This eulogy was lovingly presented by Derek's daughter-in-law, Samantha Taylor, at Derek's funeral on 5th June 2025.
Intro – Derek read and wrote prolifically. He even
wrote his own history. Tim thought it was fitting that his Dad’s life was
recounted with the words we have from him. I hope you can hear Derek in these
words.
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
My Dad had been a carpenter but couldn’t get much work
in the depression so he became a policeman. His full name was George Hollywood
Nelson. His parents had come from Scotland but lived in Belfast. I only met
them a couple of times. They both died when their gas stove got left on.
My mother was a primary school teacher in
Florencecourt county. That was where she met my Dad. I think they got married
there.
Then he was transferred to Enniskillen where I was
born. My grandmother was Granny Smith who lived in Armagh not far from the army
barracks near the top of a hill.
Mum’s name was Emily Joanna Alexandria Smith. For this
long name she decided that I only needed one Christian name.
My father was transferred to a small village in county
Armagh where we rented a house. I still remember a chap next door who was a
carpenter and who used to put assorted wooden blocks under the hedge for me to
play with. War was declared and I still remember everyone sitting around the
wooden wireless set on a miserable rainy day listening to the bad news.
My father was promoted in 1939 to sergeant and sent to
be in charge at another small village in country Armagh. This was the first
place I went to school. Sister Emer was born here.
In 1943 Father was moved to Newtownhamiliton in county
Armagh where we rented a house and I went to another school. This town was
close to the border with the south of Ireland but we could still see 40 miles
away the flames of Belfast burning when the German bombers tried to obliterate
the Belfast shipyards.
We used to all squeeze into the space under the stairs
in an air raid. We all got our gas masks and had a lot of fun trying them on.
Emer, the baby was put into a big fully enclosing gas mask which she didn’t
like. A lot of food was rationed. I became chief buyer as Mum didn’t like going
out much. You had to do a lot of shopping in those days.
We kids became good at recognizing aeroplanes.
Sometimes we would divide into gangs and have a clod throwing war until someone
got hit and went home in tears. We heard a lot about the war on the radio. A
little town in Russian called Beliki-Luki was in the midst of the conflict for
months just as Mum was knitting a doll for Emer – So the doll was called
Beliki-Luki and lasted well into the peace.
A lot of local men had gone off to fight but my dad wasn’t
allowed. He was kept pretty busy on the home front watching for spies and shot
down air men trying to get to the south of Ireland which was neutral during the
war.
Mum and I often listed to the radio together a lot of
serials we have seen on TV later were then on the radio. We listed to Pride and
Prejudice, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield. We listed avidly to them all.
I wasn’t allowed to bring other kids home so I
entertained myself. I read all the Charles Dickens Books, all the Joseph Conrad
books, the Police Gazette even the Women’s Weekly.
I remember VE day in 1945. There had been a big camp
of American soldiers just outside the village. There were big bonfires in the village
and everyone behaved oddly – kissing one and another and cheering a lot.
In 1946 Dad was moved to Newry County Down which was a
big town in the south of Northern Ireland. So I started at yet another school.
The headmaster there was a ferocious fellow called McLeod who was a strong
believer in the cane. Until I came is daughter had been the top student there.
I felt very sorry for her as McLeod tried to bring her up with the help of the
cane.
Being a bigger town there were lots of kids around and
I became aware of religious divisions when a mob of unknown kids pinched my
fish net and jars when I was investigating a stream and wouldn’t give them back
because I was not a catholic. Mum always made sure I went to Sunday School but
didn’t go herself.
In August 1947 at the start of the school year I was
promoted to go to Newry Grammar school. It was quite a good school and always
did quite well at the high school hockey championships. The headmasters name
was Greenlees and I always remember having to go up and see him after I had kicked
a football through his office window. I was terrified as he was very
frightening fellow but he was remarkably amicable about it.
In 1949 Dad was moved back to Belfast and we got to
live in a new house in a new estate in Sunningdale Avenue. I now went to school
at the Royal Belfast Academical Institute one of the biggest schools in
Belfast. This was a lot less comfortable than Newry Grammar school with a lot
of kids brighter than me. For the first year I was put in the F classes but
next year went up to the A classes.
