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

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

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

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

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

Jan had such a powerful voice. She really did.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It wasn’t a perfunctory phone call.

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

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

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

Born on October 31, 1953, …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wise words from a strong woman.

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

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

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

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

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

God bless you, Jan.

For Barry Deane: 'He loved to see the world in motion', by Tim Deane - 2017

19 January 2017, St Brendans, Shepparton, Victoria, Australia

 Barry loved a short Mass.

He was a regular at St Mel’s on Sunday evenings.

And he may have had a stopwatch on every Mass in Greater Shepp and found the shortest and sharpest—but by the book—sermon was over there.

With that in mind, I’ll be keeping this eulogy to the point.

We’re pleased that Barry’s funeral is here at St Brendan’s.

Speaking for Penny, Liza, Joel, Gemma and Camille—together with our spouses and children—we’re pleased because this feels like the spiritual home of the Deanes.

This is the place where – as a toddler – Barry crawled around the altar while the Mass carried on above his head.

This is the place where Barry served as an altar boy.

This is the place where the funerals of Barry’s parents – Pat and Jean – were held.

And this is the place where we’ve come to say goodbye to Barry.

In saying goodbye, this won’t be a chronology.

This won’t be a walk through his times as a clerk of courts … an insurance collector … a milk bar owner … a fruit picker … a real estate agent … a newsagent … a salesman … a taxi driver … or a Bunnings elder statesman.

Instead, there’ll be a couple of stories to get a sense of him. A sense of the man who was the eldest child of Pat and Jean; had eight brothers and sisters – Peter, Ann, Paul, Patrick, Denis, Jan, Kay, and Margo; married Penny; and had five children – myself, Liza, Joel, Gemma, and Camille.

Barry grew up not far from here – at Orr Street and then Oram Street

He was – according to reliable reports – a tearaway.

In the late ‘40s and early ‘50s – when Barry was knocking around with his brother Peter – Orr Street was a riot of kids. 

And Barry was usually in the thick of it – especially if there was trouble.

That’s because Barry loved action and was good at making things – the kid who could make a pile of junk into a billycart fit for Stirling Moss.

Peter said, Barry was a leader. That he was king of the kids.

And he always kept that kid-like quality.

Maybe that’s why he loved cars.

He’d always be asking about your car.

How was it driving?

Have you checked the oil, the water, the tyres?

‘You know they drive faster when they’re clean.’

The classified car ads and classic car catalogues were his Catechism.

 They were too many cars to count. But he did. He owned everything from Citroens to Sprites to a Fiat Bambino (a second car mind and ‘ran it for a dollar a week’) to Valiants and Chargers to V8 Commodores to Holden utes to South Korean creations which he made a solemn duty of convincing us were the best deals in town.

And he drove those cars for work and for pleasure and for escape.

Barry’s yellow Charger – in which he had a rare accident when driving the wrong way up St Georges Road in North Fitzroy – it was the other bloke’s fault – the Charger turned heads when Joel and I attended St Kevin’s, Toorak.

Yes, Toorak.

My schoolmates thought the Charger was cool. Or at least unusual.

I took a young woman to my Year 12 formal. Barry, me, yellow Charger, mag wheels, red stripe, picked her up from home. A night was had. She talked while Barry, me, yellow Charger, mag wheels, red stripe, dropped her back home.

She got out.

The door closed.

We drove off.

“She’s not for you, pal.”

Another example.

One Sunday Joel slept in and missed a bus.

No big deal – except this bus was heading to Horsham for a rock climbing camp at Mount Arapiles.

This was Barry’s one day off for the week.

What did he do?

He drove Joel to Horsham, drove back to Melbourne, then got up and went back to work the next day.

Barry loved his cars.

He loved his boats, too.

But they didn’t always love him back.

He launched one of his boats into Lake Nagambie without the plugs in. One of the kids saw it. Liza? I can’t remember who. And the day was saved. This was not to be spoken of again. But we often did.

Or the time we ran out of petrol on Port Phillip Bay. Also not to be spoken of again. But we did.

He loved his boats.

And I’m glad Barry took a final spin around Shepp lake with Peter Barker without coming to grief.

And I’m glad that he kept making plans, too.

A few weeks before he died, the old man decided to move down the end of Guthrie Street.

I understood it when I saw it. ‘Flat roof’ meant ‘modern’ in Barry speak. He wasn’t sentimental. And he’d take modern any day. – Which was an extra reason you’d find him at St Mel’s by the way.

And the upstairs balcony at this new place had a view of the bush and a view of the freight train line.

You see, Barry loved trees – wherever he lived he planted them– Especially Silverbirch. I always think of him whenever I see one.

And he loved to see the world in motion.

… needed it to be in motion.

… and he loved to be in motion.

So we’ll remember him on the move, in his cars, in his boats, making plans, happiest talking about them, about fishing, the Murray River, talking about his Labrador Buster and any of his dogs, about Dookie, about Waranga Basin, about prospecting, about the ol’ man, about the ol’ girl, about Pop, and laughing easily.

Now he is still.

Now he is at rest.

And now he is at peace with God.

He was a man of faith and knew God loved him. We entrust him to God, and with all our love we say good-by