Roger

Roger was president of the Part Time Evening and Mature Student Organisation (PEMSO) when I was employed as their secretary through the student union.

He was very gregarious. He wore op shop clothes, had white hair and big beard. He talked about how he used to work for the government in export and drive a fancy car and then all of a sudden he rejected that entire lifestyle and became a greenie.

After committee meetings or newsletter production, he sometimes took us up behind the uni to a nature walk where kangaroos roamed.

At the end of the year, before I headed off the Queensland he threw a big breakup party at his property in King Lake. I remember driving there from Bundoora and climbing and climbing up the hillside from Whittlesea and then driving down a road that was more like a track until I finally arrived at his house.

His house was a mud brick yurt and I remember being quite put off by the smell of composting toilet wafting into the living area of the home.

He was married to an English lady of Indian descent and they had two children.

Several years later, I had returned from living up in Queensland and moved on to a trout farm with Mark in Eildon and then Black Saturday hit. I remember being quite shocked to see Roger appear on the news that night. He was white as a ghost talking about how scary it had been to escape as the road his house is on had a dead end so there was only one way out during the bushfire. He and his family had lost everything that day.