Forty
Me at forty.
(Well, 39 and 364 days, yesterday. I had this idea of taking my own picture. It’s startlingly difficult to get a half-decent shot, as you can see. Even the one I used shows something between my teeth — and a tree apparently growing out of the top of my head, though I’ve cropped most of it out.)
To be honest I feel a bit seedy today. Not enough sleep, a cold, and the events of the last couple of weeks mean I haven’t organised anything to mark the occasion except with family. Maybe in a few weeks when the dust settles.
Tags: birthdays
28 comments
The funeral
Yesterday was a hard day, but a good day.
Thank you to my sister (siblings help so much at times like these), Reverend Johnsan David (and helpers) at St David’s Anglican Church in Moorabbin for accommodating us, Brian at Mannings Funerals, Laura and the others at South Eastern Private Hospital, all the others who helped this week and attended yesterday, and everyone else for your thoughts this week.
Here are my eulogy notes (with the ad hoc changes I recall), but of course they won’t be word for word…
Thank you for coming today. I especially want to thank Uncle Frank, dad’s younger brother, who has travelled from Brisbane to be here.
Some of you have known Dad since well before my sister and I were born. Many old friends of his from around Australia have been in touch over the last few days, and we are learning more about his incredibly diverse life every day. It’s not that he kept his past life a secret, but clearly there was a lot more to him than he talked about.
As a young man, Dad had a teaching scholarship taken from him when the authorities discovered he was of Chinese heritage. He felt strongly about this and it lead him to fight against the establishment for what he believed was right.
While editing Semper Floreat, the student newspaper at the University of Queensland, Dad was very vocal, including railing against the mainstream media. I always meant to ask him what he thought of today’s impending downfall of the mainstream media due to advances in technology.
Dad’s intellect was amazing. His interests ranged across theology, philosophy, history, literature, politics. He was a remarkable reader, dedicated to ideas, with an incredible memory and breadth of understanding.
* * *
When Susannah and I were growing up, Dad didn’t live with us. But he was never far away. When we lived in East St Kilda, he lived just down the road. When we moved to Elwood, and later to Elsternwick, he moved nearby. I doubt that was a coincidence.
For myself, family and personal relationships aside, the two biggest things in my life today are the technology I use at work and at home, and my advocacy of public transport. And Dad helped me find both those things.
When I first got interested in computers, he bought one for me. He may not have understood computers, but he could see it was important to me. I’d found my calling: it took me through university and into the workforce, and for my “day job” I still work with computers.
At some stage I decided I liked train travel. So he took my sister and I on trips; one day we rode all the way to Hurstbridge and back just for the ride. He showed me magazines he’d got from some mob of troublemakers, then called the Train Travellers Association… they sparked my interest, and you’ll know how that turned out.
* * *
Here are some thoughts from my sister Susannah:
I hope Dad has found himself in heaven. I hope his heaven is a huge library, with books and magazines and journals from theology, history, politics, literature, and a special focus on 1950s culture, and well read people to argue and debate with.
* * *
Susannah also recalls two things Dad said to her that stuck in her mind:
He said “I used to think if someone had an Arts degree I could have a conversation with them. Lately I’ve thought it needs to be a Literature degree”
And when he asked for some Sassoon poetry, and she couldn’t find any and brought him Wilfrid Owen instead – she said she was sorry it’s not what he wanted but she thought he’d like Owen. And he said “of course I like Owen, who doesn’t?” – Susannah likes his vision of the world where everyone likes good poetry.
* * *
Dad’s friend Christopher Koch wrote a well known book “The Year of Living Dangerously”. Dad used to say the Chinese-Australian photographer in the book, Billy Kwan, was partly based on him. I’m not sure I really believed it until I read it.
The character in the book calls everybody “Old man” — Dad used to call me that.
And the book describes the character:
Kwan was one of those people who rarely answer questions directly, and who start conversations in the middle.
That was very Dad.
