William Gearon, My Wonderful Uncle Bill, May You Rest in Peace
Looking over the Eqi Glacier towards a spectacular sunset, Greenland.
I dedicate the photos in this post to my uncle, Bill Gearon, who died in the city of Bendigo, Australia on 13 May 2013. He was 97 years of age.
I made the above image looking out over the Eqi Glacier in Greenland. The image seems very much to me to be about the notion of looking towards a new beginning.
That’s certainly how I felt when I made this image and I can remember being reminded of that same notion at the cemetery as my dear Uncle Bill was being laid to rest.
The day was extremely cold and it had been raining during proceedings at the cemetery. But there was a moment I remember with great clarity, when the sun shone through the clouds, in a very mystical way, and illuminated the area around Uncle Bill’s gravesite.
I felt my own spirit lifted with great positivity as though Uncle Bill was sending out one final message of hope. I spoke to my mum about it afterwards, but she had no memory of the light that I recalled so vividly. No doubt she was too involved in her own thoughts at the time.
I received the news that Bill had died from my mum during a break in an evening photography class I was running in Melbourne. I can be a very focused and highly disciplined person. That’s what enabled me to put this very sad news aside and go back to work.
But later that night, during the hour of the wolf, the memories came back thick and fast.
He was a lovely man, a straight shooter who was as solid as a rock. A family man and a pillar of the community, Uncle Bill gave a significant part of his life to serving the poor and disadvantaged in and around Bendigo.
A butcher by trade and, at one stage a foreman at Borthwicks, my Uncle Bill is sadly missed, but remembered with joy and admiration.
Path under a stormy sky on Nólsoy near Tórshavn, Faroe Islands.
Tough Childhood Growing Up Between The World Wars
All of my mother's four siblings were boys. Bill was the last of her brothers to leave this world. I lost my mother, Mary Guy, in 2021. She was 93 years of age.
It must have been extremely tough growing up in the years between the first and second world wars. Indeed, my mother was born, on the family’s lounge room table, during the Great Depression.
I never knew Little Tommy, my mother's brother, who died after being run over by a car when he was a toddler.
But my memories of my uncle Bill go back to my childhood years when he and his wife, Lorna, would visit us in my hometown, Hamilton.
I doubt that there were more than a handful of visits from my mum's brothers Len, Bill and Ray over the years. But I remember them all and the joy those visits brought my family.
When I was 17 years of age I spent some time convalescing from a severe and prolonged bout of Glandular Fever at Bill and Lorna's home in Bendigo.
I still remember the address, though I've only been to the house on one occasion since.
Bendigo is a lovely and historically important city in Central Victoria. A major part of the Gold Rush in Australia, the amount of gold extracted from the Bendigo goldfield during the 1850’s provided a tremendous boom to the economy of Bendigo and, by extension, the newly created state of Victoria.
The greater Bendigo region offers great opportunities for photography. I hope to spend more time in and around Bendigo over coming years.
At Bill's 90th birthday my mum told a story about when, as a very young child, she told her big brother Bill that she was cold.
He reached out, took her hand and put it in his pocket. It was around the end of the Great Depression and that simple gesture from Bill, a child himself, was probably all he could do.
Nonetheless my mum remembered the event and retold that story, with great affection, throughout the rest of her long and eventful life.
I also remember, very fondly, the morning after Uncle Bill’s 90th birthday celebration when members of my family joined Uncle Bill and Aunty Lorna for a breakfast celebration at an outdoor cafe by the shores of the lake in Bendigo.
Ironically, the cafe was right across the road from where my mum and Uncle Bill’s family home had once stood. The home’s now gone and has been turned into a motel, where some of us stayed the night before.
China's Huangshan Mountain is an eden of beauty in winter.
Love and Found Memories Mingled With Regret
I'm only sorry that I hadn't made the effort to visit Bill and my aunt Lorna during the final years of their lives. Lorna died in 2015.
I remember speaking with my youngest sister, Gabrielle, about making a day trip up to Bendigo and spending some time with our then ageing uncle and aunt. But we never made the trip and I see it as a missed opportunity which I very much regret.
They say it's the thought that counts, but action counts far more than good intentions. I really wish I'd visited while the opportunity was there to do so.
Surely, that’s one of those hard earned lessons that should not be repeated.
Much loved and dearly missed, Bill Gearon may you rest in peace.
