the recorder!

MacKenzie Theory had a chick in the line-up, and she wasn’t wearing satin hot-pants or singing oo-wah-oo with one finger stuck in her ear.

Cleis Pearce was a musician! And her instrument was a very small guitar called a violin – an electricified violin, with a wah-wah pedal.

These were bands who’d heard of The incredible String Band and Country Joe and the Fish, Captain Beefheart and King Crimson. Musicians who yearned for whimsy and eccentricity – bands who were anything but boring.

Where was Pinder gonna get gigs for them?

Before the Chinese, most of Melbourne was owned by the Roman Catholics. Part of their vast real estate portfolio was a rambling old joint up the footy end of Brunswick St, opposite the Sisters of Mercy, called Cathedral Hall (they called it Central Hall for a while but I drove past the other day and it’s back to Cathedral – you should take the tour…)

In 1970 this part of town was in no way hip. You could get stabbed just for walking past the Champion or the Builders Arms. And the only other reason you went to Gertrude St in those halcyon, pre-AIDS days was to visit the clap clinic (where Charcoal Lane now stands)

Well, Pinder threw a party at Cathedral Hall and it was a Too Fucking Much Ball. The hippie freaks and love children of this town flocked to Brunswick St in their droves.

You would walk through the foyer of Cathedral Hall in your rainbow crochet and face-paint, past Benny Zabel and his dancers – incredible what that one man could do with a simple set of bed sheets - and watch Pinder’s party unfold before your half-closed eyes.

Up on the balcony Hugh McSpedden and Ellis D Fogg were hard at it projecting the kind of light shows they do with computers these days. Back then it involved a complex array of colour wheels and glass dishes and paint and slides.

They needn’t have bothered.

By the time most TF Much patrons had walked through the door and paid their $2 admission they could have stared at the floor and seen Disneyland on Ice.

Pinder and Bani McSpeddon –- of the famous Leaping McSpeddons -- created something extraordinary with these events.

The bands like Company Caine, were eclectic and wild. The band I sang with was a vast and sprawling ensemble of sometimes 12 or more members, called Lipp and the Double Dekker Brothers and the Fabulous Lippettes featuring the Fantastic Crystal Tap Dancer.

The interminable breaks between bands were papered over by the remarkable innovation of bringing the curtain in and, in true vaudeville style, putting acts on in front them. 

Sometimes there was a pit orchestra – no pit, just a band on floor level, but a pit orchestra nonetheless.

There was always an MC. Usually Ian Wallace -– aka Pudding. Talking in his Pudding voice, reading aloud from Nick Carter novels, ridiculing everyone.

Jenny Brown -– now Jen Jewel Brown -- in buckskin bikini and peasant skirt would recite her own poetry. Tribe would do sketches. Colin Talbot wrote and performed sketches.

It was the whole kit and kaboodle a la Pinder, and it set the bar very high.

How do I know all this? Because I was the only person in that room who was not stoned.

Yes, I am the exception that proves the rule: I can remember and I was there.

It was a miracle I remained straight in that den of hallucination. The smoke was so thick you could barely see the naked bodies through the haze. And, no way was I buying a lentil burger….No matter how delicious they smelled.

Cathedral Hall held about 2000 people, all paying $2, the rent was 50 bucks. You do the maths. A number of pretenders sprang up. Sunbury borrowed a lot of the structure and over in Toorak Rd, Sth Yarra, at the beautiful old Regent Theatre –- where we used to flock for supper shows in the 60s to see black and white foreign films like the Cabinet of Dr Caligari and Last Year at Marienbad –- an American guy named Joe Monterosa tried to mount his own version of Pinder’s TF Much.

The pay was better but the vision came from a very different place. It was not a success. They were forced to burn the joint down to pay the bills….allegedly.

Years later, Michael Roberts would continue the model Pinder created with the Reefer Cabarets down at Ormond Hall. But by then John had moved on.

Boring!

He and Gini and Katie had tripped around Europe in a Combi van and like Toad of Toad Hall he’d fallen in love with a whole new toy called cabaret…..In early 70s Melbourne if you mentioned the word cabaret, you’d be thinking some ritzy tits and feathers show in St Kilda.

If you mentioned theatre restaurants, you’d be thinking Dirty Dicks. Or the famous Swagman Restaurant –- with the smorgasboard that we’re famous for’. You might even think of the old darling Tikki and Johns.

You wouldn’t be thinking young people or pop culture or Berlin.

