Lives in Cricket No 28 - Keith Carmody

121 From Kalamunda to Sydney to the Kalamunda house, the three of them singing such 1940s musical favourites as ‘The Surrey with the Fringe on Top’. Her memories reinforce Jill’s delighted recollections of being taken by her father to see ‘South Pacific’ at Perth’s His Majesty’s Theatre and of singing along with him on earth-moving assignments to outlying areas in school holidays. She recalled one occasion at a house in nearby Lesmurdie when he entertained friends around a camp-fire, while a pig slowly roasted on a spit. When he picked up a guitar and sang it was no surprise to Jill that his voice was ‘just wonderful’ but a huge one that he could play the instrument so well without owning one. With no saxophone in the house either, she still remembers her amazement on another occasion at seeing Keith’s duet with Eric Parr, an English neighbour and pilot for the local MacRobertson Miller Airlines – and the owner of two saxophones. Ruth, recalled Jill, also used to sing but not as well as Keith. But she had other skills. She was ‘a brilliant cook’, made tapestries for the house and was so talented a dressmaker that, for a wedding, she created a much admired coat from fabric of the kind normally used for bedspreads. A neighbour, working at a technical college, wanted her to teach there. Like many women of her generation she’d been prevented from going to university by her father favouring a brother. Because she devoted herself to the family, it was only after the marriage broke up that the full range of her talents was revealed, including eventually a legal mind so respected that many lawyers consulted her for informal advice while she worked for the chief justice of Nova Scotia and even afterwards when she retired with ill health. Jill’s memories of her father as an engaging personality, liked by everybody, related especially to the wide circle of friends he’d made around their home, among them a number of Italian families, both long-established and newcomers arriving through Australia’s booming post-war immigration programme. She was echoing the comments of many who played cricket with him throughout his career, yet from early in his time in Perth his drinking had been a lurking threat of eventual disaster. Only in retrospect could Jill see the signs of its advance through her years of innocent childhood pleasures. Sometimes it was enjoyable, often tedious, waiting with Kelly for Keith to emerge from the local pub; occasionally the family Scotch terrier would go looking for him, either there or at the Kalamunda RSL [Returned Servicemen’s club], if he was late coming home.