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John Cecil Clunies - Ross deactivated

29 Nov - 13 Sep

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John Clunies - Ross otherwise called Dad or Grandpa had what we can only describe as an extraordinary life. It would seem to most the highest point of his life was taking claim from his father of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands in 1944. Yet the following 70 or so years he became so much to so many and he pioneered his way through life. He was a husband, a father & grandfather, he was a copra farmer, a jack of all trades, a designer & architect, a successful business man, a teacher of so many things, a chess pro and gardener. He was modest and usually described as quiet but had a firm presence and gave a mean hug. He liked a cold beer in a glass and drank his sherry from the bottle. He was stern when needed and silly when inappropriate. He was far too much to write in a paragraph.

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26-11 2021 02:46 View / Comment (0)

Maxine McCartney

Maxine McCartney

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I have many lovely memories of chats with John about gardening, lovely long lunches with John and Daphne, but my favourites are remembering Johns sense of humour. I always found he enjoyed telling and being told a joke and greatly enjoyed the humorous side of a tale. The following tale in particular still brings a big smile to my face and a giggle to my heart for both of them. It was many years ago and I had been in hospital in Perth following an operation. John and Daphne brought me home to their place to recover for a couple of weeks and cared for me till I was well enough to travel back down to Margaret River. As I got stronger I looked forward each afternoon to drink o'clock when the home made crunchy chilli nuts and either a bottle of bubbles or a gin and tonic would appear. In those days John was brewing his own beer, so he was settled in his chair with a glass of beer, and I was nestling in another with a glass of G&T, while Daphne was sipping on her G&T, busying herself at the sink preparing containers of fresh fruit salads for the following few days. We had been chatting a while then got onto the subject of doctors and checkups and Daphne was quite chuffed to report that she had just had a check up and all was well. John jumped in and with an excited smile started to relay to me a conversation he and Daphne had had while at the doctors. John said that they had been going through all the usual checks and the doctor asked Daphne if she drank to which she said yes, generally in the evening. The doctor then asked her how many each night?, to which Daphne answered 1 or 2. The doctor said that was fine and repeated her as he was writing it down -"1 or two glasses"- to which apparently Daphne jumped and and said "No!...1 or 2 bottles!!". John broke into a fit of laughter telling the end of this story, and I wasn't expecting the story to go in that direction. As a result my mouthful of drink spluttered through my nose and we all laughed till our eyes were watering, ....it took us all longer than usual to recover ourselves that afternoon, and found ourselves joking each time we were asked if we would like a drink through into the coming days.....a glass or a bottle?

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17-02 2022 21:37 View / Comment (2)

Linda Clunies-Ross

Linda Clunies-Ross

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One of the memories he came up with, on a recent visit, was after I asked if he remembered me coming to see him in the library in OH when I was 4/5ish. Very excited and wanting to tell him something. And he said yes. He continued to say, that he stopped me talking, and told me to speak in English. He said that I replied "Tidak, tak mau, tak enak". It is not a memory we have ever talked about before. Usually I would be asking him questions of his childhood. How he was sent to get the doctor when his grandmother was ill (shortly before she died). That he went into the wrong class on his first day at secondary school but the teacher was very kind and didn't point it out until the end of the class, and took him to the correct one. And he told me the story it is not good to save your favourite part of dessert until last, when one of your siblings comes in, and you have to share, so you lose your favourite bit. And then there are the stories of how he and Momma met at Oxford. How he pranged his car driving too fast, but nobody hurt. The fun he had with his cousins in London. I taught him how to do Samurai Sudoku which was in the Saturday Times every week. So I would scan and send them with my weekly email, and then we would have a timed race to see who did it faster. He loved doing the times Cryptic Crossword for years. The flimsy airmail version of the paper came to Cocos every time the plane came in, and he would do them in order. After moving to Oz and when internet came and he stopped having a newspaper I gave him access to it through our subscription. He would print it every day. When I was visiting he would sometimes stop, and I might be able to put a word in or two, before he picked it up again. When Momma first got ill he said to me on his normal early morning walk when I visited after that, "I am not a carer, she will have to go into a home". But he became the most brilliant carer, bit by bit. Started driving again, cooked, did some cleaning before they got a cleaner, bought and cooked her favourite foods. I was the bully, he was always very kind, let her sit and have her dinner in her chair. I made her walk to the table when she able to. He taught me that you can learn anything if you want to. Books were his standby, the library at Cocos was packed full of every reference book that might be useful. Boatbuilding, knots, fishes, soil and how to change it, sailing (he put me first onto the book to learn the theory before sending me out in a boat). He would have loved youtube tutorials! But the fiction was fantastic too. In the days when you could get books sent by cheaper book post! he had a shelf that was new books he hadn't read yet. His rule was that you had to put the book back in the same position you got it out of. The 1001 Arabian nights! I don't know how many times I read those. He loved whodunits. The costume book through the ages was impetus to make clothes for dolls or paper dolls. The genealogy started with a tin chest in the office in OH when I was 17, there after school. I pulled fragile letters out, and said who are these from/to There was a bit of a family tree. He let me have access to all the stuff, transcribe it, copy it when the copier worked. He gave me the first graph paper A3 sheet to put the family tree out on. I still have it. Subsequently, when he got into computers, he bought me a genealogy program. I still use it. He used to send me letters from far flung cousins that had written him, so that I could add them to the tree. I love that he was excited when I found something new, although it wasn't really his interest, he was so very supportive in my interest. We had a chat on a morning walk ,some decades ago, about names on parish registers. He was fascinated to know that spelling wasn't fixed until more people were taught to read and write. Early parish registers are mostly aural and spelt phonetically by the writer, and not always consistently. I said, for instance how many times do you have to spell your surname over the phone. If you didn't have that option, they would just write as they thought it sounded. He listened much, and talked little. What he said he was usually pertinent and valuable or interesting. He did love jokes. So many books, Readers Digest, magazines, sharing jokes. Particularly puns. Origami. He loved it, and so many books on it. We used to do at Cocos in the evenings when I was a teenager. And the magic tricks from that book. Before television, and we amused each other. Board games, hermit crab races, miming to songs on the audio. Frist thing every morning at Cocos, he used to listen to the BBC world news, so you could hear the beepbeepbeep as it started.

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28-10 2021 13:43 View / Comment (0)

Nicola Battersby

Nicola Battersby

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