A Beautiful Eulogy in Honor of Phil Campbell Who Loved the Great Outdoors

The following is Australian Celebrant Catherine Campbell's eulogy for her father, Phil Campbell.

This eulogy was read at the funeral service for Phil Campbell. Unique in its setting, his funeral was held in the bushland in honor of his love of the Great Outdoors.

For a related article on his funeral service visit:

A Personal Farewell: Australian Celebrant Funeral Captures Spirit in Life by Taking Service to the Great Outdoors

What I will deliver here is a eulogy to Dad but it is more a remembrance of our life with him as a family. It is rather long but Phil lived a long life and he would not like to be rushed along!

Dad was a Parramatta boy. He was born in Concord and spent just about all his life in the Parramatta district. He was the eldest son of William and Thelma Campbell, our Nana and Pa, and older brother to Robert.

Pa was the chief rogue of the Campbell family! He was what used to be called a 'penciller', the one who wrote down the bets for the bookie as they were called. He also started the first car hire business in the Parramatta district and Dad used to help him by driving the cars to clients, long before he ever had his license.

Dad's father grew up on a property at Coonamble, moved to Sydney when he was 13 and spent his adult years in and around Parramatta and Sydney. Once retired he used to wander off and go walkabout out west. The stories of meeting aboriginal people and his adventures out there were exciting but also a little worrisome to Dad who decided that he needed to go with Pa to keep him out of trouble. Thus began our father's love of the outback.

But that was much later in his life. Back in time again now and Dad is finishing his schooling at Arthur Philip High in Parramatta and joining the RAAF. He desperately wanted to be trained as a pilot but he failed the eyesight test as he was colour blind so he was assigned to ground mechanics at the air force base. He travelled a little around Australia in the air force which, wet his appetite for new places.

Just on his colour blindness, it was always a bit of fun with Dad and colours in the family….he saw red and yellow as brown and blue as green etc. One day he came home with a new car. I was in the shower and he called out that he had a new Fairlane I asked what colour it was and he said it's a lovely brown. When I went out to see it I found it was bright fire engine red!

When he came home from the war he started his studies as an accountant. I think he first had some other work interest as he was studying at night in his early married life and I remember stories about some fellow he was in partnership with who embezzled money from their business.

He was a member of the Rover Scouts and ran 2nd Parramatta Rover crew. This is where he met and made life long friends such as Teddy Eager, Kevin Orchard, Phil Clark, George Murdoch, Teddy Horton, Kaye Vild, Kenny Bonza, Barry Davies and Gwen Mobbs, just to mention a few. His brother Bob was also in this gang and I'd like to take this moment to just acknowledge the wonderful strong friendships that all this crew shared. These men went on to marry our beautiful mothers and as families we all grew up together and shared many fantastic times camping, caving and socialising together. Dad´s association with the scouting movement lasted for many years and has always been a big part of his life.

So this is about the time in the story when Noela Cullen enters the picture. A group of these blokes, including our Dad, used to play tennis with a group of girls, one of which was Audrey Cram (who later became Audrey Murray). Meanwhile Mum's close friend Joan Baxter (who became Joan Lockard) with whom she worked in the bank had left the bank and gone to work at United Artists where she met Audrey who invited Joan and Noela to play tennis with their group. Thus was the meeting of Phil and Noela.

Back in those days there were only two social events to do on a Saturday night; going to the pictures or going to the Saturday night dances. A favourite place for dancing was Vic's Cabaret in Strathfield. Dad was invited through the tennis club mob and Mum was invited by Joan and Audrey and eventually there was a big social gang of them raging away every Saturday night!

So the beginning of Mum and Dad's relationship was a friendship in this group. They used to go on 'truck' picnics. Nobody could afford a car in those days and petrol was scarce, so a taxi truck would take people out on a picnic for the day.

Despite popular belief it was Mum who introduced Dad to skiing. She had a friend from work whose Uncle had a cabin at Kiandra and they used to go down for long weekends. They would strap their leather boots to their wooden skis and with the help of their bamboo stocks, herringbone up the mountain.

I remember just several years ago talking to Mum and Dad about the beginning of their relationship. Dad was enamored by Mum. She was this little petite beautiful looking woman with thick long black curly hair, intelligent, fun and the most important quality of all, adventurous!

So Mum and Dad married in April 1950 in the Church of England at Lakemba. They celebrated their 59th wedding anniversary this year just one week before Dad died.

For their honeymoon they drove to Adelaide in the Pontiac, (with Mum's mother in the back seat for part of the journey) but as they drove from the wedding reception they only got half an hour down the road where they broke down at the Vauxhall Inn at Parramatta. Mum spent her first wedding night with her mother while Dad spent the night under the car fixing it!

Dad had a thing with cars….he loved cars, or rather he loved engines and all things mechanical. He loved cars and planes and trains and anything that he could dismantle. In the early years he never could afford new tyres for his cars and I don't remember one holiday that we did not get a flat tyre. When I travelled in India and saw them stuffing the inner tubes with grass I thought Dad would have liked that idea and was surprised he'd never thought of it!

