It was Dr Tony Monks wish to have his ashes scattered across a cricket field in the village he came from in Lancashire and one his wife Carol more than fulfilled.
It took three years before Carol felt ready to make the journey to England from which she has recently returned to fulfil Tony’s wishes following his death at the age of 86 years.
While whiling away the hours in the aircraft on the journey to England she reflected on their lives, and remembered how important Tony’s time with the RAF had been to him, as he had documented in detail in a book he had written about his life.
“I thought, he was a member of Bomber Command on the outskirts of the village of Naphill,” Carol said.
“I could go there and secretly scatter some ashes under the wings of the planes.”
She headed to Naphill, staying at a cottage near the base and realised there was quite a lot of security around it.
“The person who owned the cottages where I stayed had also been a member of Bomber command,” she said. “He came with me.”
Carol scattered some of Tony’s ashes under the wing of a Spitfire and felt really happy to have done it.
“He would have been very pleased if he did know,” she said.
“Tony was in the RAF for two years from 1960 in Cyprus in North Africa and a third year in England. It was such an important time in his life. Then he went into the National Health Service to work.”
Carol had met Tony, an anaesthetist at the time, in London. She was a Registered Nurse who had travelled from Australia to stay and work in England.
One night she was asked by a male friend from St Vincent’s hospital to accompany him to a party in Nottinghill Gate, as his fiancé.
Obvious to her the friend was gay but not acknowledging it, so she said, “of course”.
Soon after they arrived at the party her friend disappeared and she had no idea how she would get home.
“That was when Tony came over and offered me a lift,” Carol said.
Their relationship blossomed from there. The couple married soon after and had three children in England before moving to Australia in the 1970s.
“He missed England and his friends,” she said, so they returned. But they arrived during a miners strike when “the country was in a mess and there was a shortage of everything” and Tony decided they should return to Australia.
“He was doing anaesthetics when I met him. He was never home. He decided to go into general practice. Out here he was a GP.”
The family lived in Sydney’s northern beaches for 25 years, Carol working as an RN in a war veterans hospital in Sydney, a job she loved.
“It was a lovely place to bring up the children,” she said of Sydney’s northern beaches.
The couple moved to Noosa 24 years ago to follow their children who, having found Sydney too expensive for real estate, had headed to the Sunshine Coast.
Carol still travels to Sydney annually to catch up with colleagues.
Carol and Tony built a house on Lake Weyba, then a few years ago, downsized to a property in Coolum, close to their daughter, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Last month Carol returned from her journey during which she visited places that had been important to the couple including Rye where they were married, had their honeymoon and 50 years later celebrated their golden anniversary.
She reconnected with some of the couple’s old friends including one who Tony had known since the age of eight and who accompanied Carol to the cricket grounds to scatter his remaining ashes and fulfil his wish.
“I’m so happy with how it went,” Carol said.
“I’m so relieved I didn’t let him down.”
