A Legacy Of Love

Well folks, it’s with much sadness that I find myself trying to think of some words to say to acknowledge the loss of Reg Evans, another Prisoner actor I greatly admired, in the terrible fires in Victoria last weekend that claimed the lives of so many. I’m sorry I’ve been so slow in my response to this, but it’s so hard to think of anything to say when what we’ve been seeing on our television screens and reading in our newspapers all week, which even then only skim the surface of the horror of it all, really defies anything else to add.


As the Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd eloquently put it in the immediate and ongoing aftermath of the devastation, “Hell in all its fury has visited the good people of Victoria in the last 24 hours, and many good people now lie dead...” Among those good people of all ages and walks of life who got up that day unaware that it would be their last just happened to be Reg Evans, a good solid actor who’d put in some good solid work during his brief visits to Prisoner in a number of guises spanning much of the series.

At this time, I hope you’ll forgive me for not going to go into any great detail or effusiveness as I normally would about how much I enjoyed and valued his contribution to the show, because to me at any rate, as much as I love Prisoner, it seems trite to be even mentioning it in the same breath as the events of last weekend, and so I’ll save marking what I feel are his dues for his work on the show for another day, hopefully at a more appropriate distance and time from all of this.

For now, I just want to briefly acknowledge his passing and the legacy he left us not only in terms of his input into Prisoner and his broad body of other work, but more importantly as a human being, from what I can gather from the coverage of his life and death.

As regards his professional life, as this, and indeed many articles on him have observed, his credits as listed on his IMDB profile do indeed read like the highlights of Australian film and television. He was in everything from Skippy The Bush Kangaroo to Mad Max, The Flying Doctors to A Cry in the Dark/Evil Angels, Snowy River the McGregor Saga to Gallipoli.

One of the great strengths of Prisoner for me, beyond the great icons of the series who spring instantly to most people’s minds when or if they think of the show, was its rich seam of supporting players. Admittedly, and also much to its charm, IMO, it wasn’t all gold, but when it was good, it was very, very good, and indeed it was more often than you’d maybe think it was quite outstanding. As I’ve said before, I think the calibre of actors even just passing through the show in the briefest of glimpses and the wealth of experience they brought with them is so impressive.

Whenever I’m enjoying one of Reg’s sojourns in the show, be that as Eddie the electrician’s grumpy co-worker in the opening days of the series, as Fred, Bea’s genial foreman during her work release at the printers in the early 300s, or as Howie, Jenny Hartley’s crumpled but valiant solicitor in the late 500s and the real gem that is Foxy Lawson, Lizzie’s penfriend and would-be suitor in episode 398 in one of my all-time favourite little subplots, I always feel at ease knowing that my enjoyment of the storylines in which he is involved is in a pair of safe hands, in that, for me, as with so many others we’re lucky enough to have in the series, Reg brings to the show the authority of an actor so comfortable in his craft. It’s always a pleasure to watch somebody who knows what they’re doing and makes it look easy.

Belying the thought and passion he put into refining his art over many years as a proponent of the Chekhov System, as this entry for his contribution to the Melbourne Writers Festival only last year mentions, I think he had a very a natural, easy-going style of performing which didn’t yell “I am acting, don’t you know!” unlike some of the more florid contributions to the show, I’d say! Both during his time in Prisoner and in such a wide variety of other things, it was always good to see his familiar face popping up.

I think he was a very steady, reassuring presence, just about everything I look for in a character actor, and indeed hope for in most performers for that matter, and I think there’s something in that as to why even into his 80s he was still being asked about within his profession and in demand for his services. At any rate, I reckon he did his job as an actor well and I’m so thankful that we had even if only a sample of that on Prisoner.

Moreover, and more importantly, from what I can gather about what has been written and said about him over the past week, I reckon he did his job as a human being well too.

Passionate about what he believed in (as The Age article I’ve linked to above relates, even to the extent of changing his epithet from ‘Reg from St Andrews’ to ‘Reg from Hurstbridge’ when ABC local radio stopped taking his calls due to the vociferousness of his views! – indeed one of his friends recalled in this tribute in The Weekly Times, “he loved an argument and put his point of view with all the power and training of the accomplished actor he was,”), he apparently made an invaluable contribution in sharing his wealth of skill and experience both with younger actors in general (one of his agents Jacinta Waterf commented in this Channel Nine article, “He couldn’t do enough for young actors…he was always working with young people and passing on his knowledge and experience,”) and more specifically the amateur arts scene in his local community, where he was remembered in The Age article as having “a heart of gold”.

As the article continues, a mark of their esteem and appreciation is how keen those actors are to stage a play which he had written and on which he’d been helping them to produce only the week he died, as a tribute to him and their little community that he put so much of his heart and soul into.

Even apart from his active contribution to the arts, he’s been remembered by friends and colleagues just as a decent sort, with, amongst many tributes I’ve read this week about him, the legendary Bud Tingwell affirming in the Herald Sun, “Reg was a lovely guy, such a good bloke.”

Tellingly, as an indication of the kind of person he was, as this and other coverage of his death has mentioned, even the last time he was seen on that awful day it was trying to help one of his neighbours save their property before he headed off to tend to his own.

The most touching testament to his involvement in the little community of St Andrews where he lived, loved and died and was so much a part of was the tale of the wooden cot that he’d handcrafted in the early 1970s for the son of a local identity and that had since been passed around so many families in the area over the years, with the name of each baby it held inscribed on its side.

As this story reports, it had originally been feared lost in the fires, but thankfully it was later found that it was safe and intact in Canberra after being borrowed by a young family who had moved away from the area. The baby’s grandmother, who still lives in St Andrews, said it all really in the closing lines of the article when she vowed that her son would eventually return the cradle so the town’s tradition would continue, explaining, “It’s a huge tribute to Reg really, and we’ll keep that going and we’ll look after that now.”

Yes Reg Evans was an actor, and an actor of some note, appearing on Prisoner and so many other things, and I’m so thankful for the legacy he left us of that, which is why of course I’m sitting here now on the other side of the world writing about him despite never actually having met him in person in my life.

However, in the final analysis, what really matters isn’t who you are or what you did, it’s how you make people feel. “What will survive of us is love...” wrote an English poet. And so, as with so many other people who were sadly taken last weekend, Reg Evans’ most priceless legacy was one of love, the love he had for his partner Angela Brunton, who also sadly perished in the fires, the love he had for his work and the love he had for his little community. And, as with so many others who died under such awful circumstances, the world is so much the poorer for his passing, but so much the richer for the imprint he made in the hearts of the people that he left behind.

My sincere sympathies to the friends and loved ones of all those caught up in the terrible events of last weekend, indeed to anyone affected in any way by them.