But John was. He moved a few blocks down Brunswick St to a tiny venue where the bar swung very low. It was called the Flying Trapeze and it changed, forever, the way Melbourne would think of cabaret and, indeed, comedy.

A few years after that he moved back up Brunswick St but took a left turn at Gertrude, heading for the corner of Smith where he opened a bigger and better cabaret venue.

The first time I walked into that building at 64 Smith St on the cnr of Langridge, it was still the Collingwood Dole Office.

Light streamed through the unpainted windows onto the dull public service green walls and open plan desks.

And as I stood there in one of Malcolm Frazer’s dole queues I had plenty of time to look around –- and up, to the gorgeous band shell, and wonder what the hell the history of this building was.

Next time I walked through its door John had let his cousin Phil Pinder loose with a paintbrush and the place would never be the same again. The whole joint was transformed into the most extraordinary, magical interior I’d ever seen.

He’d done it again, John Pinder, this time with Roger Evans at his side, they’d hocked themselves to the back teeth to set the bar really high. And this time it was high enough to swing a trapeze from –- as Circus Oz would go on to prove.

I’m proud to say I waitressed at both the Flying Trapeze and Last Laugh. In what we like to refer to as John Pinder’s Academy of Performing Arts and Sciences, I was proud to strap on an apron and wield a tray alongside the likes of all the Sallys -– Sliffo, Sbootler, Smill -- Amanda Smith, Richard Stubbs, Bryce and Stewart Menzies, Deborah Hoare, and Mark ‘Cutsie’ Cutler, the vacuum-cleaner-wielding terrorist David Swan and Glen Elston with his purple t-shirt that just said ‘Rosemary’.

We, the survivors of Andre Snr and Junior’s hell’s kitchen, we who know the difference between sprinkle and sprig! Amanda and I reminisced briefly the other day about how fit we were when we waitressed at the Laugh, not just because we were young and working hard but because we danced our arses off before and after the show!

And, ladies and gentlemen, the greatest dancer, the man who put Bobby Blue Bland on for us to set up the tables to and the Stones’ Respectable on 11 for us to dance on stage long after the last patron had left the building. The man who has carried the flame of the Last Laugh, long and high, is here tonight. Please welcome, Last Laugh waiter supremo, and co-host of RockWiz, Brian Nankervis!

Let me finish my part of the story by saying that the city of Melbourne owes John Pinder a huge debt of gratitude for the force of his vision and his great leaps of imagination. He taught us all to think big, think global, to recognize that entertainment is a universal thing, it knows now borders. It’s either exciting or it’s boring.

Furthermore, if Adrian Bloody Rawlins can have a statue in Brunswick then surely Pinder deserves some kind of permanent memorial, too. Maybe not a statue, maybe something more abstract, a giant pair of yellow glasses, maybe -– a new kind of Yellow Peril.

For Mietta O'Donnell: 'All around her was orderly and beautiful perfection', by Wendy Harmer - 2001

January, 2001, St Mary Star of Sea, West Melbourne, Australia

Wendy’s friend Mietta O’Donnell died in a car accident in Burnie, Tasmania on January 4, 2001. Mietta’s partner Tony Knox was the driver of their car and was in hospital on the day a requiem Mass was held for her at St Mary Star of Sea, West Melbourne. Knox was later charged, and cleared, of negligence in the collision in which local man Glen Harman also lost his life.

I’m speaking on behalf of Mietta’s family today, and in accordance with their wishes I’m not going to speak about the professional milestones in her career, because I’m sure that we’ll be reading about those for years as people come to understand and unravel her remarkable legacy.

Instead I’d like to offer a personal memoir about the woman I knew and loved dearly and then I’d like to talk about the privilege I enjoyed in having Tony and Mietta as my friends for the past 15 years or so.

Over the last few days I’ve read various newspaper articles about Mietta and often I’ve found it difficult to reconcile the woman I’m reading about and the woman I knew.

A “Queen of Cuisine”, a “Grand Dame of Dining”, a “Cultural Figure”, an “Ambassador for Melbourne”… of course she was all these things…

But more than that, quite simply, she really was the most charming, warm, gentle and loving person you could ever wish to meet.

I have read that Mietta patrolled her domain in the upstairs dining room in expensive gowns, with a personal style variously described as “aloof”, “austere” or even “forbidding”, but for those of us who watched her night, after night, we came to understand that what we were seeing in Mietta was actually pure concentration in the pursuit of absolute perfection.

