From Lesley and Frank Chamberlain late of Ringwood and now residing at Forest Hill, Vic.
We extend our deepest sympathy to your Mother Anita, your sister Claudia and yourself for the sad loss of your Father Uwe.
We first got to know your parents when Claudia was at kindergarten at the same as our daughter Dianne. At that time your father was at the Melbourne University and working towards his PhD. I used to help from time to time by assisting with the spelling and grammar. We became good friends and managed to keep in touch throughout the years.
Yours sincerely ... Frank Chamberlain.
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We met when Uwe and Anita came to live in Mariner Street, a small thoroughfare running off The Strand in Williamstown, Victoria.
ReplyDeleteThey had previously built a house in Ringwood, near my husband's brother, Bob.
Mariner Street was never the same after the Radoks moved in.
They were innovators in the little backwater of Mariner Street. Unlike any of their neighbours in those days, their household effects included a waterbed, a dishwasher and a small electric organ. Not so unusually, they also had wheeler for carrying their shopping home - not the small van that Uwe liked to drive.
Somehow we became acquainted - Uwe, Anita, me and my husband, Harold. We asked them down for a meal.
They brought their shopping "jeep" with them and once the evening had finished, insisted on taking home the dinner dishes to wash in their dishwasher. The plates were returned sparkling next day.
Uwe loved the sea and although prices on the main waterfront road, The Strand, were by then too high, his chosen street ran straight down
to the water.
In the backyard of their home was a huge pine tree. Uwe put up a ladder, nailed into the trunk, to the top of the tree. He could then climb up and view Hobsons Bay with the Yarra River running into it, the ships at Port Melbourne, the yachts, tugs - and even, he said, across to Government House in Melbourne city.
Others know his dramatic early story - including the Dunera voyage - and scientific achievements better than I do.
Anita told us once how a glacial melt lake in the Prince Charles Mountains of eastern Antarctica had been named Radok Lake after him.
Luckily I recently checked my memory of her story - because I've always thought she told me the lake was on the Moon!
I also learned how they met at Bonegilla migrant camp in Victoria, on either side of a high wire fence. Anita was only 18 at the time.
At length they married and had their three lovely daughters, Claudia, Helen and Jacquie.
Uwe had strong political beliefs.
My sister's husband was once standing for parliament in Tasmania, representing a party Uwe disagreed with.
My meteorologist neighbour saw me in the supermarket, and voiced his displeasure at this action of my brother-in-law.
I must have been really upset - because he then got down on one knee and apologised.
And before I had arrived home, a huge bunch of flowers had been delivered to the door.,
Strangely, it was only when I read of Uwe's death that I realised we were of similar ages.
But he lived a thousand years in a lifetime.
-- DOROTHY RICHARDS, WILLIAMSTOWN.