Note: Video not available.  Transcript provided instead.

Thank you Justin for your introduction. Teresa has asked me to speak to your conference today in my capacity as Queensland Father of the Year for 2008.

Fathers help to create life so that is probably appropriate that i should be doing this. However, compared with the other presentations, this will be a very non-technical talk. I do not have any professional qualifications in fatherhood. All I can offer you is nearly 47 years of practical experience of being a father. Also, I come from an earlier generation you may find that some of the things i say are not quite politically correct.

Last year I was extremely fortunate and very honoured to be named Queensland Father of the Year for 2008. I believe that this is the greatest honour that any man could receive. I have previously received an award for technical excellence in my chosen profession of mining engineering but it is easily eclipsed by this award. I say this because, irrespective of our physical or intellectual achievements, at the end of the day, I believe that we will be judged by our relationships with other people. My major wish is that I will be remembered firstly as a good husband and a good father and then secondly as a good engineer.

Who or what is the father of the year?   Each year, around Fathers’ day, the Fathers’ Day Council of Queensland makes the award to a person who they consider to represent the best principles of fatherhood and, by inference, family life. It is not something that you can apply for or even have an interview for. I was completely taken aback when ireceived a phone callfrom the Rev Allan Male, the chairman of the Fathers Day Council, to advise me that I was to be named Father of the Year for 2008. At first, I thought it was someone playing a practical joke on me. I had to call him the next day to apologise for my inadequate response to his call. He assured me that this was a common reaction when people were first advised of the award. I discovered subsequently that I had been nominated forthe award by my daughter Genevieve (who happens to be here with us today) and also by a family friend. I feel very privileged that people would do this for me. Presumably the fathers’ day council made discreet enquiries about my suitability before making their decision.

In the past, the award has gone to prominent public figures who are also exemplary fathers. For example, Wayne Bennett and Lawrie Lawrence are past recipients. The Father of the Year for 2007 was Dr John Quayle who is one of the pioneers of the cochlear implant program for deaf children in Queensland. Other states also have Father of the Year awards. The 2008 Australian Father of the Year was Paul Roos, the coach of the Sydney Swans. Coincidentally, it was announced just this week that, in the future, the award will follow a new format with the Father of the Year being selected from seven regional finalists. The new chairman of the Queensland Fathers’ Day council is Tim Mander, the well known rugby league referee, who was himself Queensland Father of the Year in 2005. I believe that I am the first recipient of the award in Queensland who is not a public figure. I was just an ordinary person, unknown outside my circle of family, friends and work colleagues, although I have become something of a minor celebrity since I received the award. All I have done is to fulfill my responsibility as the father of a family, albeit somewhat larger than average. But there are many other such fathers of large families. Therefore, I really did not deserve the award ahead of any other ordinary father. 

However, this was a deliberate choice of the Fathers Day Council who believed it was appropriate for an ordinary father to be nominated. I was the fortunate recipient. The citation on my award states: “a representative of thousands of like-minded men who are sterling role models for their sons and daughters as well as being significant to the young people they contact”. Therefore, I accepted the honour simply as a representative of those hundreds of thousands of Queensland fathers who are doing their best to raise their children to be caring, responsible citizens. These days we are forever hearing about failed fathers who neglect or abuse their children. However, we must not forget that these fathers are in a very small minority. Those good fathers who love, care for and support their children are by far in the majority, but they do not receive any publicity. The Queensland Father of the Year award is one opportunity of celebrating these good fathers and, also, fatherhood in general.

