Tim Richardson

The Reverend Edwin Thomas John Richardson, Jan 21 1934 (Blackall, Qld) - August 21, 2011 (Albury, NSW)

The funeral is at St John's Wodonga on Friday August 26, noon.

Below is the text of the Eulogy:

This sunny day seems appropriate since one of our strongest associations with Dad was his Queensland roots. Places were always deeply important to him. He was born in the outback, in Blackall where the water came not from the sky but hot from underground and smelling strong of sulfur. Dad was the eldest brother to Rosemary and Narelle.  Narelle became very ill and the family moved to Brisbane in an attempt to give her better medical care. Dad attended Churchie and I’m wearing his treasured Old Boys tie.

After school he completed his Diploma in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, and I remember him teaching me to use his old slide rule. He worked for the South Eastern Queensland Electrical Board, and seemed to be enjoying life, buying a lovely MG sports car, pictured on the back of the order of service.
But something else was going on. He was always involved in the Anglican church where he taught Sunday school and met lifelong friends like Ron Unwin (who married Dad’s sister Rosemary). In his mid-twenties he felt the calling to become a priest. He studied at St Michael's Theological College in the Adelaide Hills. Among many sacrifices from this dramatic change in his life was the beloved MG, he could no afford it. He got a motorbike instead, and the enjoyment of speed didn't end: one day he knocked himself unconscious racing back to St Michaels.
After graduating from St Michael’s he moved to Victoria to become Curate at Broadmeadows under Father Jim Grant. and then to Coburg under the shadows of the old jail Pentridge, where one of his roles was prison chaplaincy. He was ministering there when Australia's last capital punishment was carried out, which upset him deeply.
Around this time, one of his best friends, Tony, was engaged to a Hartwell girl called Bernice. On a visit to the family home, Tony had convinced Dad to do some exercises on the floor when Bernice’s sister, Lyn, came home for a visit from her student digs. Mum for some reason had bright red hair. Marty, Joc and I have conferred: we never saw Dad exercising and we never saw Mum with red hair, but so began this relationship.
Mum and Dad moved to his first parish, Templestowe, during which Jocelyn and I were born. After four years the family moved to Torquay, and the family added Martin. Like Templestowe, Torquay was an area with many young families, and Dad enjoyed these congregations.

