Juliet Lavers funeral: Eulogy tells of GP’s intense pain after losing son

A eulogy for popular GP and campaigner Juliet Lavers was delivered by her former partner Ted Mead. Here is an edited transcript.

The funeral of GP Juliet Lavers. Picture: PATRICK GEE

A eulogy for popular GP and campaigner Juliet Lavers was delivered by her former partner Ted Mead. Here is an edited transcript:

For Juliet

As the storm passes there is calmness.

After the rain there is always sunshine.

And beyond the wilting flower, there is new generation.

Juliet, this journey throughout your life has filled us with love, kindness and spirit.

And through your imparted vigour you have enriched the souls of all you have touched.

These were your gifts to the world, and karmic ones that you will carry onward through your next odyssey.

AFRICA

Juliet was born in the heart of Kenya to a wondrous life surrounded by nature and wildlife. It was essentially these early years of her life that instilled her deep connection to the natural world, which nurtured her entire existence.

Few people can say that they grew up with a pet mongoose.

And few people can claim that they survived playing with a puff-adder as an infant.

Being immersed in the wonders of life, Juliet became a sensitive, loving child.

By the time she had reached her teens she had immigrated to Australia, but the passage of that special life in Kenya had grounded her to become a caring soul as the marvels of nature had permeated her inner being.

Juliet lived by the ethos that in every life form there was a soul worthy of treasure, as she understood that compassion is the sacredness of all living things.

In essence she lived by words of Albert Einstein who claimed that — “There are only two ways to view the universe. One is that nothing is a miracle, and the other is that everything in our world is a miracle.”

Through her youth she displayed this conviction, and as the years passed it was obvious that her deep admiration of all life forms emerged strongly when she became a political activist for wild places.

As we heard earlier, the Silver Shield Animal Club was indicative of her endeavours and endearment to protect even the smallest of creatures.

Dr Juliet Lavers.

MEDICINE

Beyond senior school Juliet graduated and pursued a career in medicine.

I heard many accounts of her paving a way through her medical degree and the proceeding years as an intern. None of it seemed easy both financially and mentally, though she was determined to transgress to help others. This was her vocation, and it proved to the world to be that indelible step.

JULIET’S ARRIVAL IN TASMANIA

Juliet moved from Adelaide and arrived in Burnie in 1986 to practice medicine. Soon after she became swept up in environment campaigns and activism.

As a General Practitioner Juliet became involved in the dispute over the Wesley Vale Pulp Mill. She used her scientific background to investigate the potential disaster of organochlorines in our environment, which would have been released by this proposed polluting mill.

Juliet formed a doctors group with over 50 Tasmanian members who successfully combated the mill, as well as educate industry, government and the public about the deadly effects of organochlorines. This campaign expanded into community awareness of chemicals in Tasmanian waterways.

This group know as the Environmental Health Association then went on to investigate Atrazine and other harmful pesticides. The Environmental Health Association directed by Juliet played a major role in ensuring the prohibition of Atrazine by Forestry Tasmania.

Juliet has also been involved through her work as a volunteer campaigner for the Wilderness Society and the Florentine Protection Society in protecting our wilderness. The extensions of the Western Tasmanian World Heritage boundaries in 1992 and 2014 were part of her legacy.

As a doctor Juliet helped establish the first sexual assault service on the North-West Coast together with Dr Mary Kille, she also worked as a doctor at the Hobart Aboriginal Health Centre, and at Risdon Prison where she was a strong advocate of mothers being allowed to keep their your babies with them under supervision.

Former Greens Party leader Bob Brown speaks at GP Juliet Lavers' funeral. Picture: PATRICK GEE

I first met Juliet when I was working for the Wilderness Society as a rainforest campaigner in 1988. I had travelled to the Burnie to present my rainforest proposals to activists in the North-West. At that presentation I noticed Juliet sitting on the floor seemingly only partly engaged and somewhat aloof, so we didn’t interact that evening. What I didn’t know then, was that Juliet had no doubt spent yet another long day with patients at her practice and was simply exhausted.

From later discussions with her she revealed that she had seen up to 80 patients in one day. This was not her ideal format as a practitioner as she preferred quality consultations rather than quantity. It was a result due to her popularity.

Juliet was committed to her cause, and maintained a policy that if someone came to her practice in need she would never turn them away.

When Juliet was working in Hobart and moved from medical practice to practice, she was forever followed by her patients, who had the most admirable respect for her sensitivity and solicitude towards others.

JULIET’S CHARACTER

Juliet carried a very moody temperament. This was something that I constantly struggled with, though beyond that imperfection Juliet possessed some extraordinary qualities.

