Page 2215 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 1 August 2017
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things in the public realm, Val was, of course, a loved family member whose loss will be keenly felt by his family and friends. I extend my condolences to them.
I first met Val back in the late 1980s, through the volunteer bushfire brigade. At that time I was working at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex at Tidbinbilla, where NASA, through the space tracking station, supported the local Tidbinbilla bushfire brigade. There were many joint meetings and training exercises held with the Tharwa brigade where, of course, Val was the captain.
Before this, Val had owned the licence to deliver fuel to the Honeysuckle Creek and Orroral Valley tracking stations in the golden years of the manned space missions. At that time Val may not have realised that he was playing his own small part in modern history, supporting manned space flight. As history has shown, the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station relayed the first images of the first steps of man walking on the moon, after problems with the feed from the Parkes radio telescope, which was originally scheduled to transmit the images. There was no commercial power to either of those two tracking stations so, by delivering the fuel that ran the generators that powered the sites, Val had a hand in this historic event. This is just one example from the rich tapestry of Val’s long and full life.
Much later, in 2003, after decades of bushfire-fighting experience, Val went on to accurately predict the devastating impact of the 2003 bushfires. His forethought and warnings to many local landholders, along with his direct disregard for orders about back-burning, probably saved many local farmers, livestock and the Tharwa township from even more catastrophic injury and loss.
Apart from his strident criticism of the management of the 2003 bushfires, including the failure to get the assistance of New South Wales in a timely manner when they were, in Val’s words, “champing at the bit at the border, waiting to come and help”, Val also lobbied hard against the closure of Tharwa school, changes at Cuppacumbalong, the years of closure of Tharwa bridge and the threat to the water supply, understanding that these would contribute to the decline of Tharwa village and to hardship for its residents.
While Val had originally voted against self-government, he was willing to stand up and be counted in the political arena when necessary, bringing his rural knowledge to the Assembly for at least a short time.
Val was the quintessential country bloke—to the point, hands on, with a dry sense of humour, down to earth, “just get on with the job”—and a storyteller from the old school with years of adventures and experiences to draw upon. When I stopped by the Tharwa store on occasion, Val always had a yarn to tell and added some lobbying about improvements to Tharwa village, as well as his constant war waged against excessive signage littering the roadside, and what he saw as over-bureaucratisation and wasteful government spending. For example, he once wrote to me, “I urge you all to keep a finger on the pulse as Tharwa is taken further down the plughole of governmental and bureaucratic ignorance that has virtually decimated us since self-government.” In this world of political correctness, straight talkers like Val Jeffery are few and far between. He will be missed.
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