My brother-in-law, Bill Lockwood, died of leukaemia on 7 March in a hospice in Adelaide. He was the Australian we all liked. A lifelong member of South Australia Cricket Association, he never missed an Ashes Test at the Oval. Many of you will remember that evening in 2013 when nearly a dozen Addis piled out of a minibus into the garden of his house in the Adelaide Hills, laden with carriers of beer and wine for the barbeque that he and Alex, my sister, hosted for us with their characteristic generosity and hospitality.
Bill’s ancestors arrived in South Australia from Scotland in the mid-nineteenth century so he was about as Aussie as you can get. He was a great anglophile and had been coming to England regularly since the 1960s. It was on one of these trips for the 1972 Ashes that he met Alex. My brother and I thought it was a great joke that she had hooked up with an Aussie, the Kanga, we called him, but she was dead serious and a year later she went to Australia. They married the year after that.
Bill was born on a farm in Mt Gambier, a railway town in South Australia. He spoke fondly of his childhood in the country. Like all good Aussies he was a keen sportsman. He particularly excelled at tennis table at which he represented South Australia. He loved cricket and by all accounts, well, his accounts, he was a good leggie. He also played Aussie Rules and had a very dim view of rugby, league or union, which he disparagingly said was only played in New South Wales and Queensland. Bill was intensely parochial. He was always quick to point out that South Australia was settled by yeoman farmers and not convicts; he hated the ‘Vics’; and thought that the lack of South Australians in the Test team was a conspiracy of New South Welshmen. In his mature years he took up golf and played off a good handicap, always claiming that Australian handicaps were much stiffer than English ones. Competitive as always, when his knees gave out he took up bridge.
As his family was not well off Bill left school early for a job on South Australian Railways. He was a good organiser and soon went into management where his people skills stood him in good stead. Soon after he and Alex married they moved to Murray Bridge where took his accountancy exams. In the 1980s they moved to Adelaide when Bill transferred to Australia Railways where he rose to a very senior position as marketing manager.
For me, Bill was a great friend as well as my brother-in-law. I have watched 26 Tests with him in England, Australia, the Windies, New Zealand and Sri Lanka. (It’s a sad fact that only with Midnight have I watched more Tests – 28!) He was a very good winner and always something kind to say about even the worst England team. On the other hand, Aussie to the core, he was a terrible loser. He and I also had 3 wonderful weeks together at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. And there was that memorable cup game against Burnley at Roker Park in a blizzard when Bill swore that he’d never come to England in the winter again.
A family man, he was a great father to Neal and Alexander and a devoted husband to Alex, whom he described to me as his best friend. He also embraced my family. For my mother who wintered for 21 consecutive years in Australia he walked on water. As well as our interest in sport Bill and I sang from the same hymn sheet politically.
He faced death bravely, accepting that further treatment was of no use. That meant that we were able honestly to say goodbye to him. I admire him for that. The coronavirus meant that I didn’t go to Australia for his funeral but we had a get together at my place for his Cornish friends and relatives where we reminisced and raised a glass. I ask you to do the same.
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