Allan Frederick Savory

Life can give you joy

Life can give you grief.

Allan was my joy.

He was a very bright kid. As a small child at state school he wrote a story using vegetables as people; you could see even then his talent for writing and vast, implacable imagination. He was always full on fun. During a day out at Luna Park, he went on the dodgem-cars but somehow his car went backwards instead of forwards. He had everyone laughing; he was one of a kind.

At high school he seemed to excel at all his subjects, humanities, maths and sciences. Ironically – considering I’m a seamstress and his biological father was a woodworker – the only subjects in which he struggled with were textiles, woodwork and the like, where he felt he wasn’t intellectually stimulated. He wasn’t just a bookish boy however; tall and strong, he revelled in sports, and exploring the outdoors, such as playing soccer for the Drouin Dragons and undertaking numerous gruelling hikes and adventures with the SES cadets with whom he achieved his Duke of Edinburgh bronze award – presented to him by that time Governor of Victoria “Gentleman” John Landy – and was able to in some small way begin to serve his community, a propensity in him that was sadly never able to be brought to its fruition.

Throughout his school career, his teachers would inform me that he wasn’t doing his homework or was unorganised… whatever negative scholastic traits they reflected to me, he would still pass with flying colours. His natural intelligence put him in the top percentages of school students within the state whenever he was compared through standardised testing. He received an award in 2002 for being in the top ten in a state Maths Competition.

Throughout and until the end of his life, one of his very greatest passions was computers and gaming. The knowledge of their workings he acquired through his own study at an early age was highly impressive and right until his untimely passing we would always call him for help whenever we had a problem with ours. He could feel as impassioned and alive while playing a computer game – particularly when playing against opponents from around the world on the internet- as others do in extreme sports!

Allan did his Debutante Ball with his high school crush. I was so proud of him; he looked immaculate in his tuxedo, beginning another chapter of his life. The announcers would discuss the career ambitions of the young people whose turn it was to be presented. Amongst the usual list of doctors, lawyers and engineers came Allan’s ambition, to rule an island nation of pirates of his creation – Piratopia – which had everyone in stitches of laughter. He always wanted to be different from the norm.

Finishing high school with scores among the top in his class, he went on to study computing at RMIT in Melbourne and left the nest. Tragically however, months before he’d even begun his studies and unbeknownst to us, he had begun to suffer the unknowable daily terror and mental turmoil that was his experience of Schizophrenia. Despite years of struggle, through his sheer determination he was achieving success and was recovering a quality of life in the months before circumstances and his illness conspired to drag him back down into his darkness and he left us.

He was my angel and my soul mate.