When they first married Dad and Mum lived with Mum's parents at Belfield, along with Mum's sister Joy and her husband Keith, and their brother Ted and his wife Bon and their son Michael who is with us today. All three wives were pregnant at the same time and it was said that if those marriages could survive three pregnant woman and then three new born baby girls all under the one roof then they were destined to be together forever…and this has proven true.

So in February 1951 Phil and Noela's first child, Judith Rae, was born. Dad was working full time and studying accountancy at nights and eventually they moved out to New Zealand Street in Parramatta and lived in the sheds in the back yard of somebody's mansion.

Not too long later they managed to buy their first home on the Great Western Highway at Westmead, inbetween a car sales yard and a junk yard, so Dad was in paradise! Dad worked hard during these years and Mum suffered some ill health so it was not until February 1957 that I, Catherine Gail, was born.

When I was about two a petrol company wanted to buy them out to build a petrol station there. As the company were not interested in the house Mum and Dad decided to sell the land and take the house with them! So they bought a quarter acre at 44 Hampden Road, Wentworthville and put the house on wheels and towed by a truck the family moved. Our house was the very last house to be moved complete in NSW. From then on houses were cut in half to move then rejoined. Mum loved it because she didn't have to pack a thing!

Everybody came out to see the house being moved. Coming around the top of Hampden road the house clipped the power pole and knocked it down so we arrived into the neighbourhood with a reputation to start!

We didn't even have to sleep anywhere else. The house was propped up on makeshift peers, on a bit of a slope mind you, water and electricity connected the same day and in we moved! I remember my favourite game was rolling down the hallway, through the lounge room and into a pile of pillows at the back door.

Soon after John Peter was born in October 1959. Dad had bought his own accountancy business in Parramatta and life was good. We had a huge backyard and Dad eventually set us up with swings and a home made slippery dip and see-saw from one of his clients. The old Pontiac sat in the back yard with long grass growing around it and made for good Bonnie and Clyde re-enactments and cow boys and cow girls had shoot outs around the willow tree down in the back yard.

John and I only set fire to the Italian neighbours paddock once (we loved the fire engines and so did Dad!!) and cracker night was a yearly highlight for the neighbourhood kids who combined together to build a big bonfire. We had Catherine wheels spinning on the fence and loud bungers sending my cat Jimmy indoors. Dad built a huge Avery and filled it with budgies of all colours and a big gold-fish pond you had to step over to get in to the Avery. The toilet was in-between the laundry and the shed outside in the backyard and Dad eventually turned the original garage into a third bedroom, being the handy carpenter that he was.

After Sunday school and Mum's baked dinner, apple pie and jam tarts, and after a little family tummy rest on the lounge to recover, Sunday afternoon was lawn mowing day. Mum would mow the quarter acre while Dad would ride bikes with us up and down the driveway!! Then we would either drive over to visit Granma and Farvie at Carlingford, and often drop in on the Orchards and Vilds on the way home, or the Murdochs would drop in on their Sunday afternoon drive and Mum would whip up some scones for afternoon tea.

As I said Dad loved cars, he loved old memorabilia and was a collector of everything.…and after what we found when cleaning out his garage recently we think he was actually a compulsive kleptomaniac!! Mum never knew what he was going to come home with and when she would declare at his latest treasure; "Oh God, you don't want that"! he would hide it, but then of course Mum would find it and throw it out, although from what we found in the garage it would appear Dad won in the end!

One day Dad came home with a 1922 Buick and later a T-Model Ford, a De La Sal car, a Bentley and two vintage petrol bowsers, all of which he intended to restore along with an array of other bits and pieces he collected, not to mention Pa's FX Holden and Aunty Dot's 1957 Hillman Minx, which along with the Buick and the petrol bowsers were still in the garage up until last month!

The highlight of our life though was holiday time. Whenever there were school holidays or a long weekend we would be off camping. Usually it was with any combination of the Eagers, Orchards, Vilds, Leiths, Longs, and Mobbs and I always got to take Kaye and Margaret with me no matter what.

We would pack up the trailer and make a bed in the back of the station wagon, as we always left on the Friday afternoon and drove into the night, as there was no time to waste. After driving a long away from the city usually a good camping spot would be declared down some dirt road in the middle of nowhere next to a crystal clear creek under lots of shady trees.

At Christmas we would go to the Eagers place at Tuross or get away up the coast to Arrawarra, near Coffs Harbour. Most exciting of all, without a doubt, was our annual pilgrimage to the snow. I remember lying in bed with John so full of excitement that we would be biting our pillows. I remember our green thick plastic snow suits that Mum made for us, filling up with wind and lifting us off the ground in Johnny Abbortsmith's old caravan park where we stayed in our caravan with the annex and the speedy heater. I remember lacing up the leather boots, which would be saturated along with everything else on our bodies by the end of the day. We would ski the 'esses' at Smiggins and eat sandwiches for lunch out of the back of the station wagon. At the end of a full day's skiing we would go into the warmth of the bar in Smiggins Hotel and Dad would teach us to play pool. If the weather was bad we would go for a drive and stop by the roadside and build igloos with Dad.

