"An ordinary man's extraordinary life"

Henry Charles Eardley

(June 1, 1918 - January 20, 1998)

It is only when you sit down to write something like this that you realise what a man of contradictions our father was.

As you all know he was a people person, a bon vivant, a raconteur, the life of the party who was always full of funny anecdotes and stories - but always about someone else -or, if it were about his past, there was always someone else who was the centre of the story.

I remember in year 8 we were given an assignment to write an essay about a relative who had done something famous or notable. But the teacher said not to worry if we couldn't find anything - just make something up. So I did what any 12-year-old great researcher would do in the same situation - I went and asked my Dad!

I can still remember his words "No I'm afraid there is no one famous or notable in our family - we're just ordinary people - besides we can't go back very far in our family history - all the records were lost in the Second World War". That was fine - I just went off and made up a nifty story about Malta Convoys - I was into war books at the time.

It was only when I grew older that I began to find out what an extraordinary life that this ordinary man had lived.

Our dad, Henry was born in the European hospital in Port Moresby on June 1st, 1918. In those days, New Guinea was a protectorate of Australia which meant that Dad was classified as an Australian citizen and he was always proud of being Australian.

We double-checked that date because dates weren't Dad's strongpoint. He had always told me he was born in 1917!

Although I wasn't around at the time, I believe it was 5 or 6 years before Cathy's birthday was celebrated on the correct day- and even then only because Uncle Charlie wanted to resolve a bet over the correct date. When I was nineteen or twenty and wanting to get my first passport, I went to the Department of Births, Deaths & Marriages and found that he had officially registered me as being born on the wrong date - it took a little while to sort that one out.

But I digress. In 1923 the family moved to Shanghai, China. For the next 16 years, he and his family lived in China and then Hong Kong. He was educated in an international school run by the Jesuits - St. Francis Xavier College in Shanghai - and there he made some lifelong friends.

One benefit of this international school's education was that Dad sort of became multi -lingual. I use the term "sort of" advisedly because he could swear fluently in several languages. Unfortunately, he would never teach any of them to me.

In his youth, Dad was a talented and keen sportsman who played in many sports at a regional level. These included soccer, swimming, tennis, badminton, and table tennis to name a few. My brother Peter and Dad's grandson Alex inherited those genes - I think I took after him from the latter part of his life.

Dad would also accompany his father on some of his working trips to the interior of China. Even in the thirties, it was a pretty medieval society. Dad's father would contract to drill wells and irrigation systems for local Warlords in a region. At least three times, his father lost everything - just barely escaping the attack of a rival warlord's army. On at least one of these occasions Dad fled a battlefield with his father in a car.

After leaving school, Dad spent a short time in the Police Force before the Second World War was declared in Europe. Dad, with his good mate Charles Knox joined the Hong Kong Royal Naval Volunteer Reserves and served on the same minesweeper. They were both out on patrol the day that Hong Kong fell to the Japanese in a space of approximately four hours without a major gun being fired or a radio message being sent off.

They calmly sailed into the harbour and tied up at the dock and suddenly found themselves surrounded by several dozen Japanese infantrymen with rifles. Dad and Charlie spent the next four years in a POW camp. He was wounded in his legs in the camp - from anti-aircraft shrapnel believe it or not! What is shot up into the air has to come down and he was hit. He carried pieces of shrapnel in his legs for the rest of his life and they often caused him pain - until he got onto the dance floor where he was as smooth as silk.

Dad eventually came out with a great number of stories from the camp - too many to mention here. Again he made some lifelong friends from this episode of his life - it was a unique Old Boy network that he belonged too.

After their release in 1945, Dad wanted to return to Australia and Charlie wanted to join his sister Mary who had moved here at the beginning of the war. Because they were part of the British navy, the red tape was going to prove insurmountable - they would have to return to England first. That was until they came across an Australian colonel who was in their camp and had just returned to active duty. They were on the next plane down under.

Soon after he arrived in Australia, he married Mary, Charlie's sister. Ultimately they settled into the inner west of Sydney and had four children - Heather, Peter, Cathy and myself - and they raised us in Concord and Strathfield.

Jobs were difficult to get straight after the war - especially for someone who sounded like a pommy and had served in the British Navy. Who was he kidding that he was really Australian? For a little while, Mum, who had a job, was the chief breadwinner. Again, the old boy network came along and through various introductions, Dad was one of the first people to start in Trans Australian Airlines and was, in fact, instrumental in setting up it's freight department.

However, Dad always wanted to work for himself and, when the opportunity arose for him to be a junior partner in a travel agency with the Swire Group he leapt at it. He spent the rest of his working life in the travel industry and was greatly respected. His values and inherent honesty were his hallmarks and while he never made a fortune, he was always a good provider for his family.

Being the kind of person he was, Dad made a lot of contacts and friends. Even as a suburban travel agent, Dad had an uncanny knack for meeting interesting people. In the early fifties, in his Kings Cross agency, Dad was the preferred travel agent for the peak Trade Union body of the day. One day Dad was approached by ASIO to provide travel details of certain people in the union hierarchy.

Dad did so and soon realised that ASIO was using the information he provided to predict the incidence of the crippling rolling strikes that occurred up and down the East Coast of Australia. The strikes, strangely, always seemed to coincide within a day or two after the union official that Dad had made arrangements for had arrived in a particular city.

Dad was also the preferred travel agent for the Russian embassy, and the cultural attaché would often come in and make travel arrangements for different diplomats or cultural groups. The cultural attaché's name was Petrov and when he asked if Dad knew anybody in Government, Dad arranged for a meeting to happen with his ASIO contact in his travel agency. A few months later, the drama surrounding the Petrov defection became world news.

Dad retired in 1980 and moved to Canada - as he had always said he would. There, he was able to renew friendships with other former POWs and "Old China hands" as they are called. There is a whole colony of them who have settled in and around Vancouver. He married Jean - an old China hand herself and settled down to this new phase of his life.

Due to the tyranny of distance, it was only rarely that any of us were able to see Dad after that - a situation that was disappointing for all of us. I wanted very much for Dad to meet Heymala and, luckily, we were asked to a wedding in California. We went via Vancouver and met up with Dad. After the first meeting, Heym commented how relaxed he had made her feel - she had been as nervous as a kitten.

Something must have come up in conversation the first night, because the next day he stole my girlfriend's heart from under my nose by turning up on the doorstep with a cheesecake under his arm - Heymala's all time favourite food at the time. He had another devoted fan for life! Confidentially, I think that Heym hopes that when I finally do grow up, I'll be more like him.

Dad was happy in Vancouver, and he never really seemed to change much. The last time most of you would have seen him was in July 1993, when he came for our wedding. He had slowed down a little, but that was all.

Dad unconditionally loved his family and had a fierce, enormous pride in his children and his grandchildren - Juliette, Meredith, Larissa, Clare, Frances, Claudia and Alexander.

Everybody who knew him loved his gentleness and kindness and knowing him enriched our lives.

I would like to finish with a quote from a friend who was discussing his memories of Dad with me last week. "He always seemed to me to be a figure larger than life - in every sense of the word - and just a perfect gentleman who seemed to ooze class". That would have embarrassed Dad terribly, but I think he would have liked that description of himself. Thank you.