By Christine de Kock
YARRAVILLE adventurer and historian Richard (Dick) Duckworth died on 31 August, aged 93.
He died of an aneurysm in his aorta, while he resided at the aged residential home Yarraville Village.
His daughter Carmel Taig plans to write his biography but says it would be “pretty hard to summarise his adventures”.
“He really did stand out, he was self-motivated but always took time to consider and help others,” she said.
Mr Duckworth was the fifth generation of Duckworths to live in Yarraville and had a close relationship with St Augustines, based in Somerville Rd.
“In 1985 he was asked to write the history of St Augustine’s Church to mark the centenary of the Yarraville parish,” Mrs Taig said.
“His grandfather built the original wooden church and he attended the school in the 1920s, all his children and several of his grandchildren also attended St Augustines.”
He was asked to write a history of the church to mark its centenary in 1985.
The experience prompted him to research his own background.
“He took over a dozen trips to England, visiting hundreds of other overseas locations en route,” Mrs Taig said.
Mr Duckworth also published a biography of motorcyclist Ellis Matthewman Bankin, his childhood hero, who died in 1936 while travelling in the Australian outback.
“He sought out Bankin’s family and friends, even travelling as far as Scotland to meet a woman Bankin had supposedly been going to marry.”
Mrs Taig said that on his trips to the United Kingdom he would stop at a facility that was run by a disabled couple who ran holidays for people with disabilities.
Mr Duckworth enjoyed motorcycling and gliding, a sport involving a motorless aeroplane, which he began as a teenager.
“He worked extensively to promote the sport, serving for many years as the secretary of the Gliding Club of Victoria, establishing the Australian Gliding Association in 1939,” she said.
“He continued to glide, as a passenger, well into his 80s.”
He created films about his experiences as a glider and a motorcyclist, which are now held by the Australian Film Archives.
He joined the Footscray Historical Society in the 1980s and personally indexed Footscray’s First Fifty Years and Footscray’s First Hundred Years.
He is survived by his six children, Bernard, Anthony, Peter, Kevin, Francis and Carmel, and his 16 grandchildren.
His wife Joan died in 1979.
