Thank you all for coming. It is an honour give this eulogy.

But how to fit a long and meaningful life into a few pages? I’ve had his
memoirs to help. Over the last few years, I’d read back them to him and he’d
ask “Did I write that?”. So I would like to intersperse his words with mine.

He described an idyllic childhood. Hot and humid, multicultural and vibrant,
(although lacking in mountains), Georgetown, Guyana in the 1930s was a
great place to grow up. From his mother Elsie Dad learned a love of art and
beauty; quiet introspection and study from his father Geoffrey, from his

brother Tim, adventure in nature, and loyalty. The satisfaction of a well-
trained body and mind, curiosity and intellectual striving from his early

schooling in Georgetown and Barbados. At 14 he, Tim and Elsie left Guyana

during the war on an extraordinary one hundred day journey to England,
through heaving Atlantic storms, trading, as he explained “a measurable loss
of schooling for an incalculable gain in experience.” But he caught up quickly
at boarding school, where he writes: “I was regarded as an eccentric, a West
Indian wearing a brown suit bought at Macey’s in New York instead of a
school uniform, and with a miniature pet turtle – the Stars and Stripes painted
on its back. Acceptance came when they found I could pole vault and was
quite good at swimming.”

England, apart from brief interludes of blue sky, was unfamiliar, and he
remembers acute home-sickness in a London winter, grey and cold, when he
heard Harry Belafonte singing “Island in the Sun”; little knowing that there
was a huge island in the sun waiting for him.

After school he took an apprenticeship in Bristol then studied engineering at
Cambridge, flat sharing with gangs of jazz musicians.

Dad learned to fly, and writes: “Often in the winter I would have to climb up
through a 2,000 foot layer of black rain cloud. I never failed to be astonished
when I burst into a magical dome of cerulean blue above a dazzling fluffy
white carpet.” He was a good at aerial acrobatics, was offered a job as a test
pilot that he turned down, although he rode motorbikes and drove his
misadventure-prone MG.

In the late 1950s in London he encountered two significant things. One was a
room filled with something he had never seen before; a computer. The
second was a beautiful Australian girl, Joan Therese Hogan.
He was captivated by the “continual surprises of being with Joan”, who
brought her own practical and adventurous spirit, and of course shared with
him her love of classical music.

Two years later they were married in a cold drizzling England, followed by a
honeymoon which he writes was “As if going through a small, magic door to
a quaint and ancient world called France.” Family life began back in London.
Three children quickly arrived. But after a few more cold and drizzling years
he hatched a plan to take us on a working holiday (that never ended) to
Australia.

Dad loved Australia from the very first moment. Long, hot summers, and
sunny winters! Beaches to explore, backyard barbecues, bush headlands on
the harbour to sketch. And after a few settled years in Sydney a family visit
back to see his parents and proudly present his fourth child, with a holiday in
Greece on the way back home – astonishing locals with the blond toddler
perched on his back, lugging huge suitcases on public buses.

Life settled into a pleasant domestic rhythm, with lively Hogan-family get-
togethers (can you see Dad and Nanna quietly enjoying the whirling quintet

of aunts in the kitchen?), dusty drives to Mendooran across the Blue
Mountains (where the engine always overheated), and the first of nearly 50

years of beachside camping trips, with the revelation that a plank of
fibreglass and smooth breaking waves could provide such joy. Surfing kept
him fit. “Grandad has a six-pack” observed his granddaughters.

The discovery of Baroque music which he describes as “rich cascades of
sparkling gems”, (thus the endless tweaking of an elaborate and essential
hi-fi system). The renovations and ingenious carpentry constructions in two
old houses, with major earthworks in both gardens – Dad’s way of relaxing
after stressful teaching among equally stressful colleagues. (Which makes the
fact he retired twice surprising.)

There were endless choral concerts – first for us children then Mum’s choir,
and grandchildren’s performances and soccer matches. Sketching group and
water-colour painting. His own singing lessons and acapella choir. More
study at Macquarie University, where he enrolled in subjects he loved:
politics and human rights. French and Italian classes and cooking (we can’t
forget his stir-fries!).

