Peter Richard Chapman Eulogy. Friday 10th October 2003.
12.30 pm. Graveside Service. Cemetery Lightning Ridge New South Wales.
Written by Gaye Chapman Peter's daughter.

Dad asked us not to make a fuss at his funeral:-
"No religion, no churches, no weeping and wailing............and don't go spending a lot of money on a fancy coffin. Just say Peter Chapman born this day died that day and cover me up!"
So OK Dad here it is:-
Peter Richard Chapman was born 12th July 1925 at Remuera Auckland New Zealand
and
Died on the 6th October 2003 at Lightning Ridge Australia.
THERE YOU ARE DAD -JOB DONE!

But unfortunately father we are chips off the old block!-
Now that you can't answer back we are gathered her to say "bugger you!"
You deserve a few more words than that! You always love to tell a yarn and so "to cut a long story short"(which you never do!) this particular yarn is about YOU and for YOU and in celebration of your extraordinary life.

Peter Richard Chapman was born on the 12th of July 1925 at Remuera Auckland New Zealand.
His father, Richard Chapman was an Englishman who had "moved out to the colonies". A jeweller in civilian life, he was a retired army captain who rode and fought with the New Zealand Mounted Rifles and the Australian Light Horse.

Peter's mother Dorothy Bek was the daughter of ex-patriat colonial parents and was born in Fiji.(Peter's grandfather Lars Bek was a Danish Industrial Chemist working in Fiji. After Richard Chapman married Dorothy Bek they moved with their children Peter, his brother Robert (Bob) and sister June to Australia, Peter spent his childhood in Bellevue Hill in Sydney's eastern suburbs. As soon as he could toddle he lived on Bondi Beach and was one of the first surfers to ride the big wooden surfboards.(His board was so big for him and so heavy, he had to tow it behind his pushbike) Young Peter's father was strict and formal. Peter must learn the value of money and work for his pocket money so little Peter became a paper boy. Regrettably little Peter the new paperboy soon discovered a few scams that would inspire him and set him on his path for life. It was quicker and easier to stuff the newspapers under a bridge and just collect his pay. A trade in recycled soft drink bottles (at three pence a bottle)became a lucrative job if you stole the bottles from the back of the shop and resold them to the same shopkeeper in the front of the shop. Pocket money was there for the taking. Little Peter was quick to spot early morning pennies left on doorsteps for the milkman!

This early life of crime did not continue unnoticed. Captain Chapman packed his wayward son Peter, now 13, off to a home for delinquent boys-a Jesuit Boy's Farm at Parramatta. Far from being chastened, the teenage Peter loved it! Here were some boys he could really relate to! The Boy's Farm was a real working farm. Peter mucked out pigs, fed pigs and threw a bucket of Pig's swill over a Jesuit brother's head. He learned to ride a horse and how to drive a sulky. A golden haired blue eyed lad he could charm the birds out of the trees. One evening Peter was entrusted to drive a sulky full of boys into Parramatta to the pictures. On his way home, determined not to lose the sulky race he was having with his mate, Peter rolled the sulky kids and all. No one was hurt. Peter was "never to be trusted again" but of course the Jesuit brother who was head of the stables forgave him and charming Peter was "boss of the sulky" once more.

The Boy's Farm was the making of him and through it Peter had fallen in love with the bush and bush life-the deepest and most abiding love of his life. When he left the Boy's farm his father Richard pulled a few strings on Peter's behalf. Peter caught a train to Alice Springs and a lift onto a vast Central District Cattle Station. At 15 Peter had become a "drovers-boy". Droving cattle, nights camped under the stars. He learned to ride bareback and track animals from the Aboriginal stockmen and trackers and listened to the men yarning around the campfire with Afghan camel drivers.

When Peter left the droving life he never left the bush again. Somewhere along the way he became the best scrap metal dealer in the bush. Known far and wide as "Scrappy Chappy". Each year he returned to Sydney, dusted off his "bag of fruit"(suit) and took his beloved grandmother Bek to lunch in the city. Up to David Jones silver service restaurant they would swan(starched linen, scones, jam and cream with grandmother Bek proudly in Peter's arm-an English lady in hat and fox furs. Peter always gave her a bottle of sherry to take home.

By the early 1950's Peter had washed up in Mendooran on the Castlereagh river in central Western NSW. He was a scrap metal merchant, had learned to live on the road and he could turn his hand to anything-carpenter, welder, builder, electrician or mechanic. He could do it all. He became a mechanic in Mendooran and was for a time a business partner in the Mendooran sawmill.

In 1935 Peter met and married Patricia Lancaster a visitor from Newcastle whose mother Coralie Lancaster was the cook at Mendooran's Royal hotel. Patricia had grown up on her uncle's property "Brandon" near Moree and she to had spent her teenage years mustering cattle. It proved to be pretty much the only thing the two of them would have in common. 3 babies in 3 years followed Gaye, Peter and Clem, Peter's young family settled first in a cottage in Bundallah Street and later in Yalcogrin Street Mendooran and peter built up a successful scrap merchant business. The family moved to Sawtell on the central coast of New South Wales in 1960. It was in Sawtell that Peter first met he woman who would become the great love of his life, Raylene Roby though they were not to live together for another 10 years. Peter expanded the business and became a registered company based out of Coff's Harbour, The company specialised in demolition, salvage and scrap metal. His contacts ranged down to Newcastle and up the coast of Queensland.

