Yesterday’s edition of The
Sydney Morning Herald carries an obituary of my late friend and former
colleague Ted Pocock, who died during the night of 28-29 March after a short
illness.
Ted had a very distinguished diplomatic career, being posted
successively as Australian Ambassador to the Republic of Korea, the Soviet
Union, France & UNESCO, Pakistan and the European Union. His wife Meg, a
University of New England graduate, has been a friend since university days;
I first got to know Ted when he was Minister in the Australian Mission to the
OECD, and I was one of the Australian delegates to the series of meetings convened in Paris
by Henry Kissinger in 1976 to “bust OPEC” – the so-called Conference on
International Economic Co-operation.
For the second of those meetings I was accompanied by my
family and we enjoyed the generous hospitality of the Pococks as their
house-guests in their apartment in the Rue du Boccador. In the course of that
visit we spent a delightful weekend with them at Memillon, between Bonneval and Chateaudun, where I took this photo of Ted and his son Tig.
One
permanent memorial to Ted is to be found on the school building at the iconic
(to Australians) village of Villers-Bretonneux, where on Anzac Day 1988 Ted and
French Defence Minister André Giraud unveiled a plaque to commemorate the 70th
anniversary of the recapture of the village by Australian soldiers.
For
the SMH obituary, written by Tim McDonald, see Diplomat
reached out to dissidents. Ted was a consummate professional, and this
obituary captures him nicely. He will be sadly missed by his many friends.
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