And their travels. His diaries are lively, entertaining and succinct. He shared
these with us all, so we were up-to-date as they followed children and
grandchildren across the globe; twice teaching in Macau, music tours in
Europe, as well as his own trip to Nepal. Of course there are travel jokes and
quotes from his favourite poets, vivid descriptions and sweet tales of their
mishaps and triumphs. Within them, however are the deeper questions he
pondered all his life: of history, migration, inequality; of the prejudices of

class and race (and here I want to recognise that Dad’s life spanned the
horrors of the 20th century, but by dint of his birth time escaped their wars
and consequences. But they informed much of his academic writing and
research work. I feel he would appreciate the opportunity to include this
quote from John Stuart Mill which distills Dad’s own conclusion: that the aim
should be “the maximum of personal liberty combined with common
ownership of the raw material of the globe”.)

I will read a passage, from the Nepal chapter, one I read to him many times.
There he sat in his wheelchair, wearing an embroidered T-shirt (a gift from
Katmandu where one the nurses had visited her family), with his photos of
the Himalayas on the walls by his bed. He writes: “Next day as we plod
clumsily from the campsite hordes of children, with baskets on their backs for
harvesting barley, tear through the forest above and below us, shrieking with
laughter. Further on two boys sit in a field playing a mountain melody on
flutes. Passing curious villagers we put our hands together and say
“Namaste”, I bow to thee. At Poon Hill at last we see why we have come.
Here in front of us, the jagged white rim of the Himalayas is stretched from
Dhaulagiri to the Annapurnas. Below these staggeringly beautiful peaks,
sharp ridges and deep valleys hang like badly folded blankets. At Chitre we
camp behind a teahouse and, being Saturday night, we are invited to a party.
The porters have bought, skinned and cooked a goat, the Sherpas provide
music with tabla, flute and harmonium, and we are all instructed in Nepalese
dancing in the huge kitchen.”

Other things we recall: him dozing off at dinner parties despite Mum’s gentle
kicks under the table; his soft “hmph” during the quietest movement of
Baroque concerts; his pride in the accomplishments of family; and his deep
love for Mum. He quotes Sebastian Barry somewhere; “It is one of the graces
of married life that for some magical reason we always look the same to each
other…That is because at close of day the ship we sail in is the soul, not the
body”

He always read with a pencil to underline and take notes, loved word play,
especially names of places and rivers. I can hear him repeating
“Trunkatabella”, a creek we cross when getting very close to his favourite
campground. He wrote poetry. Did crosswords with Mum. Delighted in the
tiny wrens in the birdbath. Took great pleasure in simple things. His
sunbaking ability after a body-surf in big waves was legendary. He was
gentle with the very old, with small children and animals.

A few months before Dad died I read a poem to him, thinking that he might
long to return to these oft-loved joys:
“For too many days now I have not heard those waves, fallen out of heaven
onto earth, nor the tumult of sound and the satisfaction of a thousand miles
of ocean, giving up its strength on the sand.”
I looked at him, wondering, with a sharp sense of both his and my own
mortality. But he smiled, totally content in his present circumstances. Passing
with grace through another of life’s stages. Visited at James Milson by many
(lockdowns permitting), quickly becoming the favourite resident, and tended

to by a gentle flock of (mostly Nepalese) nurses and carers. His mantra
became “I am so lucky. I have lived such a good life”.

Within a eulogy there is the question of legacy. When I asked him once to give
me a nugget of advice, he (without hesitation) said “never resist
temptation” (So, take opportunities)

When you get too old to surfboard ride, take up windsurfing! Keep trying
new experiences.

Maintain like he did, a responsibility to awe and to beauty. Take time to
smell the roses and watch the light playing in the leaves of the trees outside
your window.

Be, like him, a strong link in a your own chain of continuity (need I say how
blessed we are “by the grace of random chance” to find ourselves in this huge
venn diagram of family?)

He showed us how to be a kind and gentle man, a good listener, as well as a
disciplined man of action and practical skills. As one of his grandchildren
observed: the largest actions don’t necessarily have to be the loudest.

I still wonder about his relationship with God and religion? and here is a
fitting observation from a second-century saint: “the glory of God is the
human being fully alive”

Perhaps this was most true in nature, for he writes that, looking out over the
lazy lagoon to the line of white dumpers pounding the outer reef of Lord
Howe Island, he was reminded of the Anglican prayer that begins: “The
peace of God, which surpasseth all understanding, remain with you…”

So, in the end we find a man who did fully live. And what a life!

I’ll conclude with his own words:

“Though leave we must and try to leave behind
Some tiny scratch of immortality
Of truth of goodness or of beauty
And of issue born of loving care
In that infinite procession that we call
Humanity”

Kate Smiley

February 8, 2021