Just a few weeks ago while shopping for a new TV at Harvey Norman on Blaxland Road I bumped into Gary Lucas, the former Liverpool Mayor.
Knowing that he has lived at Chipping Norton for 40 odd years I asked him what he was doing so far from his neck of the woods.
As everyone who attended his memorial service this morning at Forest Lawn Leppington heard, Gary and the family had moved to greener pastures, buying a property at Razorback.
Sadly, on Monday, April 7, Gary Lucas fell asleep and never woke up.
He was 79 years of age – four months shy of turning 80.
At his memorial service, those of us who knew Gary John Lucas only through his public service, as a councillor, community leader and avid military historian, we heard how he was also a wonderful family man, a loving husband, father, and more recently, grandfather.
In the late 1960s he served in the ADF, which influenced him for the rest of his life.
In 1988, during that amazing time when every single Australian embraced the Bicentenary celebrations, he was Mayor of Liverpool, something he thoroughly enjoyed.
When I first met him in the early 1980s, Gary Lucas was a young councillor who wanted to see Liverpool achieve its potential.
He took great interest in a campaign by the local paper, the Liverpool Leader, to try to clean up the Georges River by forcing the state government to connect the Glenfield treatment works to the ocean outfalls pipes.
Both of us became amateur river pollution “experts’’ as the campaign gained movement.
He enjoyed the key phrase of the campaign, that when someone in Campbelltown flushed the toilet it all eventually ended up in the George River at Liverpool.
The campaign was a success when the government came to the party, connecting the treatment works to the pipe that went all the way to Botany Bay and beyond.
The two of us, along with some other contributors to the campaign, had a quiet celebration afterwards.
At today’s memorial service I spotted Mayor Ned Mannoun, current councillor Peter Harle, and former councillor Alfred Vella, all paying their last respects to a former colleague.
Gary John Lucas, rest in peace.