[note this really bothered Derek throughout his life
and he told me many times over the past year how profound that experience of
being a small fish in a big pool had had on his future ways of thinking about
the world, and his self-perceptions].
I got introduced to rugby union which I didn’t like
one bit and cricket which I turned out to be without any genes for.
In my second year there one of the senior boys managed
to get hockey introduced and I hastily joined which got me out of the rugby.
Also at the Royal Institute they had an athletics
schedule which got me into the hurdles and the 440 yards. On the pushing of
friend Tom McCrea - an experienced runner - I went in for the school cross
country and was amazed to pass Tom and be second overall.
I used to cycle the 3 miles to school which was in the
center of Belfast and got to appreciate the value of the bicycle for freedom.
I had become interested in fishing and the bike let me
go to the Clady River about 8 miles out of Belfast where I got a few trout. Soon
I was getting more ambitious and took the bike by train with me to Ballymena where
I fished the local rivers for a few days while staying in lodgings.
I was using a side wind reel I had made from my
Meccano set as side reels had just been introduced and were very expensive.
I was quite embarrassed to win a prize at school and
selected a book on fishing. The prizes were given out by the Northern Ireland Prime
Minister a fishing enthusiast who stopped distributing prizes when he saw my
book and chatted to me in front of the whole school inviting me to fish with
him down in Fermanagh!
I sat the senior’s certificate in 1951. I thought I
would apply to be a teacher. Dad drove me up to Stranmills Teacher Training
college for my appointment. They asked me whether I would like to go to
University as part of my teacher training and asked whether I wanted to do Arts
or Science. I begged off to go and asked Dad which was best. In the end we
tossed for it and science came up.
Hard to believe now that I didn’t know which to pick!
Fortunately the training college provided
accommodation for my first year as Dad had been promoted to district inspector
and sent to Lurgan in county Armagh. The family got a house in Dollingstown.
In the middle of September 1951 I started a science
course at Queens University Belfast doing Physics, Chemistry, Pure Mathematics
and Applied Mathematics.
What with the big social life at Balmoral Hall it was
difficult to study and at the end of the year in July 1952 I had failed
chemistry. So I had a miserable summer recess swotting up my chemistry for the
repeat exam.
Fortunately I passed but I had had enough of it and
for my second year picked Physics, Pure Mathematics and Applied Mathematics.
This year I had to find my own accommodation and found
a miserable room in Botanic Avenue. The landlady kept a strong eye on costs and
heaters were not allowed. Winter in Belfast can be pretty bleak and I used to
study in bed with one arm out.
I bought some electric wire and with my mum’s help
sewed it into a blanket to make a primitive electric blanket which only used
the same amount of electricity as a light bulb so would not be spotted by the
landlady.
Fellow teachers college students then invited me to
share with them and I was happy to move. The landlady there was a lovely lady
we called Mrs Morton, I spent a few happy years there.
[over these years Janice, Greg and Juliet were all
born. Derek met ‘Mildred’ who he went with until 1958. He joined the sub-aqua
club and went diving frequently at Waterville].
It was the time of the ten-pound Pom and I was a cold
and wet science teacher in Northern Ireland. The solution to my problem was
slowly become obvious so I coughed up my ten pounds and got the boat arriving
in Sydney in September 1959.
A great move which didn’t quite allow for the fact
that it was almost my last ten pounds.
On my last few shillings I accompanied a chap from the
boat who was looking for the Australian Atomic Energy and so we ended up as
cleaners at CSR Chemicals at Rhodes.
Don’t ask we migrants can get quite confused!
A month later – promotion – they found we could read
and write and promoted us to plastics laboratory – 29 nationalities out of 33
people. A great introduction to Australia, However the shift work there was
ruining my social life so I looked or another science job.
There was one at the Falkiner Nuclear Research
Department of Sydney University in early 1960 with a friendly English professor.
Technical Officer it was called and had something to do with a little hut out
the back, valves, transistors, Geiger counters, cosmic rays and a computer.