Her deep-caring, sensitive and loving nature, coupled with her compassion for all living things, and her empathy towards others was the perfect blend for a vocation in a hands on medical career. This was complimented by her profound holistic, and humanistic outlook.

If you ever asked Juliet what made her happy then she would simply tell you ‘helping others’.

Throughout those years I shared with her, there was never a moment when she wouldn’t drop what she was doing to attend to someone’s emergency care. Selfless giving was her driving force and it subconsciously pushed her to greater strengths. Such admirable qualities I know were found in the likes of Florence Nightingale and Mother Teresa who also devoted their entire life to care for others.

Ted Mead with Juliet Lavers and their son Liam.

Beyond her work, these actions never wanted, even when we travelled around the outback Juliet was always open to helping others in emergencies or throughout peoples adversities.

I recall her alert reactions one night when we were sitting in an outdoor movie theatre in Broome. I was heavily immersed in the movie and oblivious to all around me when suddenly Juliet said there is something wrong.

She stood up; and proceeded to the back of the theatre where there was a garden. On approach I could hear someone coughing and retching in the distance. Juliet’s well-tuned radar and intuition knew that someone was in trouble. When we reached beyond the garden we found a man buckled up in pain. Juliet clicked into autopilot and through a rapid diagnosis realised that this mans’ pacemaker had become faulty which sent his body into a melt down,

Juliet immediately called for an ambulance and undoubtedly saved his life. Meanwhile, everyone else around was completely oblivious to what was happening.

Such was the caring wonder of this woman. And I assure you there were many other events where she saved lives or comforted people in times of need.

MORE

OBITUARY: POPULAR GP AND CAMPAIGNER DIES SUDDENLY

FUNERAL: HEARTBREAKING TEXT REVEALED

SOUTHERN ACTIVISM

After Juliet left Burnie and her medical practice behind she moved to Hobart to volunteer for the Wilderness Society.

Unfortunately she was soon to be confronted by the old boy’s coterie, and a very complex political campaign. It was frustrating for her not to be able to permeate into that inner sanctum of where the decision-making was happening.

Juliet decided to take the tall forest campaign front on and initiated a tour to Japan with slides and an interpreter to speak at seminars hoping that the Japanese people would become aware of the plight of Tasmania’s world-class temperate forests.

This road show was call The Paper Chase. She lectured to many communities and also spoke to Tokyo University. This tour established groundbreaking links with the Japanese Environment Groups and has resulted in continuing interchange and sharing of ideas between Japan and Australia on conservation issues.

Back in Tasmania in the 1990s there was little available resources for running effective wilderness campaigns and actions. When we were in desperate need of hi-tech equipment to outsmart the authorities, Juliet would, without reservation, will pull out the chequebook and give us what we needed.

BENDERS QUARRY

One evening we were tipped off from a source within the Federal environment ministry that there was a massive quarry blast planned the next day for the limestone expanse above Exit Cave in Tasmania’s southern forests.

After a few hours we had rounded up several people to go there in the stealth of darkness as to fill the drill holes with rocks that would prevent the blast.

Juliet drove us down there leaving Hobart around midnight, and we proceed all night under head-torch by plugging the holes and then establishing a covert vigil in the dense forest near the quarry zone.

Juliet was left to drive back to Hobart in midst of darkness and claimed she never felt more terrified driving back through the likes of Geeveston at 3am alone.

But Juliet’s contribution to that action helped save one of Australia’s great cave systems from destruction, and the fate of numerous unique creatures that dwelled within.

Exit cave is now internationally recognised cave and is inclusive in the Western Tasmanian World Heritage area.

OUTBACK MEDICINE

Consistent with Juliet’s altruistic ethos she wanted to work remote in an Aboriginal community to help disadvantaged people who were subjected to poor health.

As we had already spent a great deal of time exploring Australia’s outback she decided to take a medical position for a few months at the Pukatja community in the Pitjantjatjara lands. She saw as a rewarding experience. This is a journey that many caring doctors pursue, and I understood juliet’s reason for undertaking this commitment.

Immediately we developed friendships with some of the locals and even ventured out into the mulga country with the women digging for honey ants. Unfortunately through the influences of substance abuse within the community it was a challenging place to live, and Juliet was threatened in her work environment. Juliet loved the Aboriginal people on an individual level but he chaotic dysfunction and violence was forever present and distressing, and so we moved on to a lifestyle where we felt safe.

ETHOS

Juliet was essentially agnostic, yet she understood that our journey in life is to facilitate love and compassion, patience, tolerance, humility, and forgiveness.

She lived with a gentle demeanour and shared the peaceful Buddhism ideology. Such words are reflecting by the Dalai Lama where he claims “Our prime Purpose in life is to help others, and if you can’t help them at least don’t hurt them’’.

