Rita Margaret Barbaro (6 Aug 1934 - 25 Mar 2016)

I will love and adore you forever. You understood me and you were my rock.
Say Hi to Dad if you see him, he will be happy to see you. Your loving niece. ?

There are many things we can say about mum. She gave us a great start in life, helping us all to have independence of thought and action. Many will know her as the tennis and netball player, a talented sportswoman who continued playing tennis until the day of her stroke shortly before her 70th birthday.

Others will remember the piano, singing and even violin from her young days, including a well-known Eisteddfod appearance. She certainly contributed to my broad appreciation of music.

She went to Russia via the Trans-Siberian railway while it was still Russia. We stayed in East Berlin, the other side of the wall when there was still a wall. She went to the Passion Play in Oberammergua, and to see the finals at Wimbledon. We arrived in Bangkok 2 days after a military coup: they were real tanks, and who knew that machine guns were real and that batons weren't little 6 inch truncheons like Aussie police had! There's also this tree at the Rasa Sayang Hotel in Penang - Michelle (with husband Andy) and I still go there.

We had to choose an occupation for her to complete a form - they wouldn't accept traveller or adventurer or any of the other words we came up with - eventually we chose business woman, which got translated to company director, an incredibly boring description of the woman who invested in and managed a hairdresser and a plant shop, and was an art teaching assistant and who kept books, and who showed Don Bradman around the Amateur Sportsmen's Club in Adelaide without realising who he was until she showed him the pride and joy of the club - a life-size portrait of the Don himself (at which point she thought she'd better get the manager to come out of his meeting!).

Then there are the stories we hear from her extended family, the cousins and others we don't know very well, but most of them have some great stories about mum.

The last few years have been hard, without her reading and cards and struggling to do simple crosswords. But she took great joy in the recent visit of her grandchildren, perhaps her last actual memory.

Have a safe journey mum.
Geoff (or Geoffrey to you)