In my acceptance speech, I particularly dedicated the award to two groups of fathers. Firstly, to those fathers with physically or intellectually disabled children — these men are real heroes. Not only do they have the normal responsibilities of fatherhood, they must cater for the special needs of their children, particularly for their future needs. One of these fathers I admire greatly is Ron Delezio, father of Sophie, who was severely burned when the car crashed into her kindergarten in Sydney. Ron was Australian Father of the Year in 2006. But there are many thousands of other such fathers who receive no public recognition. Secondly, I acknowledged those single fathers, struggling to raise their children on their own, or possibly even worse, being separated from their children. For many of these fathers, they have no control over their destiny. My heart sinks whenever I hear of the death of mainly young women who leave behind children, and partners who haveto raise those children alone. A prominent recent example is Glenn McGrath, who lost his wife to breast cancer. But, again, there are many other such fathers who receive no recognition. In my case, the bulk of the credit for my award must go to my extraordinary wife Noelene who is the powerhouse of our family. I simply walk in her shadow. From a purely personal viewpoint, I dedicated the award to her. In fact, I feel rather a fraud about the whole award. I have basically watched Noelene do virtually everything and I have take all the honour. But I guess it has been a team effort. I also dedicated the award to my wonderful family, without whom I would not be standing here today. People sometimes ask how we ever came to have such a large family. I tell them that there are three types of people in this world: The first group are those who make things happen. The second group are those who watch things happen. The third group are those who wonder what happened. I think I must be in this group — I am still wondering what happened!

Be that as it may, I am very glad that it did happen. By my standards, I consider myself to be the richest man on earth. I do not envy Bill Gates or Warren Buffet or Rupert Murdoch or James Packer or anyone on the BRW 200 Rich List. Money cannot buy all the love and the joy and the good times that come out of a family such as ours. It is up to others to judge whether we have a successful family situation. However some people seem to think we have — what are the reasons? The first and by far the most important reason is their mother. As I mentioned earlier, Noelene is the dynamo which powers our family. She could have achieved anything in life but she chose to become a full time mother and has excelled in that vocation. I would describe her by three “c” words — capable, caring and compassionate. To quote Wayne Bennett (QFY in 1998) when describing his wife Trish — “I’ve never met a person who can continually give so much and require so little back”. This is a perfect description of Noelene. She is also an incredibly strong person. Come to think of it — that is probably why we had such a large family. I was simply following instructions!

We met at a nurse’s dance at St Vincents hospital in Melbourne when I was a third year engineering student — that was over 50 years ago. I had great problems convincing her parents that I would make a suitable husband but, later this year, we will celebrate our 48th wedding anniversary. We have had a wonderful exciting life together. She is the best thing that ever happened to me — I would be nothing without her. Being the father of children is a great privilege but it carries an equally great responsibility of being a role model for his children, I think, particularly for his sons. If I was asked for the most important advice I icould give to any young father, it would be this: “consistently show love and respect to the mother of your children”. This will guarantee you a successful relationship and a happy family. Secondly, we have always been passionate about education. In my case, this was handed down by my own father. As was common at that time, he left school at 14 years of age and when he retired, he was Assistant Commissioner of Police in Victoria. He was a self made man who achieved this by virtue of his intellect and hard work. My parents made many sacrifices to give me the best possible education and I will always be grateful for this. We have adopted the same philosophy with our own children.

Many years ago, we made a vow that none of them would suffer because of their large numbers. To put this in context, we had children at school continuously for 38 years. This represents a very large number of parent-teacher interviews, tuck shop rosters and many kilometres of driving children to school or to sporting events. Estimate that Noelene has covered at least a half a million kilometres specifically in that latter activity. We have been extremely fortunate to have our children educated at two outstanding schools here in central Brisbane. These schools are St Joseph’s College Gregory Terrace and All Hallows’ school. We had 23 year and 25 year associations with these two schools — they are now educating our grandchildren. They teach much more than reading, writing and arithmetic — they provide a total education, particularly in recognising the needs of other people. They greatly assisted our role as parents and we will be eternally grateful to them. All of our children have gone on to tertiary study at the University of Queensland which is another outstanding educational institution. Two of them have been Queensland Rhodes Scholars. The first eleven have graduated from UQ and are now well established in their professional careers. Thirdly, on a lighter note, we are fairly well known in Brisbane as being the family which did not have a television. As a sports lover, this was a big sacrifice for me but we are convinced that this was a positive influence on our children’s upbringing and education. Strangely enough, they never complained about the lack of such a basic necessity of life! However I have to confess that, now the children have left home, I have a 46 inch wide screen on the lounge room wall, where I have been known, on occasions, to watch sporting and current affairs programs. I am also often asked whether we planned to have such a large family. I cannot recall ever discussing this. We simply accepted each child as it arrived and there was always much joy and anticipation on every occasion, both by us and by the other children in the family. In fact, I always say that I never worked out how to stop them coming! Although raising a large family is quite stressful from a financial viewpoint, in other respects, we have not found it to be particularly difficult, or perhaps our memories are fading. Raising 12 children is certainly not six times as difficult as raising two children, or three times as difficult as raising four children.