Juliet dappled with spiritual studies such as Buddhism and Zen, but her real strength was the outreaching of compassion through medicine.

Beyond Juliet’s social gregarious outings, travel and bushwalking were her favourite pastimes, long walks like the South Coast Track, Anne range traverse, and even the summit of Federation Peak.

She even hiked with me into remote untracked country west of the Finke Gorge in Central Australia whilst she was five months pregnant.

Juliet Lavers with her son Liam.

LIAM

The emergence of Liam was rhapsodic, and for Juliet it was life’s greatest gift. Juliet and I had never seriously discussed children and she seemed content with occasionally spending time caring for her niece or nephews. However I knew there was a strong nurturing instinct there, and so every time Juliet had a paternal pang I would come home with yet another orphaned mammal for her.

One morning when we were camping in the remote part of the MacDonnell Ranges Juliet emerged from the tent with daunting announcement that she wanted a baby. I was shell-shocked from where this decision came, and through short-sharp dialogue Juliet grabbed her pack and stormed-off into the horizon.

I only managed to locate her later in that day, but from that moment on Juliet was committed to becoming a mother. It was clearly obvious that Juliet’s life would not be fulfilled unless she experienced the journey of parenthood.

At 42 getting pregnant was no easy feat, and ultimately she needed assistance. Taking fertility drugs was my concern as the thought of quadruplets for me was terrifying.

And to shorten the story Liam did emerge as a millennium baby and so the parental journey began.

There was no question that those first couple of years were trying and frequently exhausting with health issues but in the end we had produced a beautiful boy and our lives were deeply enriched by the event.

Liam gave to Juliet what she had always seeked and that was unconditional love. She had given so much to others, so it was only fair that the world gave something back.

For 16 years Juliet had a joyous life as a parent filling her with purpose, happiness, wonder and content.

Unfortunately tragedy struck when Liam was 16, and on that day essentially two people died. This traumatic event was as about as difficult as the world we had could get, and I knew that our lives would inevitably disintegrate, and that Juliet would never recover.

Over the past two years we had suffered intensely, we both had our good and bad days as we worked our way through the grieving process but seeing Juliet’s going through intense unbearable pain was overwhelming.

Juliet constantly mentioned I want to be with Liam, and I feared that such a day would eventuate.

Last Thursday she texted me with the distressing message — “I am going to meet with Liam”

I managed to speak with her in those last moments of her inconsolable pain, but her decision was final.

A WILD EPITAPH

That afternoon of your departure Juliet I stood idle on a buttongrass plain in the Tarkine awaiting a message from friends. It a bleak atmosphere when I received the distressing news, and as the passing rain-squalls swept in from the western horizon the plains were shrouded in a dark sombre mood.

Ironically to the east a vivid rainbow filled the horizon touching the landscape with warmth and vitality. This comforted me because even in the darkest of fleeting moments there remain glimmers of pervasive beauty.

I absorbed this scene knowing that every time I see a rainbow I will be reminded of you Juliet, and that your light of wonder will always be there before me.

Back in Hobart I felt Juliet’s aura has vanished instantly, and I knew that she has begun the immediate search for her loving son.

Today we share our grief and respect to a wondrous woman who did indeed touch the souls of all that knew her. So we should continue to think of her in the living hearts of all she met, for anything cherished is never lost.

Her legacy of love, compassion and spiritual direction will be forever held deep within our memories.

So if you look into sky tonight you will notice that the universe has just gained another star, which burns radiantly above us, and will always be with us.

My dearest Juliet, we, the world, all of the beautiful creatures that you nurtured, will forever miss you.

Take care on your journey ahead, and may the long-time sun shine upon you, all around you and deep within you!

CONCLUSION

These Apache words was recited by Juliet and I on our wedding day.

Though today I now see this expression as a reunification of the inseparable bond that Juliet and Liam shared.

It is in loving contentment that I feel they are finally together again, and may everlasting peace by with them to eternity.

N ow you will fee no rain,

For each of you will be shelter to the other.

Now you will feel no cold,

For each of you will be warmth to the other.

Now there is no more loneliness,

For each of you will be companion to the other.

Now you are two bodies,

But there is one life before you.

Go now to your dwelling place,

Look to the future that lies ahead.

A long and winding, adventure-filled road,

whose every turn means discovery,

new hopes, new joys, new laughter,

and a few shared tears.

May happiness be your companion,

May beauty surround you both in the journey ahead.

And through all the years to come,

May your days be good and long upon the earth.

For 24/7 crisis support, contact Kids Helpline www.kidshelp.com.au or call 1800 551 800, Lifeline 131 114, SCBS 1300 659467 or headspace.org.au