Cheryl Taylor
I first met Frank in 1968, when he attended a conference on Australian literature at the University College of Townsville, now James Cook University. That conference became a legend afterwards for its military-meticulous organisation; Frank came to the dinner in a blue velvet jacket that went well with his red hair, but contrasted with all the penguin outfits. He wasn’t putting on a show—he was just being himself.

Over the next forty years Frank would sometimes drop into Townsville to see his friends, especially fellow poet Fiona Perry. He always had writing and painting on the go, and was absorbed in reading, most recently as I recall, Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria, the whole of Shakespeare, and books about the Shakespeare authorship debate. He gave poetry readings at JCU, and sent poems to our journal LiNQ (Literature in North Queensland). Although Frank wasn’t, I suspect, too much into Christmas, he replied to my Christmas cards with letters and postcards, and became a friend of the family. Occasionally he and his blue heeler would stay with us on their way to Frank’s beloved Kimberly, though their old Kombi van never looked like it would make the trip. Frank’s persona as an artist, photographer, poet and outdoors man always made him seem more real than my university friends.