This arises to a large degree from Noelene’s amazing organisational skills. However, we found that once the family reaches a certain size, probably around five, it becomes essentially self sustaining, with the older ones looking after the younger ones. In the raising of our family, our older children gained many life skills which have been very valuable in their own lives. We have also found that a large family is, to a large degree, self regulating. Once appropriate standards of behaviour are accepted by the older children, they are accepted by the younger ones, without too much question. This generates a reservoir of internal discipline in the family, which has extended into their adult lives. We have found that when a family member experiences a problem, perhaps in relationships, their siblings tend to intervene and the problem is soon sorted out. We have been very fortunate that our older children have been excellent role models for our younger children and I publicly thank them for this. They are certainly a very close and supportive family. The family support network was brought into focus during the last few weeks. Our daughter Caroline had her first baby without problems but, soon after, developed a complication which required her to stay in hospital for a further three weeks. The family swung into action and little Jack must have thought he had been born into a commune — he had so many different mothers in his first month of outside life! Fortunately, Caroline is now on the road to recovery.

After having ten children, we felt that we should give something back to the community and commenced fostering children. We fostered a dozen or more children for various periods. Our two youngest children joined our family when they were babies and they have been totally integrated into the family. I mentioned earlier that I am still wondering what happened. As is probably obvious, we have never been very active in planning our future, including when or how many children. These days, we would probably be judged as irresponsible, by many people. We have simply lived from week to week, accepting what life had to offer and it has always worked out. I firmly believe that providence has been guiding us and looking after us. On numerous occasions bills would arrive that we could not pay. Invariably, something like a tax refund would arrive, to ease our financial worries. For the past 26 years, I have run my own consulting business and I have always been able to work harder when we were short of funds.

One of the challenges we faced in raising our family, was that, particularly in the middle years, I was often an absent father. I had to travel extensively to ply my trade but there was little alternative because I had to support and educate this large and growing family. One way of countering this absence was to take regular family holidays, one week at a time, four times a year during school holidays we had many memorable farm and beach holidays which were great bonding experiences.

These holidays were sacrosanct, booked a year ahead and never put off for any reason. No matter what problems we had, we always knew that it was never more than 12 weeks before our next holiday. I strongly recommend regular holidays to any family, large or small. Teresa has asked me to comment on the reaction of other people to our large family. When we lived in Canada in 1972-73, we had seven children under the age of 10 and we used to get some strange looks when we were out in public. However, I cannot say that we have encountered the same attitude in Australia. Perhaps this is because our children were young in a previous generation when people were not so concerned about the future of the planet. In any case, we have certainly never felt guilty about producing home grown Australians in a country which, even now, has an official annual immigration program of190,000 people, to maintain its workforce and economy. Apart from our youngest daughter, who is still a student, all of our children are high level professionals who are contributing to the progress and economy of the country. I am now going to show you a small number of pictures of the family. I promise not to bore you with a long slide show. I will not even comment on the slides. I am doing this simply so that you can put a human face on what I have been talking about and what I will be talking about.

