Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday was the Australian Football League's Big Freeze day, which raises funding and awareness for research into motor neurone disease. Yesterday, I also attended the funeral of a family friend—a constituent and a person whose active, generous and good life was cut short by motor neurone disease. Dixie Chapman was the eldest daughter of Fay and Dick Winter, who were among my mum and dad's greatest friends. She was also a sister to Margot, a wife to Terry, a mother, a grandmother and an aunt. My heart goes out to Fay, Dixie's sister, Margot, and all Dixie's family and friends. Dick left this world in April last year, and now Dixie has gone to join him. Last time I spoke to Dixie was at the fabulous wake they held for Dick at the Cruising Yacht Club in Rockingham.

I did not know Dixie well, but I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to her and her family, who are truly pioneers of the city of Rockingham. Fay and Dick's parents, Dixie's grandparents, the Robinsons, first had a holiday home in Palm Beach in Rockingham in the 1930s when there was no road along the beachfront and Rockingham was much further away from Perth than the current quick 45-minute drive that it is these days. The Winters moved into this family home many years later, and it is where Dixie and Margot grew up. Dick Winter was truly the fisherman's friend, having established the bait industry in Western Australia and providing reliable sources of bait for amateur fisherman for many years. He was also one of the few fishermen to hold a licence for the BP jetty in Kwinana.