And night, after night, after night, year, after year that’s exactly what she achieved.

All around her was orderly and beautiful perfection.

Mietta had an eye for detail which was extraordinary.

It was almost like she had X-ray vision or extra sensory perception. She intuitively knew if the slightest thing was out of place.

Every evening she would walk through the room setting the stage … straightening a napkin here, removing a speck of dust from a glass there, adjusting a flower, until it was “just so” and then the performance would begin…

The lamps would be turned on, the lights dimmed, music would swirl through the room and as the first diner arrived, all the staff would strike up asymphony for the senses which was sustained until the last person departed.

No wonder Mietta understood the artistic temperament so well and surrounded herself withactors and musicians.

She, herself, was a maestro.

And in that way that all great artists have, she lived each evening through the eyes of every member of her audience. Her aim was that every person who walked through the door should have a sublime experience.

And if you think about it, why would Mietta want to dedicate her life to offering such an experience to people she had never met and may never meet again?

Certainly not for personal aggrandisement, but because, I think, Mietta understood that to experience beauty and perfection has the ability to uplift the human spirit. To feed the soul.

If we understand that the soul is nurtured by good food and music, wonderful conversation with genuine friends and memories which touch the heart, then Mietta was a truly soulful person.

And when Mietta’s was alive with opera upstairs, jazz and cabaret downstairs and poetry in the bar … And all around her was vibrant and humming with creative energy … Mietta’s soul sang.

As she says in her lovely book “Mietta’s Italian Family Recipes”, it was her Italian grandparents who were her inspiration .

She writes: ”They gave me a glimpse of the sort of pleasure that can be given and gotten through true hospitality - when you give of yourself, of what you enjoy and what you like to surround yourself with. If that is, as it was in my grandparents case, art and music, fine food and wine, gardens and animals and family, it’s not a bad life.”

In the past few days I’ve had many conversations with friends about Mietta and, invariably, they remember some great kindness she showed .

Perhaps it was a welcome home dinner or a birthday lunch, a farewell supper. Often I would get a phone call: “I think so and so needs cheering up so I’m having a dinner, can you come?”

And always you knew, if you were lucky enough to be given such a treat, you would walk in the room to find exactly the people you wanted to see … even if you had been away from town a long time. Just like today.

Except that today there is the profound sadness that Tony isn’t here because, always of course, always when you saw Mietta, there would be Tony.

What a remarkable double act, what an inspirational love story.

If Mietta was the maestro then Tony was the architect who built the stage on which she performed.

Tony and Mietta. Mietta and Tony. You always spoke about them as if they were the one person. It was hard to tell where one finished and the other began.

They moved as one. They were together 24 hours a day for 30 years and still fascinated by each other, still passionate about each other.

Of course they didn’t always agree!

At the table it would be an exasperated, “Oh come on Mietta, get real!” or a firm, “That’s enough Tony” and then in the next breath: “You know Mietta’s absolutely right about this” or “Yes, well ask Tony, he knows everything about that.”

In all the years I knew them I never saw them show any great physical affection … No extravagant kisses or cuddles.

But did you ever watch them eat?

It was such a truly sensuous experience that sometimes you felt the children should be sent from the room.

You felt you were intruding as they spoonfed each other, passed tidbits back and forth and nodded and murmured in their own private language.

In fact, after staying with them once, I wanted to buy them a gift and I went though all the options - music, books, wine - but ended up buying an antique silver set of salt and pepper shakers in the shape of two little wrens sitting on a branch with their heads together.

And I’m reminded here of a story …

It was the only time I ever got to cook for Mietta and Tony.

They visited my husband Brendan and me in Sydney and of course I was in a great state about what I could serve for lunch!

I decided on chicken ravioli and while I slaved over the sauce I sent Brendan into town to buy the handmade gourmet ravioli from a particular little shop.

I served up the dish and it wasn’t until we cut into the pasta that we realised that the chicken had gone off, it was totally rancid and vile and it was only then that Brendan realised that’s what must have been in that package he’d found under the front seat of the car after he’d come from a few hours surfing.

What a disaster! We were mortified!

However it so happened that also on the table was a pile of our tomatoes, still warm from the garden which Mietta and Tony ate for lunch with a bit of bread and salt and declared it “just what they felt like and one of the best meals they ever had”.

To this day I believe them because it makes me feel better, but also because they could have been telling the truth.

