Frank Turney

With his birthday coming up (and thus nearly time for one of my two cans of XXXX every year), I'm thinking about Frank a bit lately. And although I hadn't thought about it in decades, I suddenly remembered how he used to play squash. I don't know if he ever enjoyed it as much as rugby league, I think he played that as a young man and it made him a devotee and watcher of the game, whereas squash was more to do with having fun and getting a bit of exercise, probably about getting out of the house and hanging around with other men. He played at a couple of different courts that I remember. One used to be at the top of a rise where President Avenue goes up and down over the bush-covered hills at the southern end of Caringbah, where it backs onto Lilli Pilli. Another was in Beverly Hills near the corner of King Georges Road and Stoney Creek Road, not far from where the M5 crosses King Georges Road nowadays. I only ever remember him playing with two people – Uncle Bob and a famil

A few weeks ago Wendy said that when I turned to look at her, her breath caught in her throat a bit because of how much I looked like Frank. For most of my life I've been bemused to think I resembled my father. One of the things you never consider very fully until you're deep into adulthood is how physically attractive your parents are (or were when they were younger). I've been telling my mother my entire life she looks 10 or 15 years younger than her age, and I've genuinely thought so – she's still full of more pep, colour and vitality than most women almost 30 years younger. But the idea that any man would look sideways at her and think 'phwoar' is a completely alien notion to me as one of her offspring. I've always joked with her that her and Dad must have had sex at least twice, beyond that I don't want to think about it. But my Dad was different again. We all remember what shape he was for most of his life (at least, for my whole life). His bee

When Lucas was much younger (he just turned 10) and he'd sleep at our place, he'd sometimes ask me to sing him a lullaby when I put him to bed. He didn't ask often and I think it was just a bit of a delaying tactic, but whenever he asked I'd tell myself I'd have to spend a bit of time the next day thinking of some more, because I could only ever remember one song at the time. I'd usually sing four lines from it and he'd be gone, which was good because I only knew two lines (and made one of them up) and repeated them twice. I don't know if I even had the tune right. But I'd sing it and he'd drift off in that way that makes you marvel at how quickly a human being can go to sleep and wonder why we lose that ability. For as long as I can remember, it's been very rare for me to get to sleep within 30 or 40 minutes of turning the light off and laying down unless I'm devastatingly tired. At some point I told Wendy I'd occasionally sing him t

I think I've mentioned once or twice before how placid a man Frank was. In fact I only ever remember him exercising his right as a parent to smack me exactly once. I'd somehow got it in my mind to drop a handful of dirt from the backyard into our old above ground pool and pretend I was on The Curiosity Show by sticking the garden hose down to the bottom and whooshing the dirt around everywhere. I don't even remember if he yelled (he never did) when he found me doing it, I just remember how shocked I was that he'd smack me. I don't remember him even being in the picture when I jumped up and down on the roof of the Capella, threw pegs in the toilet, tore newspapers up all over the lounge room of my aunty and uncle's house or wrote 'Drew i am' on my class photo from about third class – it was Mum's wrath I faced in all those transgressions. But it's also entirely possible he couldn't have cared less. In sullying the pool – and this would have a

I can't remember when my Dad started wearing glasses full time. He doesn't have them in photos from when I was a kid or in my teens, so I'm guessing it was some time around his 50s. But he had a very particular way of wearing them that was uniquely Frank. Whether it was because he never got ones that fit him properly or he didn't like the way they felt either on his ears or too tightly across the bridge of his nose, he always had the tips of the arms perched on top of his ears instead of curled over them. It's a detail I and everyone else around us might never have noticed, except that my mother's repeated refrain when she snapped 'put your glasses on your face' was as familiar to me as his face was – including the glasses. It's possible now I look back he did it because he knew how to (and enjoyed) pushing her buttons. I sometimes have no idea how they stayed married as long as they did, but I wouldn't be here otherwise I suppose, and as with ev

Now it's Christmas again that means one thing - swimming in a pool. Of everything I missed when I first moved out of home at 19 (there was probably a lot I didn't realised I missed until years later, like my mother's cooking), the biggest one was the pool. Our pool at Gabo Place was fairly legendary among my family and friends. When I look back now I'm in complete awe that Jan and Frank landscaped that rock wall around the outside all by themselves (did they do all the brick paving too? I can't remember). It would have been quite a job for any thirtysomething suburban couple back in the early 80s when they did it, but if you remember anything about my parents you'll know they didn't do anything harmoniously. I'm surprised someone didn't end up with their foot crushed by one of those huge river stones. As Brad said at Dad's funeral, the Turneys wanted to come to the Gabo Place pool even though they lived a stone's throw from Coogee beach. When