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We recently said goodbye to Kevin Hogan OAM, a long-serving member of our advisory board. Michael Chaney AO wrote and delivered the eulogy below.

Good afternoon everyone.

It is a great honour for me to have the opportunity to say a few words about my good friend of 40 years, Kevin - in commemoration of the life of an extraordinary, unique man.

As I know we would all appreciate, Kevin’s life revolved around his wonderful family - Ronnie and their ten children and twelve grandchildren - but he was a man of so many parts:

• the farmer
• rural leader
• community giant
• sportsman
• company director
• man of faith, and, of course,
• great joke-teller and raconteur

That last quality, as we have all no doubt experienced, infused every activity in which Kevin was involved.

The Hogan family farmed on a Bencubbin property originally bought by his father and uncle during the Great Depression, on St Patrick’s day in 1933.

Kevin reckoned that as they were driving to inspect the land in their T-model Ford, they noticed that everyone else was driving in the opposite direction; and they eventually understood why.

It was a tough life in a fickle part of the agricultural area. As Kevin quipped: “We started with almost nothing and, after 70 years, still had some of it left.”

He was somewhat bemused that they had named the farm “Bon View”, given that the only thing it ever overlooked were mortgage payments!

But in spite of good times and bad, Kevin never stopped loving farming, the farming community and Bencubbin itself.

He told me once that he had been MC at 17 weddings in Bencubbin. It struck me then that, given the challenge of finding, say, 170 different jokes, his popularity lay just as much in the way he told them, as in the jokes themselves.

Kevin took over the farm in 1969 and handed it on to their son Michael in 1995. He was a great farmer, keen to adopt new ways of increasing productivity and proudly winning the highest yielding crop award at the Muresk competition in 1986.

Despite the frequent tough times with poor seasonal conditions and low prices, Kevin never lost his sense of humour. For example, in one year, just before getting a bumper crop off, Bencubbin was hit with a 7 inch rain deluge.

Trevor Eastwood, who was running Wesfarmers at the time, called Kevin to see how he’d fared. Kevin replied:

“Well, I’m looking out on what was a wonderful crop yesterday and today is a beautiful lake with ducks wading in it. Oh no, wait, they’ve just walked out and they’re emus. It’s deeper than I thought!”

But of course, Kevin’s contribution to the rural community went well beyond his family’s own farming activities, as I’ll talk about in a moment.

Kevin was born 90 years ago in Kununoppin, as were eight of the ten children he and Ronnie produced, all of them delivered by his great friend and golf partner, Dr John Radunovich.

He was sent to the North Mt Marshall school at the age of 4 1/2 in order to keep the students numbers above ten - the minimum to avoid closure. He had to walk 1 1/2 miles each morning to get a lift with the teacher and the same on the way home. The other kids wore shorts and sandals, but Kevin was always dressed in a suit with a tie, shoes and long socks. The girls loved him and treated him as a toy.

North Mt Marshall was subsequently closed and Kevin started primary school in Bencubbin. At the age of 11, he went to the convent school in Goomalling where, he said, Sisters Finbar and Stanislaus taught him so well he won a scholarship to Perth Mod, which he took instead to board at Northam High, and then went on the study years 11 and 12 at Christian Brothers College in The Terrace in Perth.

It was there, under the guidance of Brothers Murphy and Collopy, that Kevin developed the strong Catholic Faith which was his guiding light for the remaining 74 years of his life.

As far as sport went, Kevin was a true all-rounder. In his younger days, he represented local associations in tennis, hockey and cricket; and as the years went by, was a keen golfer. He described himself as a hacker but he is the only person that I have seen hit a hole-in-one - on a challenging par 3 at Joondalup.

But it was in football and bowls that he really shot the lights out. In bowls, he was league champion of champions on two occasions; and in Aussie Rules, he won two Jeffries medals for fairest and best in the tough central wheatbelt league.

Here’s a quote from the Dampier Herald in 1963, reporting on a match between Bencubbin and the Magpies from Trayning, when Kevin was 30:

“With K. Hogan in scintillating form, Bencubbinn scored with ease. The final score: Bencubbin 25.20 (of which K Hogan contributed 14.12) to Magpies 4.5.”

Imagine the result if Kevin had kicked accurately! I am surprised that he never later suggested to his beloved Dockers that they try a full forward with very bowed legs like his!

Kevin attributed those bowed legs to the fact that at birth, the doctor stood him up while he was still warm!

Kevin sat on the boards of numerous not-for-profit organisations and on the Grain Pool of Western Australia and Wesfarmers. The fact that he was on the boards of Wesfarmers - the Wesfarmers Cooperative and then the listed company - for 33 years speaks for itself in terms of how he was valued as a director. He had two of the most important qualities: common sense and good judgement. I had the pleasure of serving with him at Wesfarmers Limited for the last 13 of those years, during which time he was Deputy Chairman.

Kevin was an excellent contributor to Board discussions and decisions and pretty good with the numbers, although I do recall that he never approved of Australia adopting the metric system. He reckoned that overnight on the 14th of February, 1966, the area of his farm more than halved, his mortgage doubled and it was twice as far to drive to town for a beer.

There were two occasions where Kevin’s contribution to Wesfarmers made a huge difference.