The next parish was Mansfield. This was a time when Dad’s love of unknown roads was very helpful. We had a family orientation trip to Mansfield; we ended up behind Mansfield in Tolmie, driving through hills and roads blanketed in snow. This was Dad's first time driving up there; he just pointed the car at distant snow covered hills and kept driving up and up.  It was my first magical sight of snow; a few years ago I could repay the favour with a wondrous drive into the winter hills of Belgium on one of Mum and Dad’s overseas trips in retirement.
But back to his driving. The only word to describe his driving as he raced from church to church on Sundays is “demonic”.  I loved him for it: waiting in the car for dad to finish the Mansfield service before the dash up the hills to St Peter's in Jamieson was much more fun than attending the main service. I actually can't remember him ever getting a speeding fine, but he certainly had a fondness for the "back route" to Wangaratta from Mansfield via Lima South, and I think that  perhaps he was avoiding more than the monotonous main road.
Dad’s love of cars and machinery helped him connect to country people. I remember freezing evenings in a large shed behind the Mansfield Rectory, warmed by a raging fire inside a 44 gallon drum. Gathered around were men from the Country Roads Board, labourers on farms and other practical trades, helping dad on a project to restore a Chevvy truck. He was tremendously happy in this camaraderie.
The passion for cars didn't end when he sold the MG. The MG was merely a flirtation compared with his true love: Peugeots, including the 203 which broke down on day 1 of the honeymoon. Why Peugeots? These French cars won a two of the round-Australia rallies of the 1950s. From Dad’s point of view these were the two miracles needed for sainthood. Dad had an almost unholy faith in the ability of a Peugeot to travel down any road, a faith he tested in our family trip to the Dad's outback roots when I was twelve. He asked too much of our 404 station wagon on the first day. Crossing a flooded causeway somewhere near Katamatite was ambitious, but a tow and a few hours drying out was all we needed. It was a bad start, but in six weeks of tough driving we had only one more problem, getting bogged somewhere near Chareleville. In the meantime, we went on tracks down to gorges that no two-wheel drive vehicle should ever attempt. It was great fun. He met many great friends through Peugeots, and only a few year’s ago Mum and Dad joined a Peugeot club tour of Europe which included visits to French factories.
During the time in Mansfield, Dad and Mum purchased 33 acres at Woodfield near Bonnie Doon. Dad adored Woodfield (there’s a photo of it in the funeral service). Over a number of years, it became the family place: we went from camping in tents to a shed with an electricity connection, and then to house where we lived for a year when I was in year 12. Woolshed Lane became a very important part of our lives: 21st and anniversaries were celebrated, all lovingly recorded in one of Dad’s passions, the visitors’ book.
After ten years at Mansfield, the family moved north to the Albury district, first at St Mark’s North Albury and then to St John’s Wodonga, where he worked with Father Louis Nyman and Father Andrew Neaum. Dad had always enjoyed working with the Uniting Church, and was delighted to have special oversight of the Emmanuel congregation, Australia’s first ecumenical co-operation with the Uniting Church.
Not known for his gardening skills, parishioners and neighbors were amazed at the success of the wisteria which overran the guttering of the house and the garage. Dad was often seen tending to it with fond affection for God’s creation, while those wiser in the ways of things green shuddered at a plant desperately in need of drastic pruning.
His time in Wodonga was a tremendous period in Dad’s ministry, heavy in pastoral care and a deeply fulfilling end to his vocation.  In addition to the Emmanuel role, he was active in a youth drop-in centre, and hospital and aged care visits. He still had two teenagers living at home, and hosted a skate ramp in the front drive way and attended gigs of Addiction, Marty’s breakthrough band, famous throughout the upper Murray. 
On as well as his parish roles, Dad was locum at Beechworth, Yarrawonga, Corryong, and after retirement he helped in Marysville, in the lovely Christchurch, now gone, and Mansfield.
The retirement base was Woodfield, as mentioned, a place deep in Dad’s heart. Some people have a dream home. At Woodfield, Dad had a dream water tower, a massive structure supported by a sophisticated pump and water system of his own invention which managed water between a dam and several tanks across three buildings. Induction in its mysteries was taught by a period of apprenticeship, including advice on avoiding snakes.
All of you knew him as Father Ed. But he was a father to three children. A father must raise children to be independent adults. Dad chose to stimulate intellectual curiosity and develop free thinking. Once I came home from primary school, declaring that 13 really was an unlucky number since I was dismissed in cricket for that total. He said to me "and yesterday, when you made 14, was 14 an unlucky number?". A simple lesson, and the end of superstition for me. Not that Dad cared about cricket. He loved camping and bushwalking and we had wonderful family camps, but he was not very interested in sport.
Although he was finally converted to Collingwood, a family passion from Mum’s side, and Dad became a huge fan of Leon Davis.
Science is about doing, which suited Dad very well. Visitors to the Mansfield Rectory would note a long wire stretching from the church roof to one of the rectory chimneys. Dad and I made crystal radios (like he did with his father). Mansfield is a long way from transmitters, so at great peril he strung up that 30m antenna. Made from fencing wire, it worked well, particularly when enhanced with a trick he showed me: poking the ground wire into the correct hole in the power socket. Don’t tell Mum, he told me, and I never did until just now.
Later he made me one of the first people to have a personal computer in Australia: somehow he heard about the Sinclair ZX81, and bought me one. This was a sure step to me ending with a Computer Science degree years later.
Of course, Dad was a deeply committed Christian. What type of upbringing was that for the children? Our experience of Dad's faith was not Bible-readings and enforced piety. It was the phone calls and the visitors at all hours, and his compassion for those who struggled. It was just another part of him, like the old Chevvy in the shed and his help in cutting batteries open to see what was inside. We knew he was a person that people came to when they needed help; such as the boy who ran away from a local boarding school, the people down on their luck and the people at the end of options.
He was an academic Christian, proud of his Greek and Latin. Dad was at home in the modern world, and used the phrase "peoples of the book" to me in the study in Mansfield long before I heard others use it: in fact, only later did I learn it's a Koranic phrase.
His intelligence, his memory and his love of conversation made the cruelty of Alzheimer’s even more bitter.
When I think of this disease, I think of darkness. The progress is relentless and unstoppable. No passing day made it easier or seem less horrible.
Dad died remarkably peacefully and without intervention, as he wished. He left us as we all knew him: a man whose great faith shone in that darkness.
The family is enormously grateful for the love and care he received over the last few years, from old friends and parishioners at St John's, Emmanuel, St Matthews and beyond. Mum can hardly put in words her gratitude to Lutheran Care.
What is a successful life? Evolutionary science offers a simple definition: to ensure your traits are passed on. By this measure, Dad was certainly a success. My brother Martin has his fine head of hair, and my sister Jocelyn has his mission for helping people in need. His grandson Xavier has his ears. As for me: perhaps I talk too much.
But his greatest estate was to touch thousands through his teaching and example. Today we all join in remembering Father Ed as a humble man who was given great powers of intelligence, energy and care and who dedicated them to his family and the communities he lived and ministered in.