* * *
Another long term friend, David Malouf, has offered to write a memoir of Dad. That would have meant a lot to him, and it will mean a lot to us in helping us remember him.
In the last year or so, Dad had a helper to get him to medical appointments and to the library. My sister and I would sincerely like to thank Karen, who made such a difference these past twelve months.
[Words from Karen]
* * *
Dad had had a difficult time of late. Ten years ago or so, an accident with a cyclist triggered a series of hospital visits, and sent him on a downhill slope.
It was a blow for him when his dear friend, Louis Green, passed away in 2008. Thank you Louise, for coming.
But in the past few months, with Karen’s help, he’d regained an interest in reading, and whenever I saw him we’d chat a bit about politics. I’m sure he’d have been interested to see tomorrow’s election result.
I’ll finish with some words from Christopher Koch:
[John] was a remarkable man, as I’m sure you know. He had a first-rate intellect, and a vital mind which often stimulated me when we were young. His tragedy was – and I’m sure you won’t mind my saying this – that some inner divisions stopped him from realising his full potential. I’m sure, though, that he’ll remain a vivid memory to all his friends. There was no-one else like him.
Tags: Dad, funerals
10 comments
Dad
My dad turned 79 the week before last.
He got sick and went into hospital on Thursday. Pneumonia.
Over the weekend he was very unwell, and yesterday he expressed the view that he would like to go soon.
Tonight he got his wish, and slipped peacefully away.
RIP JQ. 7/8/1931 — 16/8/2010.
Update Tuesday 8:40am:
Thank you all for your thoughts.
I thought I’d just highlight a post from 2008 where I noted one of the influences my dad had on me: My dad and the trains
The other one was computers. He didn’t understand them, but he could see it was important to enable me to pursue my interests, and thus he helped fund my first three: the Vic 20, the Commodore 64, and the BBC Micro.
Here’s also a link to some text about him from the biography of Lillian Roxon, the legendary rock music critic.
And I thought I’d repost this fantastic old passport photo of him from 1969.
Tags: Dad
52 comments
Julia and the Freddo
In my circle of friends, the story goes (and I’m sure she’ll correct any details I get wrong) that while ago Kathy was in the local supermarket with one of the kids, who was promised a Freddo Frog, but Kathy didn’t have the correct small change handy. Sorry kid, no Freddo this time. Uh oh, prepare for full-volume, DEFCON-1 wailing.
Just in the nick of time, Julia Gillard, standing in the queue behind them, shouted them a Freddo and alleviated eardrum disaster. Onya Julia!
Fast forward to now. Two weeks after Julia Gillard ascended to the position of Prime Minister, her first-female-PM halo is starting to look a little rusty.
Richard DiNatale is obviously biased given he’s the lead Greens candidate for the Senate, but I reckon a few would be agreeing with him:
The pacific solution with a different postcode, the internet filter stays, no price on carbon until 2012. Glad we’ve got a new PM.
On immigration issues, I found myself agreeing thoroughly with this letter in The Age yesterday:
Most desperate targeted
WHY all this fuss about refugees? Don’t people realise that the people who are flooding our cities, inflating our real estate values and putting strains on our community facilities are the legal immigrants: 180,000 so far this year?
Why don’t politicians mention the 50,000 overstayers who come by plane, not by boat? It is the above groups who are stressing our social and physical environment.
We certainly need a population policy for sustainable development rather than a policy of scapegoating the most desperate.
John Addie, Ringwood East
Yup.
I guess it was asking too much for the pollies, Julia Gillard included, to start focussing on the issues that really matter, rather than the stuff which is high-profile but which is actually pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.
She would have won a lot of friends, and hopefully moulded the ALP’s flawed thinking on the Internet Filter into something reasonable, by moving Conroy out of IT and putting in Kate Lundy, who actually seems to understand it, in instead.
And it does seem that carbon pricing is off the table for now, just as it was under Rudd.
See also: Clarke and Dawe on asylum seekers.
