McSweeny, Mr Donald

Mr TRELOAR (Flinders) (15:31): I rise today to pay tribute to a true legend and one of Eyre Peninsula's favourite sons. Donald Phillip McSweeny OAM was buried yesterday in Cummins, his hometown. I am going to borrow from the eulogy delivered by his granddaughters Paula and Lisa and also David Shipard. His funeral was attended by people from all over Eyre Peninsula, people whose life he touched and also many of those from the football fraternity.

Don was born in Port Lincoln on 1 May 1931. He spent his very early years at Edillilie where the family lived on a 40-acre block joining the north-east corner of the town. In 1937 the family moved to Cummins and Don began his schooling there. As was the way, at 14 he left school to serve an apprenticeship at one of the local garages, and he completed that apprenticeship in 1950. He then left that trade and began contract work as a wheat lumper and shearer. Of course, those two tasks were known as piecework. Most certainly, the harder you worked, the more you were paid, and nobody worked harder than Don.

In 1951, he married the love of his life, Eileen, and over the next four years, they welcomed two daughters, Raelene and Debbie. Both of those girls and their families still reside within the district. In fact, his marriage to Eileen lasted some 64 years and was one of the truly great partnerships to be seen. Particularly in more recent times, they were rarely seen apart.

Don worked in the grain industry, running various wheat sidings in the area. His average working day involved lumping bags of wheat weighing 180 pounds. Of course, there are 60 pounds in a bushel, and a bag of wheat had three bushels. Good wheat lumpers could stack and carry up to 2,000 bags per day, so each individual, on their shoulders, was moving 180 tonnes of grain each day.

Don invented the pull-down slide, which involved using a system of wooden slides to pull down the stack to load into rail trucks to cart to Port Lincoln and load onto boats. This was recognised as a much more efficient way of pulling stacks down and became the method used right across the state.

When bulk handling became a reality, he knew that he had to find another source of income and became a gun shearer. In fact, when I first met Mr McSweeny, he was shearing at my father's shed. He certainly was a gun shearer, getting good tallies with narrow gear in those days.

They worked hard, both he and his wife, Eileen, and eventually saved enough to make a deposit on a farm west of Yeelanna in 1966. Don continued shearing to supplement the family income and they stayed working the farm at Yeelanna until ill health in 1986. They retired onto a few acres out of Port Lincoln and enjoyed the latter years, continuing his involvement in farming.

Don was also heavily involved in community efforts. He was on the CFS and the Cummins Rodeo Committee raising funds for the Cummins Hospital. He was Chairman of the Bicentennial Committee. He enjoyed sports immensely and it was through football that he made his truly great contributions to the broader community.

I will run through just a few of his achievements. There is not time for all of them, but he was made a South Australian National Football League Life Member, he was a life member of the Port Adelaide Football Club (Magpies). He was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for service to Australian Rules Football and, through a range of administrative roles, to the communities of Cummins and Port Lincoln. He was inducted into the South Australian National Football League Hall of Fame in 2012. All this for a man who did not actually play league football but rather played local footy, associated football and contributed so much as a player, and then over a period of 60-odd years as a football administrator.

I last saw Don just a couple of weeks ago where he delivered the Welcome to Country in Port Lincoln as a host of the Maralinga Football Team. They were about to travel to Adelaide and play in the Aboriginal Lands Cup. That cup has been renamed the Don McSweeny Aboriginal Lands Challenge Cup. Don very proudly stood on the turf at Adelaide Oval and watched his name come up on the scoreboard when it was renamed as the Don McSweeny Cup. No death is timely but, for Don, lending his name and convening that Aboriginal Lands Cup, it was as though his work was done.

Many tributes and accolades have been given to Don over the past week, but if I could add mine in this place today, it is that Don was a capable, humble, hardworking man devoted to his family and his community. He cared about others and he always looked out for others. Vale Don McSweeny OAM.