Christ Our Life is dedicated to the memory of Pr Ronald John Allen - July 11, 1947 - July 16, 2024.
We will see you again, Ron.
Brother to Keith, Shirley, Lynette, Bernice and Trevor. Husband to Carmen, Father to Jean and Andrew, uncle to Meredith and brother in law to Elizabeth and Son to Dorothy, Ted and Locky. 'In him was life and that life was the Light of Jesus Christ'.
A HYMN TO LIFE
Ron was born in Brisbane in 1947 while we were living at Wynnum in a modest Queenslander up on stilts as is the custom there. Shortly after this we went to Sydney and then embarked on the Parters Anchor for New Zealand.
We spent about two years in New Zealand and returned to Sydney on a flying boat landing at Rose Bay. Ted Allen died that night. Ron, myself and mum lived in a garage at the rear of our grandparents house – Harold and Gwen Meyers. Ron and I slept on beds we had bought in NZ on either side of a lowboy also bought there.
We lived there about a year until Mum married Locky Roberts, a farmer of Mumble Peg, Narromine, NSW. The room in which Ron and I slept for many years here was arranged with the same lowboy and beds that came from NZ and which had served for awhile in the garage at 29 Acacia Avenue, Ryde. So we had elements of our past with us at Mumble Peg.
Ron always went to sleep before I, but sometimes not before I had made him laugh by saying a train of nonsense words as in Ebbinghaus’s memory drum. When he was least expecting it, I would insert some rude word of the kind mum had forbidden us to say so as to undo his composure and cause him to laugh.
As a family we were not poor. But we did work picking oranges or in the packing shed on Sundays and holidays so we were taught to work.
In our adult life we spent some time in the summer at the homes of Barry Hill and James Ward – both banana growers of renown.
This music, Walking By Flashlight, although from another land reminds, me of walks on sheep tracks beside fences and stepping over an ancient wooden style by the river where white cockatoos screeched, a black swan seen flying up the river and a water iguana splashing into the water. Foxes were like to wander and hares would spring out of hiding and bound away to some other spot near a gumtree or old log.
There is a glory in the ordinary and probably sacredness. I know what it means to be on country because I was steeped in it. Ron and I shared a life here until I went and became a teacher and he became a minister of The Gospel of Jesus Christ. I kept returning to the room that was my home with two blue beds and a lowboy in which Ron and I had lived until well past my 30s. Walking By Flashlight is not a religious composition - but it is a hymn to life.
