By Phil Jarratt
Since Simon Kuring shuffled off this mortal coil last month, just nine days short of his 70th birthday, Noosa has been awash with teary-eyed stories about the life and times of the legendary bon vivant, businessman, culture vulture and friend to all.
As you would expect, the stories and tears from his wide circle of friends are a mixture of sorrow and laughter, with laughter, perhaps the strongest of Simon’s many elixirs of life, a clearcut winner. And a month after his passing, the stories and the wakes roll on.
Born in Adelaide in 1952, young Simon showed no inklings of greatness at an early age.
According to older brother Nic, his most significant achievement at school was to befriend his teachers to such a degree that they would invite him into the staff canteen for a conversation and an illegal libation, and later, when he looked old enough to be served, he’d join them at the local, the Torrens Arms, too, after school.
Says Nic: “He always seemed to be attracted to older people. He loved to party and always fell in with likeminded people, regardless of age. I’m a couple of years older but we were still close, even though I was a sportsperson and he wasn’t. Our dad Roger was the sportsman, but I think Simon got our mum Joy’s genes. He was mechanically minded and became very handy at fixing things, a jack of all trades.”
Showing no great aptitude for study despite a keen intellect, Simon went straight from school into the workforce, starting in a photocopy shop before advancing to a managerial role at a furniture store. Then he got the travel bug and went off to Alice Springs with mate Brian Goodhart [later a Noosa resident] where, for two years, he worked behind the counter at Piggly Wiggly’s General Store.
While it might seem strange that a bright young man would last so long in a dead-end job in a town where not a lot happened, it can possibly be explained by Simon’s growing love affair with meeting people and sharing a drink, which led to the related growth of his waistline.
Nic recalls: “That was when he went from a sylph-like figure to a super-sized version, because all they did up there was drink. But he’d become a good worker and when he got back to Adelaide he worked at Holsten’s Florist Supplies where he did everything from running the new computer accounts system to making the foam they stick the flowers in.”
He also met the first love of his life, attractive Brenda Kowarsky, who had arrived from Perth to work and was taken in by the Kuring family.
Although they would never marry, Simon and Brenda would remain friends until the end. As she wrote from her home in Perth last week: “Over those 51 years I remained the closest to him as the partner and wife he never had. His wonderful father Roger always bemoaned the fact I’d never been a Mrs Kuring.
“Simon had a few fleeting fiancees chase him over his life, but to no avail. He and I had an incredible bond, we understood each other perfectly, shared very similar senses of humour.”
During the late 1970s Roger and Joy Kuring took several vacations in Noosa, some with the grown boys, and around 1980, Simon decided to move north, settling in Eumundi where he bought a block of land with a mate and started working for a local realtor.
But the bright lights of Noosa proved too compelling, and he soon moved into a riverside rental and took a job at Noosaville Disposals and Camping on Gympie Terrace, a cramped and overstocked emporium owned by Colin and Pam Smyth.
When the Smyths decided to sell to focus on their hairdressing business, Simon sold his share in the Eumundi land and partnered with Nic and his wife Julie to buy it. They would be silent partners, he would be hands-on.
This was when Simon Kuring became a Noosa notable.
For starters, he performed the near-impossible by increasing the clutter in the shop, mainly through the entirely sensible acquisition of caseloads of beer, wine and champagne to offer to customers as an inducement to purchase a tent or a bucket.
Retired restaurateur Gary Roser recalls: “The disposals store sold just about everything, often with a, ‘Would you like a beer with that?’ It would be unusual if Simon hadn’t opened a bottle of champagne in the store by 10 each morning.”
Says Nic: “Then [late restaurateur] Ziggy Fiegl would come up after he’d done his prep at The Lobster Trap with a bucket of beers. Simon always had jazz playing in the shop and it became a real scene, with customers and staff all having a drink.
“Tennis legend Lew Hoad and his wife used to stop by when he was in town, and he loved it. Simon and Ziggy became great mates, they even went to Europe together for a couple of months.
“Ziggy had a $20 seafood buffet a couple of times a week and Simon never missed it. He and his pal Brian Goodhart would clean out the trays of oysters and lobster in record time!”
By this time Simon and Brian had become stalwarts of the Noosa Film Society and Jazz Club, and Noosaville Camping and Disposals had become the Salon du Simon.
As a patron of the old style, Simon needed an appropriate means of transport, and ordered up from down south a 1936 Daimler, which conveyed his lunching posse from bars to restaurants and back again (on fine days only as its roof leaked), much to the consternation of the local constabulary, who frequently felt the need to offer him hospitality for the night, and even a couple of stints of community service in the local parks, where, despite his bulk, he taught gangs of layabouts the correct way to lay bricks and organised fabulous barbecues for the workers.
Like all the lunching ladies of Noosa, gossip columnist Cassandra (aka Susie Osmaston) was a little bit in love with big, ebullient, good-hearted Simon.
She recalls: “One day when I was a bit down he had me to lunch at the store. Ziggy sent in trays of seafood and Simon and I got through several bottles of Seaview bubbly (it was about 35 years ago!) and when customers arrived I had a marvellous time serving them, champagne flute in hand.”
On Sunday mornings Simon’s salon at the disposals store spilled out onto Gympie Terrace, where the local luminaries of arts, business and politics, plus assorted reffos, no-hopers, surfers, yachties and random passersby would gather to tell yarns, drink bubbly and listen to Simon pontificate.
These sessions became known as Rev Simon’s Sunday Devotions, and cartoonist Knuckles Wall made a sign saying so.
Meanwhile, the senior Kurings had bought a retirement unit at Munna Point, and mum Joy began meeting with friends at the park bench along from T-Boats. When Joy passed on, Simon took it over for his Sunday devotions, modifying the bench to sensible drinking height and adding several umbrella holes for all day sun protection.
Long after the disposals store had gone, and an ill-fated partnership with Ziggy in Maisie’s Seafood Café had collapsed, driving a wedge between two mates that was never healed, Simon’s Sunday Devotions thrived, along with sister events like Friday lunches, Tuesday lunches, wine tastings and the like. Even when his health started to fail, Simon always had enough energy to organise a party for old friends and new.
As Brenda Acton (nee Kawarsky) remembers: “His doctors all loved him, apart from the hepatologist who told him to limit his drinking to two glasses of red per day, to which Simon replied, ‘Jeez, I spill more than that!’”
Although several of the devotees, like Simon, have now passed on, there is still a core of long-time mates who treasure his memory, and hold frequent gatherings to celebrate it. I dropped by a recent gathering on a stormy afternoon at the Devotions Table, and asked a group, led by Simon’s brother Nic, for a lasting memory.
Nic: “With one notable exception, Simon got along well with everyone throughout his life, and that’s a rare gift.”
Gary Roser: “He was so bloody smart, but if you were a dumb bastard he’d never put you down. Unless he knew you! He loved jazz but he couldn’t play a note, yet he’d point out every special note on a record and why the musician played it that way. Simon and I went to Spain and stayed at Lew Hoad’s tennis ranch a while back, and we were meant to be heading back there next year, a last hurrah that won’t be happening.”
Delys Murray: “Simon collected friends, he never forgot a name. People would drop in from all over the world, and he’d remember them.”
Cam Muirden: “I can say emphatically that Simon was the most colourful character I’ve ever met.”
Susie Osmaston (via email): “He was large, outrageous and had a huge heart.”
Brenda Acton (via email): “He was the glue in everyone’s lives – kind, considerate, generous,
irreverent, opinionated, loud and rude, but the best friend to everybody.”
Vale Simon Jonathan Kuring, 1952-2022.