Tony and Mietta were two of the most unpretentious people you’d ever meet. Wherever there was fellowship and conversation, that’s where they were happy to be - whether it was in a five star French restaurant or fish and chips on the end of a pier.

And as friends, they were always thinking about how to bring joy into your life, how to honour the friendship.

They travelled to Sydney on Tony’s motorbike when our son was born and walked into the room when he was only hours old with a bottle of champagne. Tony brought his camera and took photographs of him breastfeeding because they thought it would be good to record his first experience of fine dining.

What an adventure they had … what amazing things they achieved … and what plans they had for the future!

Their partnership will always be remembered for it’s physical and intellectual energy; commitment to community and dedication to social change. There was certainly nothing “relaxed and comfortable” about Tony and Mietta.

A friend made a wonderful observation when he said that usually social change is affected by a movement, but in this case, in the cultural life of Melbourne, and indeed Australia, change was affected by just two people -Tony and Mietta.

That’s how dynamic and creative they were as a couple. That’s how powerful and transforming true love can be.

And while they were all those things to the outside world - dynamic, formidable, energetic and forceful - to all those who loved them and were loved by them they were just a blessing.

So today we close one chapter on a great love story. I know it will inspire people for years and, of course, will never be over while Tony is alive.

And it’s time to say farewell to Mietta.

I know that forever in my mind I will be walking through a door and see her there, her hands gently clasped, a perfect size eight in her little silk suit from Milan, her hair “just so” and her little golden Cretan bee earrings and pendant shining in the soft light of the lamps … and that enigmatic smile.

A bit like the Mona Lisa now I think about it.

And I’m also thinking that at last they have in heaven someone who truly understands seating arrangements. What an asset she will be.

Goodbye dear friend. I don’t expect to see your like ever pass this way again.

We will all miss you so much.

We do love you so.

For Carey Leech: 'Words are inadequate, but they are all I have' - by husband Greg Leech, 2008

5 September, 2008, Mt Eliza, Victoria, Australia

First of all, please let me say that we have done Carey proud with such an incredible turnout to see her off in style. It comes as no surprise, but I know one thing for certain. She’d sit back, survey the scene and feel really loved. Thanks again.

The fact that Carey was such a perfectly balanced character was no accident. Carey had a simply wonderful upbringing from a loving family. She loved to spend time with her father, Roy, whenever she could, enjoyed a very special and close relationship with her lovely mother Lois and took great pride in the love she had for sister Louise and brother Nigel, both of whom equally loved to have their doting little sister around. Her delight in having a close family never wavered and the lessons learned in that warm and secure environment supplied her with the blueprint she took into her own marriage and motherhood. It was totally based on love and security and she learnt that early in life.

Fast forward to 1984. When I first lay eyes on Carey. She was 18 years old and an apprentice at a printing company at which we both worked. Apart from being, as we all know, absolutely striking to look at, her manner, her seemingly effortless elegance struck me the minute I saw her. And life was never going to be the same. I knew it right then, but it took me a while to convince her of the same thing. In fact two years of pretty determined pursuit! It’s history now that she relented and decided that, for some strange reason, I was worth investigation. She had discovered beer right about that time and I can’t help but feel there could be some correlation between the two occurrences!

Carey took it all in her stride. This was a path she was choosing and she was to embrace that choice, through thick and thin. I like to think she is still embracing it, in that ageless, classy way. Because Carey had the most wonderful virtue of being unburdened by ego. She simply never saw it necessary to inform those around her of her undoubted abilities. I’m sure most present will recognise how, when speaking with Kez, she would sincerely want to know what was happening in your life, only touching on her own trials or triumphs as a matter of course in the conversation. Even then, she would understate her own achievements, not because she had to, but it was her natural way. And she had achievements. Many, many achievements. In fact, it was failure that was the stranger to Carey. It was this care for others that set Carey apart from most. That genuine way of hers, the really wanting to know, to listen. To really listen. She made every person she called ‘friend’ feel special. She made me feel special. Every day. She still makes me feel special.

Back to the story… We became inseparable. We became known for our ability to fully enjoy a party, but it was Carey that was the principal in that. When other mates were getting a tug on the sleeve from their partners at around 1am to hit the road, more than once it was whispered in my ear as they made their reluctant way from a venue, ‘I wish I had a chick like yours’. ‘Keep wishin’ pal’, I’d think to myself as Kez would race from the dance floor, grab me around the shirt collar and rush me back so we could bust a few of our trademark messy moves to Soft Cell’s Tainted Love or some such ‘big-haired ‘80s classic. All the while those gleaming white teeth shining from that so freely-given smile. So we moved through life, married, ate bacon and eggs and read the papers on a Sunday, worked hard, played hard.

