CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS
Mr LEESER (Berowra) (09:35): I rise to acknowledge the recent passing of my friend Ray Hancock at age 99. Ray was one of the legends of Kenthurst and one of the last of the greatest generation, who served the cause of freedom in World War II. Ray was born in 1927 at Leamington Spa in England, where his father worked as a driver-mechanic on the estate of Lord Heber Percy and ran its heating system, and Ray remembered the estate as being a little like Downton Abbey.
Ray spent his boyhood roaming the gardens and playing cricket and rugby under its chestnut trees. His life changed one morning in 1939, when the local church minister interrupted a service to announce that Britain was at war with Germany. At 14, Ray joined the civil defence corps as a messenger.
He was still at school and he wanted to do his bit. He also admitted there was another attraction: he got to ride a motorbike. He rode between railway stations and the clearing hospital at Warwick, helping soldiers and paratroopers who'd returned from Europe disfigured by war.
Part of his job was simply to keep their spirits up. When Coventry was bombed in the Blitz, Ray ferried the injured from the wreckage, and it was during this time that his own father was killed while serving as a firefighter in the auxiliary services. Ray also witnessed a fire truck carrying firefighters take a direct hit from a German bomb, killing everyone on board.
In 1944, as soon as he was old enough, Ray volunteered to become a Royal Navy pilot. He earned his wings after just eight hours of flying training, trained at Pensacola, and joined the British Pacific Fleet in Ceylon under Lord Mountbatten. From the aircraft carrier HMS Colossus, he flew Seafires—a converted Spitfire.
John Benyon, after whom the great park at Kenthurst is named, used to say that Ray was the last surviving Australian to have flown a Spitfire. After the war, Ray built a career with the Rover motor company, travelling the world as an expert on Range Rovers, including work on the vehicles for the Queen's 1954 royal tour. Ray adored Australia.
He told me that that there were opportunities in our country if you were prepared to look for them. On one of his trips he met Jenny Brown from Adelaide. They married, and more than 30 years ago they moved to Kenthurst and built the rural life they wanted together.
There Ray gave enormously to his community, through the Rotary Club of Kenthurst and the Kenthurst Rural Fire Service. He never missed an Anzac Day ceremony in Kenthurst after living in the area, and this year he was rightly featured in the Lest We Forget Anzac tribute concert at the Sydney Opera House. Ray's story is of an ordinary man who lived through extraordinary times.
He never lost sight of what mattered. He loved Kenthurst and they loved him. And those places are so much better for having had Ray as part of the community.
To Jenny, to all of Ray's family and friends, and indeed to the broader Kenthurst community, I want to offer my condolences for a great legend of our community—one of the people who make our area unique and special. May his memory be a blessing.