3 weeks ago
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In the half-hour before the funeral commenced, St James’ Church was full of chatter.
The congregants’ talk rose to the gold-panelled ceiling and wafted back to the bell tower where the bell-ringers did their solemn work, small carpeted mats placed beneath their feet.
The bells tolled the news of Dame Marie Bashir’s death, but inside Francis Greenway’s Anglican church, there was plenty of life.
Bashir was known for her championing of the dispossessed and the disadvantaged, but the powerful and the great turned up to honour her, as though in inverse proportion to her personal humility.
The dignitaries piled out of their cars and lined the front pews – former prime minister Scott Morrison sat just behind former NSW premier Kristina Keneally, leaning forward to chat to her neighbour, former premier Barry O’Farrell.
Former Labor premier Nathan Rees formed a cordon sanitaire between Morrison and Malcolm Turnbull, who was perched a few seats along, chatting enthusiastically to his neighbour, John Howard.
Bashir saw six premiers through her 14-year term as NSW governor, and they all paid tribute at her funeral – as well as Keneally and Rees, Mike Baird, Morris Iemma and Gladys Berejiklian were all present, as was the man who appointed her as NSW’s first female governor, Bob Carr.
Other notables included former governors-general Peter Cosgrove, Dame Quentin Bryce, and David Hurley, NSW Governor Margaret Beazley, Treasurer Daniel Mookhey, Minister of Environment Penny Sharpe, Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore, Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane, Supreme Court Chief Justice Andrew Bell, businessman David Gonski and Sydney University vice chancellor Mark Scott.
The pre-service mood was nearly convivial – Bashir was 95 when she died, and as the service made plain, her life could not have been any better lived.
But still, when Governor-General Sam Mostyn arrived, and then, Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek, who was representing Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the church fell silent.
The coffin was carried in by members of the armed services in dress uniform, followed by Bashir’s three children and six grandchildren.
State funerals are naturally formal and governed by precedent, and this one was no different. There was a Welcome to Country and the national anthem. There was a greeting from Reverend Kanishka Raffel, the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, there was the pipe organ-backed swelling of I Vow to Thee, My Country, and an introductory prayer from the rector.
But no matter how storied and public the life, and no matter how stately the funeral, the most illuminating stories always come from the family.
Alexandra Shehadie, one of Bashir’s daughters, spoke of her mother’s childhood in Narrandera, “a place where land, people and story were woven together” on the banks of the Murrumbidgee River.
Bashir was born in 1930 and witnessed the privations of the Great Depression as a young child.
She was “immensely proud to be a country girl”, and learnt early the resilience and generosity of country Australia.
Narrandera was also where she fostered a lifelong respect and admiration for Indigenous people, her daughter said.
“She came to understand that alongside the warmth and strength of rural life were lives shaped by disadvantage.”
This affinity with First Nations people was confirmed when she moved to Redfern to live with her grandmother and aunt while attending Sydney Girls High.
Bashir studied at the University of Sydney, where she encountered Nicholas Shehadie.
According to Alexandra Shehadie, Bashir didn’t think much of her future husband when they first met.
He, a famous rugby player, was boasting of a recent Wallabies tour to South Africa.
She, a Women’s College student with a social conscience, hated apartheid, and told him so.
But still, this “bookish, athletically challenged” young woman fell in love with him, and their marriage lasted 61 years, until his death in 2018.
Shehadie recalled a childhood bathed in her mother’s love, but also integrated into her mother’s working life – when Bashir, now a qualified doctor, was running a general practice in Pendle Hill, childcare was scarce, so she took the kids along to after-hours house calls.
“She was our teacher, our guide to the natural world, and our cultural compass,” Shehadie said.
The family home was full of music – her mum’s two “boyfriends” were Bach and Beethoven, but she was nearly as impassioned about her rock idols – Santana, the Stones, and the “Beethoven of rock”, Led Zeppelin.
She made the family queue in the rain for Bob Dylan tickets, and would sing her children awake in the mornings, “Mum’s voice lifted down the hallway like an overture”.
Granddaughter Francesca Spry spoke of a grandmother intimately involved in the lives of her grandchildren, despite the weight of her public responsibilities.
“‘What did I do to deserve a grandchild like you?’” she would tell them, “as if we weren’t the lucky ones,” Spry recounted.
Former premier Bob Carr said “deep compassion was her personal culture”, and Professor Bruce Robinson said that “she never ceased to advocate for resources for mental health”.
There were more prayers, hymns and a homily from the archbishop, who spoke of humility and grace, qualities which have never seemed rarer in public life.
Bashir was proud of her immigrant heritage, the archbishop said, and she was unpretentious, driving herself about in an ageing VW, even to St James’ church, where she worshipped regularly while she was governor, and was even on the roster of readers.
The bell-ringers stood on their rugs again, and pulled on their ropes as the coffin was carried from the church, covered in glorious native flowers, and placed gently in the hearse on Phillip Street.
In her final procession through the city she loved, Bashir was watched by wigged barristers from the Supreme Court, passers-by, members of the public who came out to see her, journalists, and all the dignitaries who streamed out from the church into the midday sun.
Bagpipes mingled with bells, which competed with the traffic on Elizabeth Street.
It’s not often you see the city stop, but for a few minutes, this corner of it did.
There was a flyover by the RFS air tanker named after the late governor, and the funeral car processed down Phillip Street, followed by family and flanked by military personnel from the three services.
Members of the public clapped as Bashir was driven past, and then the flow of the city resumed, full of chatter again.
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