Niall’s life well lived

Born: 3 February 1918
Died: 6 July 2005

MANY people throughout the Yarra Valley and throughout Australia were saddened by the recent death of longtime Gladysdale resident Niall Brennan.
Writer, teacher and historian, he was well known and much loved, and a familiar figure around the district for many years.
He came to Gladysdale in 1954 with his wife Elaine and two small children. Born in 1918, he spent his childhood in Northcote.
His father was Frank Brennan, the Federal Attorney General in the Scullin Labor government. Politics thus entered his blood at an early age, but his early passions were for the theatre, mountaineering and bushwalking.
He fought for many years to have the ski jump on Mt Donna Buang, and hated the bureaucratic vandalism that ultimately destroyed it.
He was a prominent Catholic on the national stage, retaining his loyalty to the Labor Party when many Catholics had split to the DLP, and he campaigned vigorously against conscription in the Vietnam War, as his father had done in the First World War.
He was the unsuccessful Labor candidate for the state seat of Boronia in the late 1960s.
On the local stage he was much involved with Father Charlie Cerini in the early days of St Joseph’s school in Warburton, and taught at the Upper Yarra High School for many years. He was a teacher who made a difference to those he taught.
He wrote many books, including biographies of Archbishop Mannix, John Wren and photographer Damien Parer, several local histories, and A Hoax Called Jones, which in autobiographical form argued against succumbing to the lures of consumerism and affluence, and the drive so many of us face of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’.
He lectured for the Council of Adult Education for many years, and was the host of the popular Sunday afternoon debating show on Channel 7, Parliament of Youth.
He worked on the radio, in publishing and as a freelance journalist.
At home he loved his garden and his bulbs, and continued working at his typewriter into old age.
He remained in demand as a public commentator, appearing in his last years on the ABC historical program Rewind, speaking about John Wren.
He was a significant person of our times, and for many his death signalled the end of an era.
He died peacefully at home at the age of 87.
He would have enjoyed his own funeral with a packed church, a home made coffin, Irish pipes played by Leo Kelly, a 4WD instead of a hearse, and even an impromptu wedding.
It was a celebration of a wonderful life, and we are all poorer for his passing. His wife Elaine, eight children and 18 grandchildren survive him.
Peter Brennan, one of Niall Brennan’s eight children, lives in Gladysdale.

PETER BRENNAN