This is the Eulogy I gave for my dad, Emeritus Professor Noel Thompson Drane, who passed away in September 2019. He was 92.
Thank you all for coming today to remember Noel and celebrate his life.
Dad was born in Jan 1927 in Rabaul, New Britain to Claude and Elva. He was their only child. Mum used to quip that she married a New Guinea native when she wanted to pique some conservative new acquaintance.
Post WWI times were a bit tough for Claude, working his returned soldier settler land grant near Gladstone, clearing jungle with an injured foot and a walking cane, living in a tent. So with his new wife Elva, a Sydney girl from Ashfield, they moved to start a new life in Rabaul, then the capital of the Australian Mandated Territories of Papua and New Guinea.
Looking back, life in Rabaul between the wars was a last vestige of the Colonial age. Claude’s business was often done at the club, where Noel would have to wait outside for him, the house had a local staff, and picnic and race days set the social calendar.
Young Noel grew up and started school in this environment, something of a boys own adventure in someways. Dad told me tales of being flown around the coast and islands in old Junkers aircraft, to make visits in the area.
But I also think it was a time when children kept their place and although there were other children about, I think Noel’s strong independence has its groundings here.
Life was not without its turmoils though. Elva, at some point contracted TB, and she and Noel were sent for a time to the Blue Mountains.
When dad was 10, on 29th May 1937 Rabaul suffered a catastrophic, volcanic eruption and was destroyed. Earthquakes, pyroclastic flow and mud rain. Over 500 people died that day. When I was young, Dad told me a story of riding his bike home from school, with cracks in the ground opening in front of him.
It seemed exciting to me back then, but this would have been a traumatic, tumultuous and unsettling event.
The administrative capital was moved to Lae, and Rabaul was rebuilt.
Life continued.
Noel started high school at The Southport School, on the Gold Coast, away from his family. He was athletic and good at sport and ran, swam and enjoyed playing cricket for the school.
War came to the Pacific.
At the end of 1941, he would not have been home long for the summer school break, when under threat of imminent Japanese invasion, the women and children were evacuated to Sydney.
Noel and Elva on the last ship. That was the last they were to see of Claude.
After the invasion Claude, along with the civilian and remaining military population were put in ships bound for Hainan Island. Claude on the Montevideo Maru. It sailed without lights or markings indicating it carried POWs and on 1st July 1942, NW of Luzon, the ship was sunk by the US submarine Sturgeon.
Claude was lost.
This was a hard thing and had a lifelong impact on Dad, so it was a joy that in 2012, so many years later, we were able to take him to the War Memorial in Canberra for the unveiling of the monument to, and commemoration ceremony for those more than 1000 souls lost on the Montevideo Maru. Finally, a resting place for his father.
I think life in Sydney for Elva and Noel in those years would have been tough, insecurity for the future, and uncertainty over Claude’s fate, on top of the general strictures of wartime existence. Dad never spoke much about this time.
In Feb 1945, Dad had just turned 18 and enlisted, first in the Airforce, training as a bombardier. Then, since aircrew were no longer needed, he was transferred to the Army in August. Good fortune smiled, and he was not required for active duty and was discharged in January, 1946. He met his lifelong friend Mike Cockburn, who was the nearest thing Dad had to a brother, during this service year. They remained close after that, our families meeting up whenever they were in Sydney, away from PNG where Mike was in the administration.
So these were Dads formative years , years that made the man. Sprung from the colonial age, so different from what we know today, exciting and adventurous surroundings, interrupted by catastrophe, war and loss. These circumstances instilled in Dad his traits, values and quirks: intelligence, gentlemanliness, resourcefulness, an adventurous spirit, self-reliance, frugalness, stoicism, humility. His strong sense of doing things himself and a little wariness of the world, no doubt have their origins with some of these happenings of his youth.
A new chapter begins after his military service. Dad went up the University of Sydney, and studied Economics, part of a cohort of bright young things, that went on into academia and into central banking. He had the unique distinction of graduating with first class honours in both Economics and in Statistics. After graduation, he joined the University of Sydney staff as a teaching fellow in Economics and then as a lecturer in Statistics.
Dad took an opportunity (a Fulbright Scholarship) to attend Harvard in 1954 where he lectured and studied, attaining his Master of Arts. He re-joined the Sydney University staff in 1955 as a lecturer and senior lecturer.
With a growing family, Dad was looking for new opportunity and in 1967, he joined the new School of Economics and Financial Studies at Macquarie, becoming that universities first Associate Professor. Noel became full Professor of Economics in 1970 and remained at Macquarie until he retired in 1988.
I remember a visit he and others made to Singapore to advise on its reconstruction, and in 1976 he was part of a panel of Economists providing advice to the then treasurer Phillip Lynch. He also advised the Australian Financial Services enquiry from time to time. He sat on the Economics Exam Committee for the Higher School Certificate .
He twice served as a member of the Macquarie University Academic Senate 1st from 1967 and again from 1975 to 1980. He was a staff elected member of the University Council from 1974 to 1977.
He was Head of the School of Economics and Financial Studies overseeing a long period of growth and development.
