Lives in Cricket No 28 - Keith Carmody

120 From Kalamunda to Sydney close friends admired his skills. Keith was a perfectionist, said Allan Edwards, and the house was ‘meticulously built’. It was a man with ‘a brilliant brain,’ said Aileen, who could bring his own building plans perfectly to fruition. Son-in-law Russell Stewart (Jill’s husband) explained that Keith built the house entirely himself, with the exception of some specialist electrical work. He also made a divan/cum settee, built into a corner, with its own internal storage space; a large china cabinet; bookcases; kitchen cupboards; and a jarrah-wood table. He used distinctive stone – still highly regarded in contemporary Perth – from the inland town of Toodyay for retaining walls. Ruth complemented his workmanship by upholstering chairs, after learning the necessary skills at technical college. By the time Jill was old enough for memories that would last a lifetime, the Carmodys had an enviable lifestyle in the white weatherboard house with green roof, built into the hillside on a half-acre block with olive trees in the garden and spectacular views down to the coastal plain surrounding Perth. Cricket was so remote from Jill’s world that she was amazed one day at high school to hear from the boys that her father was famous. Instead she remembered film nights on summer evenings, when Keith set up chairs on the slope and projected movies back onto the house’s white walls. She couldn’t recall who was there, allowing Russell – who hadn’t yet met Keith in that period – to suggest in 2012 that many may have been people he’d met through his bulldozing. There’s no doubt, however, that amid his alienation from the WACA, Keith’s closest cricket teammates remained important. Both Jill and younger sister Kelly regarded Lester Charlesworth and his wife Dorothy as uncles and aunts and their children, John, David, Judy and Ric among their best friends. For his part, Ric – future first-class cricketer, parliamentarian and legendary hockey player and coach – ‘knew the Carmody girls as well as anybody in those days.’ Ruth, said Jill, was very close to Dorothy. But the death of retired opening batsman – and active dentist – Lester at the age of 63 in 1980 meant that, in interviews in 1996 and 2011, the Edwards household provided the most vivid recollections of Keith himself. ‘Looking beyond his flaws’, especially involving alcohol, Aileen remembered Keith as ‘really great company!’ – the source of ‘wonderful, social, fun times’. Long before her marriage in 1952, the Adelaide-based air-hostess was used to being picked up at Perth airport by Allan and Keith, the latter driving his Hillman car