A great sport who never complained

NOEL and Janet Southern married on December 23.

Never mind Christmas rush, the break in cricket season was about the only Saturday the groom had free from sport.

“Nothing interrupted sport,” Mrs Southern chuckled this week.

“On our honeymoon we had to come back two days early so he could play cricket.”

That time 47 years ago was in Mr Southern’s days playing with South Barwon. He was something of an institution there, just as he was with the many other clubs of his heart and at Geelong High School where he learnt and then taught across decades.

He was always so active, then on February 19, 2004, in an instant, life dealt him a more challenging hand.

On open road a B-double truck swept past overtaking him and Janet in their Land Rover Discovery and caravan. The truck’s draught flipped their rig and set it rolling multiple times.

“It was goodnight nurse, and he just kept on going of course,” Noel later said.

Mr Southern finished the accident hanging in his seatbelt with no outward injuries but multiple neck fractures that strangled his spinal cord and took him within a hair’s breadth of death.

The accident rendered him quadriplegic. Mr Southern’s oftrepeated response in his following years of incapacitation was that it was far better than the alternative.

After having been cut from the car he spent three weeks in intensive care, 14 weeks in the Austin Hospital’s spinal unit, three months at the Royal Talbot rehabilitation unit and three months in Barwon Health’s McKellar Centre before returning to his Transport Accident Commission-modified home, controlling his electric chair with his chin and his computer with his voice.

Then he spent the next 11 years further inspiring everyone who crossed his path, until his death at home in Clifton Springs on February 18. Mr Southern was 72. “He never complained, he just didn’t want to let anybody down,” Mrs Southern said.

“The doctors and nurses were really good and he said ‘I don’t want to let them down’. He had a good attitude.”

Mr Southern grew up in Geelong, attended Geelong High School, graduated as a physical education teacher from Melbourne University and later added economics and commerce to his curriculum.

He taught in Melbourne, became one of Geelong High’s longestserving staff members and in the early 1970s he and Janet spent three years in the Papua New Guinean village of Kwikila, about 100km from Port Moresby.

He taught at the village school. Their son Simon arrived in PNG as a six-week-old baby and daughter Fiona was born in Port Moresby.

Back home he maintained his passion for sport.

As a rover and back pocket he played under-19s football for Geelong, then with Sandringham and Geelong West in the VFA, Greensborough and coached Leopold.

He coached Thomson under-15s, Geelong West under-17s, was runner and physio for coaches Stewart Lord and Warwick Yates at Geelong West and also coached Drysdale under15s to their first premiership in 1986.

Mr Southern spent his dedicated decades of senior cricket with South Barwon, Greensborough and then Drysdale, where he was everything from under-16 premiership coach, to senior coach, president, treasurer, secretary and life member across the years.

He was also a long-time member of Curlewis Golf Club and served terms as assistant handicapper, captain and president.

After his accident both Drysdale football and cricket clubs, and the Bellarine Football League during finals, all had special areas for him to park and enjoy his love of absorbing the action.

Long-time mate George Browney ferried him on many outings for meals and drives and to local games with devotion.

Mr Southern still enjoyed a beer and a wine and Mr Browney would help him out, raising drinks to his lips, though occasionally the assistant’s attention might have been diverted by other conversations.

“He’d say it’s a bit thirsty here,” Mr Browney said.

He described Mr Southern as inspiring.

“He was a guy who never really complained about the situation he was in, it was never ‘Poor me, why did it happen to me?’. He had a very positive outlook on it,” he said.

Nurse, support worker and friend Julie Mahobule met Mr Southern at the McKellar Centre, where he became legend during his regular hydrotherapy sessions, and later helped out at his home.

“I was only going to go out there for a few weeks to show the routine and 11 years later I was still there. There wasn’t a day that I didn’t see him,” Mrs Mahobule said.

“I loved him. He was a wonderful man … a gentleman, he was a fighter.

“Never once he complained, he was like a mentor to me.

“And he was funny, he was a great sport. We had so many times we’d laugh our heads off.”

Mrs Mahobule said a mark of admiration for the man came during his last fortnight when he required 24-hour care and carers were rushing to volunteer their help.

She said her 11 years working in his company were never tough.

“It was a pleasure, an absolute pleasure and I think I got more from him than he ever got from me,” she said.