Our father was diagnosed with terminal, inoperable cancer at 4:30 am two weeks ago and the love of our family and everyone in the small country town near our farm could not change the sad, inevitable destiny which lay before him. With the cancer so far progressed and a perforated bowel poisoning his body there was nothing that could be done but allow him the dignity of an end surrounded by the people he loved in the farming land he called home his entire life.  He died almost exactly one week after being diagnosed, the sparkle finally taken from the bright blue eyes that had seen so much change in his 84 years.  My sister and I delivered the eulogy below at his funeral three days ago.

(Andrew)

Dad was born on Christmas Day 1928, just before the start of the Great Depression. The seventh of 10 brothers and sisters his early years were spent growing up on a share farm near Coolanie.  As you would expect of the time there was very little money around and Dad tells stories of meals of dripping on mouldy bread and after school work picking fruit or other odd jobs in order to bring in some meagre funds to help the family survive.

In 1938 Grandpa Deer, Dad’s father, bought a scrub block near the Dog Fence towards Kimba.  Over the next few years Dad progressively spent less time at school and more time riding his bike or a horse out to “The Block” to help Grandpa, Uncle Reg and Uncle Dud begin to clear the new farm.  With no communication between Coolanie and The Block, Grandma wouldn’t know if Dad had gotten to The Block safely until he returned home several days or even weeks later.

Living on a diet of boiled kangaroo, onions and potatoes it must have been during this time that Dad began to develop his extraordinary gastronomic palate.  He often said he would eat anything, however through the years he began to trim that list of “anything” to be pretty much anything as long as it consisted of chops, vegemite sandwiches or jelly.  On one particularly memorable occasion he announced to Mum not to bother cooking carrots for him anymore as he’d never actually liked them despite her cooking them for him almost daily for the past 40 years.  I often used to joke with him that he would eventually die when chops, vegemite sandwiches and jelly were finally struck from the list as well.

It must also have been during this time that he developed his dislike of big cities.  His first holiday as a boy involved he and Uncle Dud spending a few days in Port Lincoln.  By all accounts they didn’t think too much of the big city as each afternoon they would climb to the top of Winter’s Hill and sit and gaze back longingly towards home wondering what they were missing on the farm.  Their homesickness was only relieved by the discovery that a cowboy movie was playing at the cinema in Port Lincoln. So it was that every night they went back to see the same Tim Holt movie over and over again until finally their holiday misery was over and they were allowed to return to the farm to work.

Dad always had an analytic mind and it was probably this that prompted Grandpa to suggest that, with the expanding farm, perhaps Dad should become the “office boy” to look after the farm’s accounts etc.  Dad obviously didn’t take this advice too well as the “office boy” continued with the manual labour on the farm for the next 70 years.

As the 40’s turned to the 50’s a period of relative prosperity arrived on the farm. It was also the time that Dad’s brothers began to get married so, in order to help their young families establish, the cleared section of the farm would be split off and Dad and the remaining brothers would begin clearing the next farm.  In 1959 Dad started clearing “Winter Springs” – the farm he would continue to work until just a week or so ago.

In 1965 Dad had the misfortune to get a schnapper fin stuck in his finger.  Fortunately this also meant that he got to meet Mum at the hospital as her and Dr Thompson removed the fin.  A whirlwind romance ensued with Dad whisking Mum away to such exotic locations as the pictures in the Cowell Institute, the Coolanie Ball and even Winter Springs.  Despite this obvious “no expense spared” approach to dating Mum thought Dad must be rich.  An impression she maintained until they married in 1966 with the sudden realisation that her nursing days would not be behind her if they wished to eat.  Over the next five years we children arrived and our family was complete.

One of Dad’s greatest gifts was his ability to modify equipment.  No matter if it was second hand and had been used successfully for years or brand new, there was always some modification that could be made to improve it.  Here his skills with a pocket knife and twitches of wire came to the fore.

(Jennifer)

It’s amazing the problems which can be solved with a pocket knife. Dad in recent years became an avid reader, but only of non-fiction books. He thought fiction was ‘rubbish’ and wasn’t really proper reading material. One cold winter’s night a number of years ago, Dad was preparing for his night time read in bed. He was fed up with the sleeves of his pyjamas slipping down as he held the book up, therefore making his arms cold. So he reached over for his pocket knife, cut a slit in the end of each sleeve, then hooked these over his thumbs. Problem solved, the sleeves no longer fell down and his arms kept warm.

