Vale Philip Charlwood

 

Frank Taylor has been to too many funerals lately. He has been asked to say a few words at them – which does not surprise me, knowing Frank who radiates life and warmth and fraternity and community which is why we love him at the Almanac.

His dear friend Phil Charlwood passed away in late January. Phil’s funeral was held on February 1. Frank gave this eulogy.

 

 

 

 

G’day my name is Frank Taylor, and I am honoured to speak about Phil today.

 

Philip, Phil, Charlie, Charles, Chas – whatever you knew Phil as, he was, in his very own way, his very particular way, a unique human being.

Going to Eltham High for my first Matric year, Year 12, I was in Dianne – his older sister’s year level, so I sort of vaguely knew of Phil through Dianne.

It was probably a couple of years later on that I really got to know Phil – as Charlie – through my beautiful wife, Rose, as she was part of a close bunch of Sixth Form, school group peers that also included, Barbara Kueffer, Peter Biddington, Gloria and Cynthia Pinnigar, Geoff Stephens, David Meyers and Karen Goldthorpe.

Andy Hillier, Richard Pinnigar, Dave Biddington, Paul Van Eeden, myself and others were from an earlier and older school cohort, however through friends and siblings we all later became friends with Phil in our adult lives.

Through this network, we all managed to stay in touch one way or another, sometimes often, and at other times rarely as our lives ran their course with marriages, mortgages, kids and the demands of family, careers and work. However, we still kept in contact.

I remember when Phil and I began to really bond. He loaned me a book, probably 35+ years ago –  A Traveller’s Tale (I have forgotten the author’s name), written in the mid-eighteenth century in old English about the very detailed and descriptive tales of a western traveller in the New World.

He reckoned that I might like it.

He found it fascinating and I did as well.

We were both brought up on a diet of boyhood English adventure stories like The Coral Island by RM Ballantyne and The Swiss family Robinson by Johann Wyss which was immortalised for a generation by Walt Disney on a Sunday night. I read them both, more than once.  Phil almost certainly did to.

The boyhood appeal of the romantic adventure in uncharted lands and derring-do was alive and well in us both.

Like myself, Charlie was a reader and we shared a solid interest in real life stories, almost invariably biographies, history in general, the natural world, a solid smattering of philosophy, the manual trades – often “lost” or forgotten – and warfare, particularly wars in which Australian servicemen and women fought.

Like a lot of us here, we both had parents and uncles and aunts who served in the armed forces during wartime.

We had that common, unconscious and unspoken understanding of what that meant growing up.

These books we shared also often had a fair bit of detail which in some sense was often trade and skill-based – sailing, sails and rigging, flying, fishing, farming techniques, carpentry, building, metalwork and the like, you get the drift.

In the past few years YouTube became a regular go-to for us as old footage of axe making, iron and steel casting and special forging, knife-making, building construction and other lost and near forgotten skills became rediscovered and more widely accessible, as well as lots of nature videos.

We swapped books with greater frequency in the last few years as we ploughed through great reads that we would usually source from country op shops and the like and afterwards bang on together for hours about all kinds of weird shit that, I am sure, others just didn’t or couldn’t quite get or see the appeal.

I’m going to really miss this.

He was a very fine tradesman – a welder, forger, fitter and turner – who did small to medium, special, finicky jobs that required a focused expert – skilled across a number of disciplines – to make it work. Over the years he helped me a lot with some of my particular – very particular jobs.

Particular, like Phil himself.

Charles had a penchant for knives, pocket knives in particular. He always carried one, as do I – usually a French Opinel, also, as do I. Strangely (or perhaps not so strangely) we both came to love the Opinel quite separately and independently. He has an extensive collection which, with the help of Kate, is mostly catalogued, along with many, many specialist natural sharpening stones which all have very particular qualities and come from all over the world. His own knife-making skills were exceptional and he always had an eye out for knife-making steel in scrap yards and the like which he could use in the future.

Rose and I both treasure a couple of knives that he made us. Rose’s having it’s own leather scabbard which he also made. It is quite unusual and, if you like that sort of thing, really quite exquisite.

I’ll always remember his tasteful hat selection.

Knowing him to have a punt, one of my vivid memories of Philip was years ago, when sometime in the mid ‘80s – not long after Phil and Maria were an item – Rose and I, Phil and Maria, caught up at a country ANZAC Day race meeting in Avoca.

It was a lovely day, a classic day, picture perfect.

The view was old-school country Australia. Set on river flats with a large spattering of mature, shady river red gums, the first blush of vivid green autumn grass and the racing track beautifully defined by the white, freshly painted, double-rail barrier around the whole course and not another building in sight.

All of the action – and all of the people – were along the finishing straight, with the old tiered wooden grandstand, overlooking the last 50 metres. The commentator’s box on the finish line with the betting ring just behind. Mounting yards and the old tin sheds which served food and beer all by volunteers, and all within half a stone’s throw. The two-up school behind the grandstand.