I think I got the job because I had got the school
kids in Belfast to build their own transistors from glass diodes and them make
a radio from them. Apart from that my electronics was abysmal and I had never
heard of a computer. They must all have wondered how I got the job.
I was to maintain the M unit cosmic ray shower
detection system. Back then we had 92 M Units each of which consisted of an
army ammunition box containing 3 Geiger counters and their associated valve electronics.
These boxes were spread over all area of about half a hectare at the back of
the physics building.
Each box would send a signal to the “hut” if all 3 Geiger
counters went off at the same time a recording device produced several feet of 5
level paper tape giving the response of the M unit array to the cosmic ray
shower that had been detected.
This paper tape had to be entered into the Silliac
computer [Australia‘s first computer] daily under the control of a few computer
programs the team had written.
I was living in a garage at Kogarah with the chap from
the boat who was being more persistent that I had expected and by now got
himself a job at the Atomic Energy at Sutherland.
I shared both an office and the hut out the back with
Ron Wand who was starting to wind up his studies on penetrating cosmic ray
showers with a lot of lead and Geiger counters in the hut. Ron was a great
character and we shared many adventures together. When Ron left for overseas in
1965 I inherited his old Austin Lancer as my first car.
In 1961 to get a better idea of the density of cosmic
ray particles in a shower we added 4 big boxes each containing 48 Geiger
counters to the array. These needed a fair amount of power and we used a 200 volt
supply made up of a heap of car batteries.
I got a feeling for the power of the battery heap when
I accidentally touched this supply one rainy day when doing a spot of
maintenance. I couldn’t speak for an hour after!
In 1962 we were joined at the local country club new
blokes Arthur Watkinson and Terry Black who added considerably to our social
life. I can still remember joining them at the nearest pub the Lalla Rook Hotel
a few times at 5.45 for the “6 oclock swill”. I would find that I had 6
schooners waiting for me which had to be finished by 6 o’clock (well possibly
6.10pm).
Staggering off home this could present some problems. Physics
school progress meetings were held once a month and were a great source of
entertainment for us lesser fry especially after the 6 o’clock swill. The boss
didn’t let any questions to professors be evaded and it was common to hear him
say “For God’s sake just answer the fellow”.
Joining Physics had worked out for me and my social
life had improved and in 1961 I got married to Beryl. This must have made my
boss Murray happy as before that I got an unusual number of phone calls on the
electronic workshop phone which he had spoken to me about.
Beryl and I got a house in Bronte in 1962. My son Tim
arrived in 1966.
[I reflect that at the same time the 6 o’clock swill
was a thing. Derek was newly married, doing major renovations to the house they
had bought in Bronte, and Beryl was setting up the house for lodgers to
supplement their income. I can only image the trouble that Derek would have
been in staggering home after those country club evenings! I can hear Beryl
now! Arthur remained his close friend and Derek missed him terribly after he
died in the late 90s. Derek and Beryl made many friends in the Bronte area – their
neighbours Rita and Joe, and Max and Marce]
The whole Silliac business was rather exciting.
Silliac was big and delicate and to some of us threatening with its big banks
and neon lights. We all had to line up outside Silliac twice a day to try out
our new or modified program under the stern eye of the duty operator. Silliac often
needed repair and a few of us cosmic ray people ended up doing the all-night
shifts.
In 1965 Silliac was replaced so we had a lot of fun
changing all the programs from tape to cards.
Squash was a regular feature of life at Physics and I
would play twice most weeks.
About 1966 we went on a weekend fishing expedition to
Lake George on the way to Canberra. We camped out on the shore and had a sailing
boat with us. Someone asked if there were any snakes about and we assured them
that this terrain was lousy for snakes. We had to revise this advice slightly
next morning when we were joined by a character with a hessian bag. This fellow
informed us that our camping spot was the best spot for tiger snakes in NSW! We
actually caught a perch from the boat but then a southerly buster came up and
we made a frantic dash for safety across the shallow lake water and through
barbed wire fences losing all the fishing gear! No further trips were
suggested.
[In 1968 Fiona came along].
