Coast mourns loss of ‘influential’ June
in Southport to go swimming at Main Beach,’’ she recalled in 2009.
“You would get splinters in your feet if you were not wearing shoes.
“I always dreaded driving across the bridge because there were ridges to guide the car’s tyres and it was quite easy to slip out of them.’’ mayor and inaugural state member for Surfers Paradise Sir Bruce Small’s tight-knit circle of family and friends.
Gold Coast journalist and author Rachel Syers interviewed Ms Redman at her Benowa Waters home several times during the past four years for an official Sir Bruce Small biography, to be released later this year.
She said Ms Redman went to work for Sir Bruce in 1970 as a personal assistant and helped organise his gala dinner before he died in 1980.
“She helped Bruce and (his late wife) Lillian raise funds for the building of Lady Small Haven at Benowa,” Ms Syers said.
“She also helped Bruce and Lillian in their home at Isle of Capri when he was ill with bowel cancer. She would organise his mail and business for him.
“They became such great friends that Bruce and Lillian asked her to live with them during Bruce’s illness to help them. She couldn’t due to being a mother but still visited him every day.”
Ms Syers said Ms Redman’s children were aged 19, 17, 15 and 13 when she went to work for Sir Bruce in 1970.
“It was a busy time. I was 39 when I came to work with Bruce,” Ms Redman had told Ms Syers.
“I didn’t really get any years off with the children. I kept working. We didn’t get paid like women do now and I was divorced by then so I was a single parent.”
Ms Redman had said she helped run Sir Bruce’s campaign for the state seat of Surfers Paradise.
“I was always the secretary of Bruce Small Enterprises. I helped run the campaign and set up morning teas all over the place and I became very close to the Smalls,” she said.
A driving force behind a 2015 exhibition in Sir Bruce’s honour at the Gold Coast and Hinterland Historical Society’s Bundall museum, Ms Redman told Ms Syers her long, proud involvement with the society dated back to 1975.
“I was 10 years as the treasurer and then I came back in again and was secretary for five years up until 2013. So
JUNE WAS A WONDERFUL PERSON TO MY GRANDFATHER AND TO ME AND I WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER WHAT SHE DID FOR MY FAMILY ON THE GOLD COAST
Anne (Sir Bruce Small’s granddaughter, Dr Anne Small) was coming up to visit and I said to her ‘I think it’s time we had a section of the museum to honour your grandfather’ and she thought that was a good idea,” Ms Redman said.
Dr Anne Small, who lives in Melbourne, said she was grateful for everything Ms Redman had done for her grandparents.
“June was a wonderful person to my grandfather and to me and I will always remember what she did for my family on the Gold Coast,” Dr Small said.
“She was a very special woman and will be sadly missed by the Small family.”
When Sir Bruce died in 1980, Ms Redman went to work for former National Party minister and state member for Albert Ivan Gibbs and became Gold Coast director of the National Party, based at National House in Southport.
National Party powerbroker Sir Robert Sparkes’ son Doug – whose father died at Hillview House Nursing Home on the Gold Coast on August 6, 2006 – said at the time Ms Redman had been “truly an angel’’ during his father’s final years, which were dogged by Parkinson’s disease.
Friends and colleagues have recalled Ms Redman as “a wonderful woman” in tributes on social media.
“The Coast has truly lost one of its most influential heroes. RIP June, you will be greatly missed by many,” Jason John Hughes wrote on Facebook.
A celebration of Ms Redman’s life will be held at Allambe Memorial Park on August 24.