The veteran race commentator was a cracker – he certainly learnt his craft in the `50s and `60s with his slow, deliberate and overly enunciated nasal, Australian drawl – liberally punctuated by classic, racing idioms and one-liners like:

“As they turn into the home straight, Dodgy Mechanic bolts to the lead like a shot out of a gun crossing the finish line with plenty of petrol in the tank while the favourite, Shining Light, has gone out, coming in stone, motherless last. The bookies will be happy.”

At one point during the day I caught sight of Charles from a distance, where I watched him for a few minutes without him catching my eye. He was comfortably but well dressed, topped by a tasteful, wide- brimmed felt hat on his head worn with accustomed familiarity.

Leaning comfortably on an elbow on the shed’s hoarding board – which served as a wide bar when lowered and propped – enjoying a fresh, cold pot, and quietly taking in the events and the crowd around him and the day as a whole.

I was profoundly struck how comfortable he was.
How Australian he was.
Laconic Australian.
He fully embodied that word, that adjective.
Totally at ease with himself and the world.
I can see it all now in my mind’s eye – even at the time I wished that I had a camera.
The hat just bloody nailed it.
Charlie loved the bush and all of the plants, trees and critters that inhabited it.

In recent years he and Maria camped often at his mate Flea’s bush block down in South Gippsland, discretely filming snakes and lyrebirds and the like in fern gullies with a quiet commentary in the background. All videos received accompanied by acute observations which just confirmed his detailed understanding and undiminished wonder of nature.

Phil loved his Dees.

An MCC and Melbourne Member from year dot, he followed them loyally and determinedly through thick and thin. It must be said, it was mostly thin.
I was just sooooooo rapt – for Chas in particular – when they won the flag in Perth a couple of seasons ago in 2021. I’m sure that many of you felt the same.
Personally, I just wished that it was at The G where he watched his beloved Demons get beaten too many times in the long, lean years beforehand.

Still, he lived to see one nonetheless after the last one, long long ago, in 1964 – you ripper.

Amongst my group of friends, including some really serious competition, he was, head and shoulders, the master of the superlative.
Superlatives which, it must be said, have entered into the everyday lexicon of the Taylor/Draffin household.
Uttered with masterful ease and honed by long practice, he could have done a regular cameo with the Coodabeens as Phil from Ascot Vale.

 

A truly FINE win.

Our FINE team lead by our SPLENDID captain, Max Gawn, put in sustained and truly STERLING effort all season, to play a simply MARVELLOUS game to win The Flag.

Go Dees.

They are just MAGNIFICENT.

Now just think of that word and how Charlie pronounced it.

MAGNIFICENT.

 

Nailed it.

 

Phil made sure that he was well informed, he was a keen observer.
He thought widely and deeply about many things that mattered to him.

He had manners.
Quiet manners.
Real manners.
Very much like Arthur, his father, who Rose and I met relatively recently, later in life.
The fruit does not fall far from the tree.

I’ll miss Chas.
I’ll miss his genuine warmth, his wit, his particular take on the world and society.
His empathy.
His unique and intelligent sense of humour.
His curious and inquiring mind.
He still had the boy in him even though I still want to talk about the man.
Phil was quietly considered, quietly confident – a bloke very much at home in his own skin.
He understood his strengths and his own failings.

Phil was manly, in the quietest and best way.

With his empathy, innate sense of fairness and justice, he could see a situation that a lovely woman was in and did something about it.
He won her and made her his wife.
Maria became his soulmate. There was never any question about that – it was pretty obvious from Day 1.
He loved her dearly and fully embraced his new extended family – he loved his Roma deeply, it was plain to everyone.
Although culturally from two different worlds – Anglo/Australian and Italian/Australian – they just fitted together beautifully.
I know that it was a clique, however they really were made for each other.
Phil was the creative one – Maria the financial engine room.
It really worked for them both.

Steelwise – the perfect name for his small, one-man firm – came about and was enabled through Roma’s financial nous. Phil was a pig in shit.

By the same token, Phil’s can-do and building skills were skillfully and fully employed when they returned to Maria’s family village in Paganica and restored the family home. Phil just loved being part of Maria’s extended family, he fitted right in and I know that many of the family friends in Paganica made during this time will mourn his passing.

When Kate came along, he truly was over the moon. Naturally.
He just loved his girls to bits.
Kate’s music skills and her later academic linguistic career was a source of immense fatherly pride.
A very, very proud man, and rightly so.
And when Henry came into Kate’s life, he embraced him as well. A father’s love for his daughter is very special and I know that you have his blessing Henry.

I’ll miss Phil.
I’ll miss his depth and strength of character, his genuine modesty and humility, his deep sense of justice, his English-derived, quietly self-contained, old school Australian manners.
I’ll miss our chats about stuff that went on for hours at a time and often followed up, embellished and continued at a later date.
I’ll miss his hats.
I’ll miss his quiet, warm “G’day mate.”
I’ll miss his smile.
We will all miss his smile.

This is how I knew Chas. Everyone else here have their own memories of the man – as a friend, a colleague or a family member.
Hopefully a couple of my recollections finds a connection with your own memories of Phil as well.
Thank you Maria and Kate for this opportunity to speak on behalf of Charlie’s friends, it has been an honour and a privilege.

 

See you Chas.

See you mate.

 

Thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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