PS. At least the mining tax debate got settled, though I’m not sure us lowly taxpayers got the best deal out of it.
Flashback to 1993
My old uni buddy Brian recently emailed through a copy of a photo from graduation day at Monash Uni, from 1993.
It was at the main Clayton campus, which we rarely actually went to in our student days, though I do recall one memorable session in the campus radio station recording a demo tape of us being comedy DJs with Nick Marvin (then student newspaper editor, now CEO of the Perth Wildcats NBL team) which, to my knowledge, never got broadcast.
Brian and I started uni in 1989. Our degree — Bachelor of Computing (Information Systems) — at Caulfield campus was meant to be three years, but Brian did Honours, and I… uhh… well, I failed a core subject in second year, and thus was a year late finishing. But I got to do some extra electives as a result which taught me some really good stuff I’ve since used in my IT career.
So we both finished in 1992, and by the time graduation day rolled around, we were colleagues, fresh-faced graduates in a small team somewhere inside the machine of corporate Australia, and travelled down to Clayton for the day to put on the gowns and silly hats and get our degrees.
Being the serious young men that we were, in the learned grounds of the campus, we took a few minutes to thoughtfully ponder what the future might hold.
(Thanks to Rae for digging out an old pic and inspiring this post.)
100th birthday
Adrian and Peter turned 100 today.
To be precise, their birthdays are both today. Adrian (my sister’s husband) turned 38, and Peter (my step-father) turned 62.
To celebrate the occasion, they’re having a joint birthday party on Saturday.
So, happy 100th birthday, Adrian and Peter!
(I do have a great aunt who turned 100 last year — on her own, that is.)
Tags:
Comments Off
Happy birthday to me
Last year of my 30s starts today.
While I’d love to have a lazy day at home and a big party, I haven’t been organised enough, so neither will happen. Instead it’ll be a work day, punctuated by breakfast with my boys, lunch with my girl, and dinner with my Posse of TroUblemAkers — family catchup will be on the weekend.
Tags: birthdays
17 comments
On the public record
I think I might have out-done myself this time.
Last month I represented the PTUA at a senate hearing into Commonwealth investment in public transport.
During questions, the topic of public transport for special events came up, and as I had the night before been to such an event, I drew on that personal experience in one of my answers, all of which naturally has gone into the hearing record*.
CHAIR [Senator Glenn Sterle] — I find it absolutely amazing — in fact, I find it gobsmacking — that you can exit the MCG with 100,000 people and within an hour it is a ghost town.
…Mr Bowen — That is right. The money has been put into public transport to make it work extremely well for special events — big sporting events, concerts and all those sorts of things that Melbourne does really well. To give an example, I went to a concert after the grand prix last night at Albert Park. That was a huge crowd.
CHAIR — How were The Who?
Mr Bowen — I do like The Who. I am not so keen on the racing cars but I like the music, so I went for that. The crowd all, after the concert, swarmed out of Albert Park. They were cleared very quickly out from the tram stops surrounding Albert Park. A tram, again, can carry up to 200 people. That moves crowds not quite as well as heavy rail but certainly very quickly. You can just imagine the nightmare if they allowed parking there — the space it would take up and the time it would take to get those people out. Those special tram services moved people away from Albert Park very quickly, but they quickly broke down, so to speak, a few kilometres out. The special services provided were really good, but for people going a bit beyond where the special services go — out to the suburbs, and in my own case I was heading back out to Malvern to catch a train home — there were no special services at all. The big crowds were certainly taken away from Albert Park but they did not get all the way home, and they had long waits ahead of them, in some cases, to get all the way home. Melbourne public transport does clear crowds very well but, again, the lack of a complete cohesive network running at all times of day means that it does fail in some cases.
It’s like blogging… via Hansard.
- *The transcript, just released, is still in draft form, and contains some minor errors.
- Channel 7 story from the day of the hearing.
Tags:
4 comments
