Tim’s father died when he was 26 on an overseas trip. In his later years, Tim spent time trying to figure out what kind of man his father was and what influence he had on forming the man Tim would become.

His earliest memories were playing football with his dad in his hometown on the Mornington Peninsula.

“It was so exciting and exhilarating. I remembered being shocked at how dad would tackle me to the ground. I felt like a ragdoll,” Tim recalls.

“I remember how big he was; big hands, big feet. He would jump so high.”

But Tim’s father Rex wasn’t that big. In fact, he was average height and weight.

“That’s the thing, I remember my dad’s through a kid’s perspective. I would have liked to know him as a mature adult. ”

In the years after Rex’s death, Tim would go on various fact-finding missions to learn more about his dad.

The first was a trip to Melbourne’s state library to look up archives of the local community newspaper.

“Sometimes I would spend my lunch breaks there, reading and photocopying articles that I found about dad’s footy career.”

Rex grew up near Bendigo and played for the local football team, Kangaroo Flat. His teammates and the local press would refer to him as “The Human Tank,” or “Killer Kelsey.”

Hard as he may have been on the football field, Rex was a kind, generous and loyal man in the community.

“Dad used to sing at the local parish. I suspect it was because he couldn’t say no, he was an awful singer.”

Yet, each week Rex would get up in front of the microphone, much to Tim’s embarrassment.

Rex was community-minded; he was one of his children’s school committee members, helped out at the Parish, worked with St Vincent de Paul’s and sat on the local football leagues tribunal.

Friday night was fish and chip night –although Rex would be flabbergast that it was called fish and chip night.

“It’s not fish and chips if you don’t eat the fish,” Rex would say.

Rex was either a loyal man or man of routine. Every Friday night they would go to the same fish and chip shop and when the owner moved his shop to a neighboring suburb Rex would happily drive the extra distance to get there.

On a Friday night, a white sheet would be placed on the floor and the family of seven would hovel in potato cakes, fish cakes, chips and the occasional burger.

Every now and then, Rex would take out the projector and show the families’ slides.

Rex, it would seem, was an avid photographer.

There were more than two thousand slides of the family, landscapes, and flowers.

Years later, Tim would go through and scan each slide, hoping to find out more about his father.

But there were few photographs of his father.

“I suppose it just feels like I didn’t get enough of him,” Tim says, still wanting more.

Photo montages, much like memories, are interesting in that they give the illusion of a whole story; of continuity, yet, the photos in isolation are merely moments captured.

“All I can do it surmise or guess who he was. I don’t have the whole person in front of me,”

From an outsider’s perspective in seems that there is some of Rex in Tim.

Tim volunteers his time to teaching young people to drive in his local community, is still an avid footy fan, and he is actively involved in his step-children’s lives.