In 1971 we sold Wentworthville and Dad said, just for three months we would live in the caravan in the back of his office in Palmer Street Parramatta while the house was built, the one just around the corner here. Judy was 20, I was 14 and John was 11. Dad took the project on as an owner builder and three years later we moved!! I must pay tribute to my Mum here who, due to her amazing capacity for tolerance and endurance, did not divorce Dad during this time!

Judy escaped by marrying Ken and I have vivid memories of my friends hanging out the caravan windows and doors partying in the office backyard!

Not long after the move, Dad and Mum bought the Australian franchise dealership of Zeibart rust proofing. By now Dad was a successful accountant and he juggled his practice with running Zeibart. But eventually it was Mum who ran this very successful business.

Dad was a member of Parramatta Toastmasters, Parramatta Business Men's Club and Baulkham Hills Lions Club. He was respected in the professional world for his ethical business dealings and in his local community for outstanding service to charity.

We wanted to celebrate his life today outdoors near his beloved bush because this seemed to be more appropriate to who he was. Dad loved camping, skiing, caving, playing squash and tennis in his younger years and bushwalking. In honour of all the bush he has walked all over this country we will eventually, according to his wishes, scatter his ashes at Narrow Neck at Katoomba. He was an outdoors man who loved adventure and exploring, everywhere and everything, He did major expeditions out west and crossed many deserts which John will expand on and he and Mum travelled around Australia at least twice.

Dad went into semi retirement in his 6o's so that he and Mum could travel the world. And they went not just to your regular countries but to exotic places such as Tibet, China, India, South America, Alaska, Antarctica, Russia and Morocco, to name a few. They also returned to New Guinea where they had been with the scouts in 1969.

At the end of 2007 Mum and Dad moved to their unit on the beach at Manly to be nearer to John. Dad liked it there but the beach is more Mum's thing. He pined for the bush and his trips out west. At times he was like a trapped lion, enclosed in too small a space. The open road was more his style.

Phil was a good husband who loved Noela dearly until his dying day. His family was the most important thing in his life. To us he was a wonderful father, who played with us as kids, enriched our lives through his unbridled sense of adventure, taught us the value of friendship, and loved us for who we were without wanting us to be any different. He adored all of his grandchildren and great grandchildren and was always truly interested in what we all were doing in our lives. He was generous, supportive and kindhearted and always there for us when we needed him.

Another favourite childhood memory for us, and for many of you here today, is the regular Friday night social nights playing squash or ten pin bowling with the gang, which was always followed with a party and a slide show of all our shared holidays. Dad was the ultimate amateur photographer and movie maker. He loved to record his life. We have a room full of slides, photos, super 8 movies, videos, tape recordings and diaries of his adventures. Don't worry we will not inflict all of them upon you!! But we would like to continue this honouring of Phil after this ceremony back at Dad and Mum's old home by showing a slide show (well the modern version of) with highlights of his life.

I would like to finish by thanking all of you for being the good friends that you were to him. I know he valued each and every one of you. It is said that the measure of success in one's life is not by how much you have loved but by how much you have been loved. Dad was a respected and loved man by all who knew him. He was a unique character and he lived a successful life. His family loved him dearly.

These last several years, especially the last 18 months, have not been easy as a result of his illness with dementia but we will remember him far more from the greater context of his life; such a full, colourful, and rich life.

He was never a religious man and he used to say that he would 'get' religion in his old age, as he'd probably need it by then! He always wanted to live to be 100 and get a letter from the queen as he loved the monarchy and we have honoured that today with the Australian flag painted on his coffin.He approached the end of his life with acceptance and grace and while he died of prostate cancer in the end we are grateful that he wasn't in any pain. He gently and slowly breathed his last breaths bathed in the love of his family.

What I loved most about Dad was that he was an individual and I had a relationship with him that was separate to Mum. When I travelled I received letters and phone calls from them separately. When I was distressed or in some drama he was always there on the end of the phone and he would listen to me and tell me that everything would be alright. I feel incredibly grateful to him for being the father he was to me and I feel honoured to have been his daughter.

That Father of Mine

He was just an old bushy that father of mine,
he loved to hit the road and leave civilization behind.
I used to call him a reincarnated Burke or Wills
But he was just an old Rover Scout called Phil.

If there was a track he hadn't been down, we'd hear the old familiar, "let's see where it goes" and we'd all frown.
'Cause Phil didn't care for the restrictions of time, exploring and roaming for him were just fine.

As kids we all loved him because he was the one,
Who'd let us hang out the car windows, ride on the bonnet, stay up beyond bedtime, play pool in the bar or sit by the fire telling stories in the setting sun.

What he gave us is beyond measure, he was our legend, a unique spirit and a lion,
He made our life one great big adventure, and we so loved and adored him,
That father of mine.

Celebrant Catherine Campbell coordinates a volunteer community service to support people in grief and people who are facing a life threatening situation. Through this service she also promotes Do it Yourself funerals.

Pictured: Phil Campbell