And then Spencer arrived… Home-Brand anyone? Carey was a natural mother. We had no idea that was going to be the case, but, once again, failure never turned down Carey Street. This was just another example of her wonderful attribute of celebrating what life brought her. She took to it with the same enthusiasm she approached everything. Angus was on the scene by this time too, and her clear blue eyes were given yet another reason to sparkle. And the next phase of Carey’s wonderful life hove into view. Carey loves her children. In fact, who doesn’t? They became her focus. She happily gave up a career that she’d built on ability and ethic, made her life around our little family, became involved with all their activities and loved every second of it.

It was about this time that it became obvious that our little house in Burwood would split its seams with the addition of Gus. Enter Mount Eliza. Moving to Mount Eliza saw Carey blossom even further. It was within days of our shifting in that she had friends in the area. Most have gone on to become lifelong mates, people that stick true. Because they are the types of people that Carey attracted. It was no fluke that the friends we have made since our move down here in 1999 are so wonderful. People always have wanted to be near Carey and that is why her being gone is so difficult for all of us. There is simply no replacement for her. We are just going to have to keep her spirit alive. We will one day remember her and do it without a tinge of sadness. We will smile like she did. Like she wants us to. That day will come. It’s just not today… or tomorrow.

It was not long after this, in 2001 that Carey was diagnosed with cancer. It shook the foundations of Team Leech, but it was Carey that first arrived at the pragmatic approach she took all the way through her illness. She was to have a double mastectomy, reconstructive surgery and she would push on. She did just that. In fact, she never allowed cancer to define her. Yes, she had it, but her life was filled with quality was her approach. Bravery. It’s a word that is used flippantly, but I have seen bravery that has no words. But she would never tell you about it. It was part of her day, but not once was there a complaint. It was simply inspirational. As I said, words are inadequate, but they are all I have. Carey overcame the disease that first time. She was active beyond belief, played sport, taught swimming to kids that flourished under her understanding tutelage, her life was on track. She attended all the children’s events, organised a goodly amount of them, ate, drank and danced. Her life was good again, and she considered that her cancer was behind her.

Until that day in August of 2005. It was back and it was back in a bad way. What was Carey’s approach? ‘I’ll have treatment and we’ll push on’. Still, she stood in its way and dared it. Still, she remained unfrightened. If courage was enough, well cancer never stood a chance. But cancer is not like that. It’s a sneaky coward that finds other ways. We know how she attended chemotherapy once a week for two and a half years, how she became loved by the patients and nurses there, how she made even that daunting grind a way to bring happiness. It took her slowly, but she kept on. We finally arrived at a point where it was obvious it was going to take her life. With bravery, she informed the boys. Then she set about making everything in the house understandable and easier for us, should she leave. It became her number one priority. Spencer, Angus and myself. Not herself. Us.

In February of this year, she was given weeks to live. As we know, it took until August 30 to claim her. And she passed with the same dignity and truth with which she had led her life. I’ve never felt prouder than I did holding her hand as she was released. And it was beautiful. Even through the period leading up to all but her final days, she laughed, she even danced. Her intellect and humour still defined her. The sparkle had dimmed, but it was still there in those beautiful eyes. Spencer and Angus bravely coped and loved her all the more. They are very special little boys and why wouldn’t they be, having had the privilege of being able to claim this wonderful person as their mother. Carey knows how much they love her and miss her, but she also knows that the agony will pass for the boys, she has delivered them of such emotional and intellectual sophistication. Another of her wonderful, wonderful gifts.

At home, we have a picture of Kez. It’s 1988, she is aboard a galloping horse in Egypt, her long natural blonde hair streaming and cascading behind her, with the pyramids outside Cairo supplying a dramatic backdrop. It’s just a photo of her as a 21 year old girl, in an album at our house, but, this is but one of the images of Carey that define the happiness and unaffected lust for life and all its experiences that she lived every day of her packed life. I will always see that shot in my mind, and feel the freedom she experienced at that moment. I like to believe that she feels just such freedom today and will forever more. I love you Carey. Like you loved me. Ride on my beautiful darling. Until we meet again. Greg.