Final farewell to John Embling

He did not want his death noted, let alone commemorated. Sorry, my friend – but this is a column I had to write.

John Embling, pictured in 1982: ‘He would not be happy with today’s tribute.’

Phone buzzes. Unknown caller. I usually don’t respond but this time, yes. The voice of a middle-aged man. “You won’t remember me, but we met when I was about eight. At the Foundation.”

The Foundation? Memories crowd. The Families in Distress Foundation was the rather grand title for a weatherboard house in Footscray, one of Melbourne’s melancholy industrial suburbs. These days full of forgotten factories. John Embling, Heather Pilcher (a formidable Earth-mother) and I established the Foundation half a century ago. Overcrowded with books, donated paintings, dogs and, most importantly, kids. One of whom, now an adult, was on the phone.

“John’s dead,” he said. A long silence. We’d talked only a few days earlier. Heather passed away years ago and John had been forced into retirement because of illness. But every month or so I’d text him. “Still alive. You?” And we’d talk again. He suffered constant pain but remained uncomplaining and cheerful.

John and Heather saved hundreds of kids from, as they’d say, “Pentridge or the cemetery”. Kids that “the system” had abandoned as beyond redemption. Often abandoned by criminal fathers like Chopper Read. We’re talking about 12-year-old drug mules and addicts, 13-year-old prostitutes. Kids described by John as “the roadkill of capitalism”.

We couldn’t get government funding, state or federal. The money to run the Foundation came from you. Once a year John and I would co-author a column of horror stories about the “roadkill” – and readers of this paper would send sufficient funds to keep us going, helping not only the kids but, wherever we could, their desperate single mums. Who were often little more than children themselves.

It was a daunting task, and yes, some of the kids did go to prison or the grave. But many are alive today – not only survivors but contributors. Many Foundation “graduates” stayed on as volunteers. Like the bloke on the phone.

I first met John when he came to my office as a young teacher and asked me to read the manuscript of his book Tom: A Child’s Life Regained, an account of trying to save the sanity of a damaged child. Teacher? Actually ex-teacher, as John’s efforts got him the sack. We took the manuscript to Penguin and it became a bestseller. Later I made it into a now forgotten feature film – Fighting Back.

Neither book nor film dealt with the later years at the weatherboard house. Dangerous years including a full-scale attack by a bikie gang – warded off by John and his dogs. The full story survives only in the hundreds of hand-written letters from John to me. Hundreds of them, on his ideas, ideals, dramas and disappointments. All preserved in hundreds of boxes of my correspondence deep in the basement of the National Library.

John did not want his death noted, let alone commemorated. Shunning honours, he rejected my efforts to get Heather and him gongs. And he would not be happy with today’s small tribute. Sorry, my friend – but this is a column I had to write. Not to raise money, but to raise awareness. There remain thousands of families in distress, young people in danger. Now John’s torch has passed to my young friend in Sydney, the extraordinary Matt Noffs. Vale John.