Patience this is the second last of the series. Curtesy of our isolation in Halls Creek.
John Durack: Thank you, Patrick. And last, but not least, the man in the wonderful shirt, brother Matthew.
Matthew Durack:
Well luckily I do have a supporting crew, and ours will be a multimedia presentation, with a small musical interlude followed by some rambling. Alex would like to play 'Morning Has Broken'.
FLUTE PLAYS
Matthew Durack: Now that was the best of this speech, unlike the speeches to date, mine being the last, it must be the best for the day.
Certainly I can say, I think Michael mentioned that John had pre-empted for him many of life's occasions. Well if it's bad enough for No.2 son to be pre-empted, No.5 son gets pre-empted fairly badly. But there are a few things you do learn, being No.5, and that is that delegation is pretty important, and having delegated John as the Master of Ceremonies here for today, his speech really did sum up just about everything that I could think that I would like to say.
But I'm mindful of an event that Dad and I attended, the Mary Durack Craft Awards at which we were holding court, as it were, and I think I had been speaking that day at some other engagement, and Dad was performing really very well on that evening to the assembled guests. And I think that Matthew or Kim had got their picture in the paper for some reason, and the phrase came up about the Duracks, that we had managed to create three generations of bullshitters. Now I'm not too sure Michael, whether it's two generations or three, but there's a lot of them, and I wouldn't like to miss out.
I'd like to thank Kate, who I think has been more instrumental in today's success than anybody else, because she created the invitation, which allowed us to make today whatever it was we wanted to make it. She did not define the event too closely, nor lock us into anything too rigid, and I think that that was an inspiration to all of us, to let it go. So thank you, Kate.
There's been a lot of talk of books and music, but farms and dirt really do figure fairly highly in Jenny's and my life at the moment, and Dad's and my life, and so I would like to just emphasise how important farms are and how important Nobby has been in our whole upbringing, and how it's great to have this celebration somehow close to where all these things happened, and to have Rita and Keith on board. Rita seems to have been a friend for as long as I can remember, which as she did mention, was when I was that big, so that's probably about right. And also to have Keith here, because Ted Mengel, Keith's Dad, was someone who I think I learnt more about animals from, and horses and cows, than anybody else except Bubbles and sheep. And I must admit, Keith, I'm getting a bit worried that Dad seems to be getting to look more and more like Ted as time goes on.
OK. Firstly I'd like to thank everybody, but I'd like to hope that Mum and Dad had as much fun in preparing us for the world as we had in preparing this whole show for them, because I had a lot of fun. And I think therefore, we should make it an annual event. So we'll get into that.
But Dad, and farmers. I do want to thank Dad for the opportunity to do what I have always wanted to do, which is to farm, and I think secretly it's what he always wanted to do, so we're mutually exploiting each other.
Bill Durack: You got me when I was down!
Matthew Durack: It probably is appropriate that everybody should know that the day on which we bid on the property called Old Talgai, Dad was in fact under anaesthetic. It was the only way I thought I could get him. And we're having a lot of fun because of that untimely event.
But for Mother, a love of literature for me, has probably seemed to her something which would be very unlikely. I managed to go through school without ever having read a Shakespeare play, without ever having studied history in any shape or form at all, and I think only learning to read off Crispy packets in around about Grade 6. But I am finally developing a love of literature, and that is mainly through reading to the kids at night, and so what I'd like to do now is for Jenny to read a small passage out of 'Moby Dick', which is our book of the moment, but it has become a bit of a tradition with 'The Three Musketeers' being pretty good stuff when we got really fired up in that. And even I think the neighbours, (our neighbours are a long way away) were getting concerned when I was yelling out to 'perforate these people!' and various things. And you may think that Mother and Dad are moved to tears very infrequently, but our rendition of the 'Seven Little Australians' moved Dad to tears on one night. So we have got a history of some pretty fine reading, but this last paragraph from 'Moby Dick' I think is appropriate for the moment.
Jenny Dearden: Finally, it was stated at the outset that this system would not be here, and at once perfected. You cannot but plainly see that I have kept my word. But I now leave my cetalogical systems standing thus unfinished, even as the great cathedral of Cologne was left, with the cranes still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For small erections may be finished by their first architects, grand ones, true ones, ever leave the capstone to posterity. God keep me for ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draft of a draft. Oh, time, strength, cash and patience!
APPLAUSE
Matthew Durack: That was a very timely bit to have read, only two nights ago because that really does sum up what I think the Durack family to me stands for, and that is that it will never be completed, but we will keep going. And we may not have finished things, but we will always be in a position to look forward to finishing things. So, thank you.
APPLAUSE
Matthew Durack: I missed out one important event. We were multimedia, with three members of the family, but Nick, Mother, wishes to challenge you to that tennis game immediately after lunch!
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