We created a GatheringUs memorial to celebrate the life of Louise Julie Bickford. Collecting your stories and memories here will offer us great comfort. Thank you for contributing to this lasting memorial.
Tribute to Julie Bick by Sam Hobbs on behalf of the Hobbs family.
I am quite sure all of those who knew and loved Julie and were nourished by her glorious spirit has a story like this little anecdote.
Thirty years ago when I was 21 I moved out of home... moreTribute to Julie Bick by Sam Hobbs on behalf of the Hobbs family.
I am quite sure all of those who knew and loved Julie and were nourished by her glorious spirit has a story like this little anecdote.
Thirty years ago when I was 21 I moved out of home with my then girlfriend and now wife Nina into an old, small limestone terrace house in the port town of Fremantle.
We asked Julie, on one of her visits to Western Australia, and my mother Marie to dinner.
It was a quite a big deal for us.
It was our first attempt at being a grownup couple.
And it was the moment I was introducing Nina to my one and only, beloved Aunt.
That day I went down to the Swan river where our family has had a boat shed for many years and gathered a generous bucket of mussels that grew on the shed’s pilings. I brought them home and we scrubbed and cleaned them. We set a makeshift table in the back yard where we had paved a little area.
Mum and Ju arrived and got settled in as a gentle sea breeze blew and the sun set in the Indian Ocean.
A perfect, beautiful, spring evening.
Nina and I cooked the Mussels in wine, fresh tomatoes, garlic and fresh parsley
Delicious ….
but indescribably hot.
In my youthful exuberance I had put in way too much chilli.
Julie and Mum bravely tackled their meal…
Drinking gallons of water and one or two chilled wines…
And they laughed and giggled the whole way.
Nina and I saw them together as the wonderful double act they were…
United again after another of their separations….
And as these cheeky, brilliant sisters sat together in our garden the world felt complete, it felt unified it felt whole.
And we felt that our life together had started and they had given us some funny type of blessing.
The sound of Julie’s laughter that night was like an attack of joy to our ears.
It crackled…. It electrified….
It was bountiful..,
It said … life is a party and more.
It said …
life is in its very essence a magnificent adventure – every moment of it-
even eating the inedible meal prepared by your youngest nephew.
And it was a laughter of unconditional love, of open hearted acceptance …
of a fascination with all things...
It was with this laughter that she could enter a room in any house in any country at any time and meet a complete stranger and greet that person as if she had known them all their lives.
And it is this laughter that my Mother and my Aunt share.
And to see them together laughing was to realise that such a thing was no accident – that it came from a deep, deep place.
It came from their father John and their mother Zelda and their country…
It came from a place of extraordinary grace and fun and sophistication.
When Julie came to Perth it was if our tight nit family suddenly exploded into something so much bigger.
She expanded our reach across the world
and when we have ventured North, to be with her and Nick and Michael she was the pole to which we gravitated. She was our bedrock.
It is entirely unimaginable that the world can exist without the sound of her laughter.
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