Vale Charles Victor Northam

Charles’ brother Hugh was approached for material to include in this edition of OVAtions. What follows is an initial comment followed by the eulogy he delivered at Charles’ funeral.  

"Charles’ death was the result of a stroke he suffered, suddenly and without warning, on Christmas Day. After two operations to retrieve a first, and then a second blood clot from the brain, he died on 5 January this year after receiving the last rites from Fr Des Dwyer, who had been in the boarding house for the Xavier prep school in Kew, Burke Hall, where Charles was sent as a boarder from Tasmania at the age of eight, until attending St Virgil’s in 1955. 

His burial took place at Sorrento yesterday, 18 January. The undertakers pointed me to the unnamed grave adjacent to Charles’ marked simply RIP Champion, and informed me that it is the grave of Shane Warne. I remarked that by far the greater champion now lies in Charles’ grave."

Charles is pictured on the right with former classmate and lifelong friend Albert Ogilvie (svc 1951-57)

Charles Victor Northam

An Impression of our Brother

Requiem Mass St Peter's Toorak 12 January 2023

The apple of his mother's eye

In the early photographs in India of picnics in the sun, we can see the radiant joy of a beautiful woman at having produced two beautiful children, one blond, one dark. Elegantly attired, in a style later eschewed for a more ascetic garb concealing the enormous scapula of the Carmelite order, this lady sits on a rattan chair, long legs folded in the approved, regal manner befitting a memsahib. Behind her stands her husband, also elegantly attired, handsome, debonair and of military bearing.

Having lost her father, a charismatic RSM and later commissioned officer in the South Wales Borderers, at the age of three, our mother may have thought that he was being restored to her in the person of this wonderful son. Blond of hair, blue of eye, fearless of spirit, a persona so large that the whole world, it transpired, was barely large enough to contain him

Education

Our mother was clearly ambitious to provide her two eldest children with the best education the world could offer. In her view, that meant the Benedictines, to whose preparatory school, Worth, Charles was sent as a boarder, whence, in the normal course, he would have ascended to Downside Abbey or Ampleforth College. However, before relocating to

Australia in 1948, she had been informed by the Jesuits at their Farm Street church in Mayfair that the nearest thing in this country to a Benedictine education was a Jesuit one, and Charles was sent at the age of eight as a boarder to Burke Hall, where he was known, we have recently learned from his contemporary, Fr Des Dwyer, who miraculously materialised from nowhere to give him the last rites in hospital, as "Blond Charlie". We are most grateful to Fr Dwyer.

The Jesuits famously say that if you give them the boy at seven, they will give you back the man. That may have been true in Charles' case, for he feared nothing and no one. Whether he feared God, we shall continue to ask ourselves. Above all, he surely became the embodiment of the Jesuit ideal — to be a man for other men. The candour of his gaze as a young man, his utter selflessness as a mature man, were almost unbearable.

After a distinguished career at Xavier as a rower and sportsman, and participant in the G & S operettas, he completed his education in Hobart, where he arrived in 1956 like a clap of thunder at his last school. One of his new teachers was sufficiently unwise to accuse him of not properly completing his homework. Charles stood up and responded that at the school I come from, the Masters put the homework up on the blackboard so the boys know what to do. The enraged teacher said "rarely have I seen such suave indifference in a schoolboV' and ordered him out of the room. Charles' arrogant saunter as he slowly left the room further enraged the teacher, who then threw the Longman's Latin grammar at him, which disintegrated upon impact. A star was born at the school that day. The boys were enraptured. Not only had the school acquired a future King's Cup rower, they had the unheard of example of a boy who had the unprecedented daring and aplomb to stand up to the Masters. He was made a prefect the following year by popular choice

His school fellows were not alone in their admiration. At the nearby girls' convent, which he and I had to walk past every day on our journey up the hill to school, I became conscious every morning of the increasing presence outside the convent of the girls feverishly polishing their shoes. In the background could be heard the sound of piano practice. Bach's second prelude of the 48, I recall. When I asked one of the girls why they did this, she replied that it was to get a glimpse of Charles as he walked past. The legend of the blond Adonis of Hobart, now forever lost to the cracked hearts at Loretto, Mandeville Hall, was born.

Character

In the incident of the outraged teacher lies the key to Charles' charisma. Friends of his and family members to whom I have spoken agree with me that, in almost equal proportions, the sometimes mutually contradictory ingredients are:

• his utter fearlessness
• his boundless energy
• his relentless optimism
• his boldness
• his reckless courage
• his aplomb, flair and originality
• his entrepreneurial creativity
• his extraordinary powers of mental concentration, combined with his ability to compartmentalise his utter selflessness
• his all-encompassing, unstinting generosity which embraced all of mankind regardless or rank or status, no one who needed help was ever denied
• his kindness, universally acknowledged his arrogance
• his lordly tendency to scoff
• a certain disdain for the norms of bourgeois society
• his unflagging energy
• his Byronic romanticism
  • he was larger than life, a giant of a man
  • his unfailing Christian charity
  • a Christian gentleman

These gifts were deployed by him with flair and address and energy, in the various business and commercial ventures he undertook in a remarkable career: civil engineer, property developer, distributor of Favco Cranes, manufacturer of anechoic chambers for the Pakistani Air Force to test their jet engines, global traveler conducting business in most if not all of the five continents, traversing most if not all of the seven seas, driving unattended, at night, through Soweto, and from East to West in India, as if to Geelong or Ballarat.

Charles' brothers and sisters are so very grateful to Maureen for giving him the stability and security of their happy marriage, her never failing love, loyalty and support, and the happiest years of his life for nearly a quarter of a century.

Finally, to our beautiful brother, in the awesome words of the Proficiscere, the ancient prayer originating in a Frankish Benedictine monastery, transcribed by Cardinal Newman in The Dream of Gerontius, and spoken by the Dean of Windsor to the Queen at her funeral last year: Go forth upon thy journey from his world, O Christian soul.     

Hugh Northam