In 1961-1962 Peter was contracted to demolish and salvage "The Runick" a shipwrecked merchant ship. "The Runick had run aground on her maiden voyage and was jammed up on the Barrier Reef with libraries full of books and dining rooms under water. Peter took his salvage crew up north and spent 6 months cutting the metal belly out of the ship. The men lived like Robinson Crusoe, fishing off the reef, eating coral fish, wearing brand new tablecloths(from the ship's wrecked stores) as disposable sarongs and drinking hard.

On one such drunken night Peter, the worse for wear and out for a piddle, fell through the big hole cut in the middle of the ship, down, down, several stories and splashed into the ocean waves crashing inside the hold of the broken ship. No one saw him fall in. Bang! Bang! the giant waves crashed against the metal hold, smashing Peter up against the walls again and again. No one could hear his cries for help above the noise. There was no way up or out. It was dive or die. Peter held his breath and dived way under the water searching for a way out. He tried again and again and eventually found it bobbing up stark naked into the ocean outside. "Been for a swim Chappy!" the drunks yelled as they hauled him aboard.

Peter's marriage to Patricia officially ended in 1963 and he hit the road wheeling, dealing and scrapping for the best part of the rest of his life. In those travelling years he saw more of Australia than most men will ever do-every backtrack, side road and ghost town, across gibber deserts, out into The Territory and up through Kimberley, running naked along deserted beaches in The Gulf of Carpenteria and eating oysters fresh from the rocks.

Peter did not travel for a holiday not for a year's trip around Australia but for his life. For his whole long life Peter sat behind a wheel watching the Australia he loved drift by. A gypsy, he lived and camped by the road and riverside in a series of converted vans. He outfitted the vans himself, plumbing, carpentry and wiring always with a dog who obeyed his every command like Scotty and Lass-both found as grown strays. Peter had a gift with animals.

His vans were often coloured or painted with murals, a pink furniture van, a hippy pad psychedelic van painted by his daughter Gaye in the 1970s and his last van in the new millenium painted with bush murals by Karen Duce.

He took his kids away in the vans each Christmas for a big long holiday. For dinner he often cooked them several tins of food at a time-a lordly dish he names "Slum Gullion". He woke his children at dawn to show them the mysteries of the bush and to watch the Murray cod come in to feed. He almost drowned his three children once, caught in a river whirlpool they spun out of his reach, but the boy from Bondi got them to shore. He took them to public swimming pools after that and made them all strong swimmers saying "I couldn't go back and face your mother saying I had drowned all the kids."

One night Peter was camped in one of his vans at the junction of 2 bush rivers. It was after midnight and he woke to hear yelling, shouting and abuse. The van being punched, kicked and rocked by a gang of drunken youths. Peter, in the nude(in all of his best stories he is always in the nuddie) grabbed old "Bess'(His blunderbuss-an unloaded shotgun)and flung open the van door.

"Which of you bastards wants it first," he yelled at the bloke with the biggest mouth. So saying, Peter leapt from the van to the fire, grabbed a burning stick and jumped, leaped, whooped and screamed like a banshee re Indian across the clearing towards them, burning stick, shotgun, wedding tackle, long hair and beard flapping up and down. A sight that scattered terrified boys through the bush shouting, "Don't shoot us mister! Don't shoot us mister!"

In the mid to late 1970s Peter's lover and darling girl Raylene (Ray) Roby came to live with him. She was his true wife and the love of his life. She was his helper, soul mate, lover and best friend. She was also a top notch scrap metal dealer and they worked as a team. They bought, renovated and sold houses to build up their capital and Ray travelled on the road with Peter up through The Northern Territory. Their last home together was at Beenleigh in Brisbane, another team effort renovation with a view to selling. Peter got a steady job while they socked away the extra money they made from dealing scrap. They were happy and Ray made him very happy and she loved him and knew him better than anyone ever had or has.

Ray died in 1987 and Peter hit the track again-back to his real home in the open road and the bush.
Over the years the wild bush places grew tamed, suburbs sprouted and neat civic minded citizens pushed the fringe dwellers and characters further out. Government and council laws restricted freedom more and more, where you could and could not camp, where you could and could not build a bush "donga."

But Peter had always had the luck of the devil, bent and ignored rules. Lightning Ridge remained enough of a frontier town to suit his freedom loving, restless spirit.

Peter shared two mining leases at Nebia Hill with his last great dog and best mate Scamp. He loved to get up early, squat in the bush and hear the birds. He indulged his love of gemstones, nature, wheeling and dealing and of people. He respected and shared understandings with people of character from all walks of life-people who live "outside the square." It is fitting that his bones now lie in The Ridge.

Peter Richard Chapman never "settled down", he only stopped moving when his body ran out of petrol. There are bits of his DNA in every corner of The Wide Brown Land. He is in it and it is in him. Like a cat with nine lives Peter has set himself alight, rolled sulkies, trucks, a petrol tanker and prime mover, set up scams, rip offs and deals (which shall remain his business) and has gotten away with blue bloody murder. They'll never catch you now dad!

Peter leaves behind his children Gaye, Peter and Clem, his daughter in law Roby, his son in law Dick, his three grandchildren Lillie, Jasmin and Shane, his sister June and her family and his adopted "children of the heart", including Sue Ward and Stephen Spence.

DAD:-
fighter, rogue, lover, scrap metal merchant, geologist, naturalist, nudist, non conformist, Zen master, free spirit, hard man, self made man and gentleman.

"Happy Chappy's Nappy Service*" is still open for business somewhere out there.
MANANA DAD!
TURN IT UP!
WE LOVE YOU.

MAY THE ROAD RISE TO MEET YOU.
MAY THE WIND BE ALWAYS AT YOUR BACK.

*He always answered the phone that way,