Dozens of dark navy blue and white balloons were let loose on blue skies over Melbourne’s north yesterday, in tribute to the life of June Middleton - the long-serving Carlton member who for more than 60 years lived her life inside an iron lung.

The fittingly uplifting finale followed the celebration of an extraordinary existence, when almost 500 people gathered in a marquee at the site of the old Preston & Northcote Community Hospital to pay their final respects at June’s funeral.

Amongst them were wheelchair-bound and bed-ridden fellow patients, medical staff, volunteers, and of course June’s trusted Labrador Angel, who sat dutifully by her dear owner’s flag-draped coffin sporting a dark navy blue top.

Representing June’s beloved Blues were Carlton’s 1945 and ’47 premiership player Ken Hands, and the 1968 premiership player Bryan Quirk - the latter a pallbearer as June was farewelled to the strains of Lily of Laguna.

Quirk’s friendship with June, which spanned more than 40 years, was first forged at the old Carlton ground.

“She came to Carlton to watch a Sunday morning training session, and as I was leaving the track, someone said ‘Would you mind saying hello to June’?,” Quirk recalled.

“I did, and from there I kept in touch and started to visit her. She met our kids, we used to take them in, and I always wrote her a letter once a year.”

Hands’ memories of June, a Carlton member since 1940, go back even further.

“When June was at Fairfield, a lot of us [the Carlton senior players] were regular visitors,” Hands said.

“This was back in the mid-50s . . . to think that she’s gone on.”

Marigold Southey, who spoke on behalf of all the volunteer drivers, remembered ferrying June in her day bed to the old Carlton ground, in an old van known as “Rosie”.

“Many and varied were the excursions with June, very early in the year to see the footballers at the old Carlton ground. There she would purchase her season’s ticket, her annual present to her father,” Southey said.

“I have memories of those great big men [the Carlton footballers], piling into the van, absolutely filling the van, but all wanting to say hello to June. Her love for Carlton and the boys was legendary.”

Amongst the many tributes paid to June, who died recently at the age of 83 and a half, was that from an old friend Gwen Nairn - a fellow Carlton supporter with whom she worked at the Gippsland & Northern co-operative in Flinders Lane more than 65 years ago. Nairn talked of the correspondence she received from June after she (Nairn) had relocated with work to Western Australia.

“I still have the first letter June ever wrote on the apparatus set for her. She would also have every bit of news about Carlton cut out and sent over to me, which I appreciated and will miss,” Nairn said.

Another old workmate at G & N, Harry Newell, explained that “anyone who was a Blue was a mate of June’s”. To best illustrate June’s devotion to all things Carlton, Harry recounted the tale of how he actually copped a blast from June four years ago, when he arranged for a bouquet of flowers to be delivered for her birthday.

“I always sent a blue and white bouquet - the Blues’ colours - and June always loved them,” Newell explained.

“That year my wife said to me, ‘Why do you always send blue and white? - why not send something colourful?’ To keep the peace, I ordered the colourful ones, and when they arrived I duly copped the phonecall. ‘What’s this you’ve sent? Why have you sent these blue and gold flowers?  You know I hate the Eagles.’ And they were always blue and white from that day on.”

In a world littered with shallow, two-bob celebrities, June was remembered as a genuine, real-life inspiration, conquering her very own “Mt Everest in a fish tank” as a poet friend Heather Shanks wrote. Instead of pitying herself, June put herself out there, and as the service’s celebrant Anne Edwards so rightly observed, she was an amazingly resilient being, “a lady who set an example simply by defying the odds and living”.

“She was a strong and courageous lady who played the hand she was dealt without complaint, never asking ‘Why me?’,” Edwards said.

That was a message not lost on Bryan Quirk either. As he said afterwards: “My knees are playing up and I’m complaining they’re hurting, but it doesn’t really measure up when you’re comparing it with what she went through”.

Having spent more than six decades cocooned in her metal contraption at medical facilities including Fairfield, June’s greatest joy was to end her days in her own home in Thornbury.

Towards the end of the service, images of June’s life both before and after contracting polio, were screened to the accompaniment of Charlie Chaplin’s ‘Smile’ and Nat King Cole’s silky version of ‘Stardust’.

Accompanying the final, most recent image of June, was a message penned by the lady herself.

To all who have known,

cared for and loved me

 
THANK YOU

 
For everything you have done

To help me live as I have.

Your help has been much appreciated.