It was many years prior to this that Dad and Uncle Barry had decided one Saturday night before heading into Cowell, that it might be a good idea to wear their pyjamas under their clothes. It was winter time and heating was limited so they thought they may be able to retain their body heat if when they got home they just had to take off their clothes revealing their pyjamas underneath. It worked and nobody ever knew they had done it.

Dad was a helpful husband and every now and then would take household items to the shed to be either fixed or cleaned. Having a gas stove the bottom of the cast iron frying pan would often become black. Dad would take it to the shed and using a wire brush or even the grinder, give it a good clean. On one occasion, while Mum was away for a few days, Dad decided it was time to clean the pan. On opening the cupboard he noticed there was another frying pan, which looked very black, so he took that as well. On Mum returning home, Dad showed Mum the newly cleaned pans and stated that the second one was harder than the first. Mum didn’t know if she should laugh or cry as the second pan was her best non-stick pan and Dad had scrubbed all the coating off.

Dad was concerned about the lack of ‘meat’ Mum had on her bones. So one night after knock off time, he opened the fridge door, placed a chair in front of it, carried Mum who was laughing hysterically, over and placed her on the chair and said, “Don’t move until you have eaten the entire contents.”

Dad was a very polite and well mannered man, until politicians came on the TV or wireless, a travelling salesman turned up to sell something or a Harvey Norman advert came blaring out at him during the 6 o’clock news. About 10 years ago a car pulled up at the shed as Dad worked on the car. The man got out of the car with a note book and pen in hand. He then proceeded to write something down. Showing Dad, it informed him that the traveller was deaf and dumb and he was collecting for charity. At this time, Dad wasn’t sure how he was going to communicate with the man, and a few hand gestures were needed. The man noticed that there was a dent in the car and wondered how it happened. Dad thought quickly, then proceeded to jump around like a kangaroo and banged into the side of the car.

Despite being nearly 85 years of age, Dad was a strong, fit man who went to work at 7 o’clock each morning and knocked off at 5 o’clock. At Bill Walsh’s funeral in this very church 3 years ago, Mum had arrived early and had saved Dad a seat at the back. He stood behind it and when Mum enquired as to why he was standing, he said, “I’m saving it for someone old”.

Dad’s loves were his family, his work and God.  He also loved the Australian bush, his animals, his electric blanket, the mute button on the tv remote control, Queensland, going to watch Cowell play football and cricket, gazing at the sky both day and night, beer and peanuts, the singing of Connie Francis, Roy Orbison and Mario Lanza, and the TV show The Two Ronnies. More importantly he loved it when Martin and Rachel went away from the farm for a few days, so he could get out on the bulldozer and do a ‘little work’!  His love for family also extended beyond his immediate family.  When Uncle Barry died in the late 80’s Dad became a de-facto father for Ben and Susan and always delighted in their achievements.

He disliked public holidays, day light saving and snobs.

Dad always had an interest in statistics whether it was the rainfall figures that he supplied daily to the Bureau of Meteorology for the past 40 years, the horsepower of the D10 bulldozer he always wanted, the number of wickets Matthew had taken in the cricket or the number of times Jessica visited Mum’s pantry.  A few years ago he tallied up, amongst other things, all the eggs, weetbix and chops he’d eaten, beers he’d drunk and km he’d walked in his life.  An updated and abridged list includes:

Eggs: minimum 2 per day – Total = 2.7 tonnes of eggs

Weetbix:  2 per day (with powdered milk straight from the tin and boiling water) – Total = 780 kg of weetbix

Beers: 2 per day (there seems to be a pattern forming here) – Total = 48,000 beers

Sheep eaten – Total = 615 sheep

kms walked to the shed and back = 12,211 km

(Andrew)

Dad, and his generation, can truly be called the generation that built Australia.  A generation who saw hard work and just got on with it.  During his life he turned unproductive scrub into farmland that has fed and clothed millions of people around the world, providing employment for a number of local families and earning the love and respect of those gathered here today.  Thank you Dad for everything you have done for us.  For the laughs we’ve had, the home brews we’ve drunk and the love you’ve always shown.  I’m sure you are at this moment discussing with God how you reckon you could just knock down a small patch of scrub with your bulldozer and it would make it so much easier for God to sow his crop.  I’m sure he’ll discover you’re right.