The first was during the takeover by the Co-op of CSBP, a company twice its size, in the late seventies. This was the largest corporate takeover in Australia at the time, and the most contested and drawn out. Kevin played a pivotal role in persuading his fellow farmers to support the bid - and his success, I am sure, resulted from the respect in which he was held, widely, throughout the country.

The second occasion was when the Chairman of Wesfarmers, Sir Marcus Beeck, died suddenly in 1986. As Deputy Chairman, Kevin was the natural heir, but a combination of rural politics and religious rivalry split the board of 21 farmers and it appeared that the other candidate, who had very different ideas about the direction of the company, might win.

Kevin put the company’s interests ahead of his own, stepping back and persuading Harry Perkins to stand. Harry won by a slim margin and went on to become an outstanding Chairman.

I mention that incident because in my view, it typified Kevin’s approach to life. He was selfless. Everything he did was aimed at helping others and there are no better examples of that than the major contributions he made to the rural sector and the people in it.

It was for those contributions that he was honoured in the Order of Australia, received the Advance Australia Award and Centenary Medal and was inducted into the Agriculture Hall of Fame.

Two of those stand out - the establishment of the Mt Marshall Rural Counselling Service and the Country Medical Foundation.

The first was during the nineteen eighties, a terrible decade for those on the land, with a run of bad seasons, low prices and interest rates of 20 percent or more.

Many farmers went to the wall. Banks were declining to provide additional finance, foreclosing on defaulting debtors and selling up farms, often at giveaway prices. The despair in the rural community was palpable.

Despite being at risk of losing his own farm, Kevin’s focus at this time was on helping others. He played a key role in persuading the banks they’d be better off adopting a different approach, accepting some debt write-off and keeping farmers on their land until conditions improved.

In 1986, Kevin, through his own initiative, established a counselling service, providing financial advice to farmers in trouble, initially with the involvement of farm consultants, David Bedbrook and David Nuttall.

In a later interview, Kevin said of this time:

“It was two of the most difficult and heartbreaking years of my life, getting it started and promoting it. Of all the things that I did, that one is close to my heart.”

“People’s dignity was restored; they were given their confidence back, they were taught how to deal competently with financiers and how to manage their farm businesses, even if that sometimes meant exiting with dignity.”

Kevin was Chairman of that Mt Marshall Rural Counselling Service for six years and its model was eventually replicated across the state, from Carnarvon to Esperance.

The second major contribution addressed the critical shortage of doctors in rural areas - the establishment of the Country Medical Foundation, of which Kevin was founding trustee. This body raised money to fund medical students’ education, in return for which they agreed to complete their residencies in the country and subsequently practise there. Kevin served on that board for over 15 years.

I mentioned earlier that Kevin’s faith had been his guiding light since he took his First Communion at the age of 16. A regular Mass-goer right up until his death, Kevin was active in the Church and in Church bodies. He served on the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council for the Catholic Diocese of Perth for eight years, including six as Chairman -under Archbishop Goody who, as a Monsignor, had celebrated that first Communion with him 24 years earlier.

I know that it was their faith that allowed Kevin and Ronnie to cope with the challenges they have faced over the years - crises on the farm and the tragedy of losing two sons.

In 1985 Kevin joined a financial advisory committee for the Benedictine Community in New Norcia and served there until his death. I had the privilege of serving with him for 36 of those 38 years. I’ll very much miss the drive with Kevin to New Norcia for our quarterly meetings, recounting old times and sharing a joke - I figure we must have done that return trip together about 140 times! Stopping off at the Bindoon bakery for morning tea just won’t be the same again.

Kevin’s great contribution in that role was his immediate understanding of the need of the Community for professional advice in farm management; and the appointment of the late David Bedbrook as initial farm consultant proved to be an inspiration.

And finally, to family. In an interview in 2009, Kevin said:

“The pivotal point of my life was my 1962 marriage to Veronica Hudson from Yelbeni, a newly graduated nurse. Then, over the next 20 years, followed the birth of our 10 children. We built in most of the verandah on the house to fit them all in, but the memory is of tremendously happy days of noise, laughter and love.”

Kevin was devoted to Ronnie for the whole of the 61 years of their marriage, and Ronnie to him. They were actually married under unusual circumstances. They had been engaged when, nine months before the planned wedding date, Ronnie’s mother was diagnosed with cancer and was told she needed an operation the next Wednesday. She told them there was only a 50 percent chance that she would survive and asked if they would get married before that. Ronnie, who had intended to convert to Catholicism before she wed, was baptised on the Friday, received Holy Communion on the Sunday and they were married on Monday.

That seems to have been a winning formula! And happily, Ronnie’s mother lived for another 25 years. And of course, Kevin and Ronnie’s lives revolved around their ten children. You could no doubt write a whole book on that, but it was summed up by a story.

Ronnie once told where one of the older boys had said:

“Gee dad, if you didn’t have all us kids, you’d be rich.”

To which Kevin replied:

“Son, because I have all of you, I am rich.”

Kevin died as he had wished, at home, surrounded by family and his priest, reminiscing and having a laugh until a few days before he passed away. At his 90th birthday last July, Kevin told his gathered family,

“I’ll see you in paradise.”

I know that all of us who knew this man - a man who genuinely lived for others - would agree that he would have been at the front of that queue. And so we farewell Kevin Patrick - husband, father, grandfather, colleague and friend - who was the very definition of what it is to be a good man.

May he rest in peace.

By Michael Chaney AO