[Show slides]

You would have to ask the twelve children whether they enjoyed growing up in a large family — I would like to think they did. Three years ago, at an All Hallows’ father-daughter dinner, my eldest daughter Cathy (who is also here today) gave a very touching and amusing talk on her reminiscences of growing up in a large family. I am sure that they could write their own version of “cheaper by the dozen” which would be a best seller and be made into yet another version of the movie. But this time it would be totally factual.

Living in our household must have been like being in the army. It was highly regimented, with Noelene like a field marshall organising the troops. Everyone had a job from the list posted on the kitchen wall. Michael had to clean eight pairs of school shoes, Peter had to bring up the full crate of milk which was delivered every morning. Cathy’s job was to change and feed whoever was the baby at the time before setting off for school. She now has four children of her own and says that this experience has been invaluable for her. Meal times were organised chaos — that is probably why they are all such fast eaters!

Cathy mentioned that you only ever had one chance to get your hand into a packet of chips. I can well remember having to put my plate on a pile of freshly washed socks and singlets which seemed to have a permanent home on the kitchen table. Living together certainly honed their tolerance and sharing skills. The older boys and girls were each four to a room, in bunk beds, with the younger ones in a third bedroom. The younger ones had to wear hand-me-down clothes. Homework time was always a challenge with so many children at different levels. Again they helped each other to a large degree. My maths and physics knowledge was kept active over nearly thirty years, although my daughters claim they have been permanently scarred by my tutoring. We had very strict rules about social functions and what time they had to be home. These days we would probably be investigated for child cruelty.

We supported them fully at school but when they went to university they had to support themselves by part time jobs. The boys specialised in bottle shops and the girls have waitressed at all the top hotels in Brisbane. Caroline was the quiet one in the family. On several occasions, when we came home from church or some other function, we would eventually find that Caroline was missing. We would race back to find Caroline sitting patiently, exactly where we left her. She knew we would find her. We have always had a no-presents policy within the family. Nowadays, we give each other as presents. Each year, in the week before Christmas, we hire a small restaurant or half a large restaurant and have a major family celebration, with adults only. Every family reunion is a great occasion, the next one being Genevieve’s wedding in August.

One major advantage the children have is that when I become old and decrepit, they can draw up a roster to look after me, but only for a month a year each. However, they are already fighting over who will have me in February which only has 28 days! Probably, the biggest disadvantage is that when we finally depart this mortal coil, they will each receive only one-twelfth of not very much, at the rate Noelene is spending or giving away their inheritance!. However, considering my earlier comments on education, we do not feel particularly guilty about this. An example of how times have changed.

When we lived in Mount Isa in the late 60s, we used to drive to Melbourne with seven children in a heap, on a mattress in the back of a station wagon. We never thought twice about it and I shudder every time I think about what we did. These days, we won’t move the car until we check that the grandchildren are safely strapped in. At the other extreme, last week, we attended a grandparents’ day at our grandson’s kindergarten. At the conclusion, we were invited to share refreshments on the verandah, including a glass of water. Unfortunately, they could not offer us tea or coffee because health and safety regulations did not permit the use of hot water in the vicinity of children. What can I say?

You have probably read or at least heard of the book “a fortunate life”. It still is a best seller and was made into a TV series. It is the autobiography of Albert Facey who had a very hard life, including being wounded at Gallipoli, in the early part of last century. He died in 1982 at the age of 87. Despite all the hardships he endured, he still considered that he had a “fortunate life”. One of the reasons was that he was married to Evelyn, the love of his life, for 60 years. I could very easily write a book with the very same title —“a fortunate life”. However, it would have very different content to the hardships chronicled by Albert Facey. It would describe all the good things which have happened to me, starting with meeting Noelene, raising our wonderful family and being surrounded by so many grandchildren. It would culminate with me being named Queensland Father of the Year in 2008. I would like to finish today by playing to you a beautiful song which Cathy played at the conclusion of her father-daughter talk. I will show the lyrics while it is playing because I believe that they summarise in a few words what fatherhood means. It is very specifically oriented towards daughters but I am sure a similar story could be told for sons.

Butterfly Kisses