Outside of the university he was a council member and president of the NSW branch of the Economics Society of Australia and New Zealand, and was federal president for 2 years.
In September 1988 after his retirement, the University Council, his professional colleagues, conferred him the title of Emeritus Professor, for his and I quote “outstanding intellectual quality, imaginative, meticulous and painstaking with a distinguished record in research and scholarship” and as a congenial colleague. Dad deeply appreciated the commendation and high honour bestowed on him.
I want to rewind the clock now back to when Dad was in University. Dad and Mum met there and she recounted that they met at other time as part of the Sydney “push”, a postwar revitalisation of intellectual life in the early 1950s. I know he managed to make a trip from the US to meet her in the UK, when she was visiting relatives with her father. So he was very keen on her.
In January 1956, they were married at Northbridge and settled to married, and shortly family life at 2 Kendall Rd, Castle Cove. I was born in 1957, Sue in 1959 and Jill in 1961.
Over the years, together, they undertook projects at home. A house extension was done and Elva moved in with us for a few years. Our side veranda was constructed over part of the grounds where we children weren’t allowed for fear of the funnel web spiders. A carport was built, so Dads study could be moved to the damp old garage and the kids all have rooms of their own. Dad was a night owl, he would often descend to the garage as the family went to bed and work till the early hours, his torch lighting his way back to the house at 3 am.
They settled into life in the local community, making special friends with Gordon and Pam Butler our immediate neighbours. We kids went to Castle Cove primary school, the kids in the street all played together. They were close to their friends, particularly John and Fay Richardson, from university days. Our families used to visit each other’s houses for occasions and go on trips to the beach together.
There was travel as well. In 1962, we travelled as a young family, 6 weeks by ship to London. Dad had a sabbatical year and studied and taught at London School of Economics. They made more friends on the way in Jay and Iris Appleton, another academic family , returning to the UK after a stint in Australia. They remained friends the rest of their lives, meeting up whenever locations allowed.
In the UK, Dad fitted out a Ford Commer van and a grand adventure tour, with 3 young kids under 5 in tow, around Europe ensued. Wilma could indulge her passion for ancient history. They were backpack pioneers indeed.
Again in 1973 Dad had a 6 month sabbatical, so we flew to Frankfurt and crammed into a Kombi camper for another expedition in adventure, experience and education for the family. This time we were old enough for it to sink in. From London we went to Boston, where Dad was engaged to teach summer school and then study at Harvard.
When Mum and Dad were married they bought a block of land at Forster, where we first spent summer holidays. I have special memories of Dad steering “Pete” the white and blue ‘put put’ boat we hired (it always had to be “Pete”, kids insisted) to go on family fishing trips on the lakes.
About 1969, they sold the block to buy a beach shack on a sand strip at Hawks Nest. I think of this as the House that Dad built. Holidays, especially the summer break were spent packing the car and trailer, driving up the coast, waiting for the ferry. At the beginning it was a step up from camping: unlined house, no ceilings, hot tin roof, tank water, hot water from a copper.
The time was spent between having holiday fun and house projects, where I was inevitably “holding things”. I loved the time I was able to spend dinghy sailing with Dad, we would go off for hours to get the Sunday paper across to Nelson or Shoal Bay. We kids would hound dad into taking us for pre-dawn fishing trips up the big beach. I know he would rather have slept in, but he took us, fishing and watching the sun rise over the sea sometimes with a fire on the beach, bashing the car to death on the rough track. Over the years the house had a couple of generations of building and changes, but it was a real place of the heart for him.
We children grew up, moved away, got married and had children of our own. Dad loved his grandkids and took great pride in them and in their achievements and a deep satisfaction in the happy times he had with them.
Early in 1995 we all nearly lost Wilma. Skill from the doctors, luck and Wilma’s tenacity saw her make a miraculous recovery, but she lost a lot of her energy. Dad took all this quite hard, and a new reality of life set in.
It wasn’t many years and they moved to a town house at Turramurra. They continued going to the theatre, indulged their passion for the opera, interests with friends and attending family events.
They did some travel, cruising the islands and Dad revisited Rabaul, and a bus tour across the top end.
In 2010 they both were not well, Mum seriously ill. They had to move into care at Wesley Gardens. Mum passed away in October that year. It was a big loss for Dad and stoically he has continued to live and be cared for there, as his dementia slowly progressed and he became more and more muddled. There were a few scary times when he took himself on a jaunt and went missing. He kept his independence of spirit, always.
I see these three story lines as the triangle which surround Dad’s life. The base, his upbringing in a different age, setting his values, characteristics and quirks.
His academic life of great achievement, and his personal life, with building stability and family life, deep love and fulfilment as the two sides that enclose that base and encapsulate Noel.
He has left us now, peacefully, a good man, a gentleman, who lived well the values formed as he grew up, true to himself.
I know this myself, and affirmed it in the closing days of his life from all the conversations and comments from those who cared for him at Wesley Gardens over these past 9 years, who expressed great affection, for him, his interest in their personal stories, and who always spoke of him as a real gentleman.
I thank them greatly for that care and respect and he would too, because that was who he was.