In 1969 the University organized a 50 mile walk from
Richmond via Blacktown back to Sydney. Quiet a few of the cosmic ray crew gave
it a go. After a game of squash I joined them in taking the uni bus to
Richmond. We left Richmond about 7pm and got walking. I learnt an important
lesson then, Preparation and training are important. My walking speed slowly
dropped and by 5am I had reached Blacktown but was unable to lift my leg high
enough to get onto the footpath.
When the City to Surf fun run was proposed in 1971 I
was still suffering form failure complex but at least I knew about preparation
and training . I have been doing the City to Surf ever since with many
“personal worsts”.
[Derek did 50 city to surfs – the last when we was 87.
He managed to do most of them in under 2 hours, many much less time than that.
Extraordinary.]
In 1969 we all had a memorable day sitting in one of
the Physics lecture theatres waiting to see if a man could set foot on the moon
-he did – and the finances for our cosmic ray research from the US started to diminish.
At the time Uris Ulrichs and I had been designing a spark chamber array to help
with the SUGAR array at Narrabri and this financial shortage put some strain on
what we could buy. We eventually made our own neon filled glass boxes, power
supplied and spark gaps. But my days were numbered.
A job came up at the chemistry department. Mass spectrometers
had developed greatly after their use in the Manhattan project during the war
and had just reached the stages where well-endowed chemistry departments could
but a commercial unit. The new commercial mass specs required a lot of
maintenance and had much room for improvement. I fitted in well. We got
chemical identification problems from all over Australia. I helped set up the
first Australian and New Zealand mass spectrometry conference and became local
convener at monthly mas spec talks for Sydney.
After a few years at the Chemistry department at
Sydney University I moved to Uni of NSW where the school of chemistry had just
got the first chemical ionization mass spec in Australia. We built the first
Australian fast atom bombardment source for this mass spec and a computer
system to record and present all the data.
[this is the era of the famous Nelson Christmas
parties and where Derek met Radge, Joe, Bob, Graham and so many other lifelong
friends]
I got a Churchill fellowship in 1982 to spend a few
months in the UK.
School of chemistry finances started to drop off so it
was time to move on again. This time it was to the Australian Jockey Club, in
1989. Strangely enough the AJC did a lot of drug testing on horses and dogs
then had more mass specs than anyone else in Sydney.
Had a good 10 years at Randwick. Gave up in the end
when Beryl needed a bit of caring.
[this also got Derek a collection of great friends,
including his boss Alan – together they walked almost every suburb in Sydney]
[Beryl died in 2006, later that same year Derek met
Jean Bell. Jean and Derek became great friends and went on many adventures
together. When Jean got dementia Derek rode his bike most days from Bronte to
Hunters Hill to be with her]
In retirement I have been treasurer of Bikeast local
cycling group with whom I did a fair bit of bike riding around NSW.
I have also been president of the Eastern Suburbs
branch of the Association of Independent Retirees for 12 years.
In my dotage and looking back at the theories of our
old cosmic ray days I have come up with a live longer theory.
We retirees have a 90% chance of death from the
so-called chronic diseases. The biggest factor in these diseases is age. Now
there are many theories of ageing but the simplest that could explain all these
varied diseases is a decline in the immune system.
I was very happy to read a fairly decent biology paper
on old mice showing that they have a lot of senescent immune system stem cells
which did little apart from annoy adjacent cells.
Also this biology paper suggested a fix – fasting –
old mice fasted 3 days a month digested their senescent cells and when feeding resumed
went on to build new fully working immune system cells.
These old mice lasted much longer. Fortuitously I
started the 5/2 diet a couple of years earlier. Now I feel condemned to carry
it on as a one-man experiment and see if this biology also works for people.
Wish me luck!
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
[post script –
Derek collected friends everywhere he went, they
stayed with him all until their end, or his.
He loved 2 incredible strong and smart women – Beryl
and Jean.
His other 2 great loves were his children Tim and
Fiona. They were the pride of his life.
I was blessed to know Derek for more than 40 years.
The phrase one of a kind doesn’t do him justice – he
was quite a man: Kind, curious, fiercely loyal and bloody stubborn.
I loved him and will miss him very much.]
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
The Memorial booklet from the funeral:
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