Braidwood farewells Jeff Sutton

At University he gradually became more interested in psychology, graduating from the field with honours. After some time as a tutor, university counselor and research assistant, Jeff and I married, and we went to London via India. Jeff completed his PhD in education at the University of London while developing a degree course for teachers at Enfield College of Technology.

In 1968 we returned to Australia where Jeff implemented a number of ground-breaking courses in social policy and in environmental studies at Macquarie University. During this time he took a leading role in the improved tertiary education of NSW police and magistrates at Mitchell CAE.

His work in this area must have lifted the performance of the justice system in NSW considerably. On his appointment as Director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, he went on to develop sentencing material for magistrates, kits on criminal justice for secondary schools and drug diversion programs. He retired from his work as director of the Bureau in about 1988 but continued for some time as a consultant.

Jeff was now married to his second wife Pip and hoped to settle with her in Braidwood so he took up work as a psychologist with the Southern Area Health Service where he supervised psychologists in training, presented papers on practice issues and developed a referral system which involved more feedback from case managers.

After Pip’s tragic death, Jeff gradually moved to become an independent counsellor. He was not only much loved by many in the community around Braidwood, but also appreciated as an elder with much to offer in the fields of human wisdom and spirituality. He cherished his post-graduate studies and teaching at St Marks National Theological Centre which he fitted around his life as a therapist.

Towards the end of his writing life, Jeff paid tribute to the role of Eastern religions in his development and makes particular mention of his stay with Dom Bede Griffiths. Bede was a Benedictine monk whose ashram in India blended aspects of Hinduism with Christianity. Later Jeff spent time in Pondicherry where he also reported the spiritually-elevated state of mind which seemed to be part of his love of the Indian continent.

Jeff had always emphasised the importance of cooperation and divergence of ideas, he disliked authoritarianism of all sorts including economic rationalism, and he opposed ‘simple systems’ which split existence into bits as though they were ‘independent of the whole’. His popularity as a counsellor must have depended to a large extent on his acceptance of complexity and diversity in life, and on ‘the importance of people’s experience and not just their behaviour’.

His return to Coronation Avenue, Braidwood, was welcomed by many of his old friends and he settled here, sadly saying goodbye to his wonderful colleague Rev Ian Lipscombe, not long after.

Jeff accepted his gradual decline from a brain malfunction with customary warmth and aplomb. Long after Jeff could make total sense, his presence and wonderful voice could still comfort us, and right to the end of his three years at Queanbeyan Nursing Home, I found it a privilege to visit him. Many of his carers there got to know that presence without words too, and I knew and was grateful for their countless acts of tenderness which responded to his presence.

In Jeff’s papers I found a quotation from Simone Weil. ‘The capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing’, she writes and goes on to say, ‘It is almost a miracle; it is a miracle… warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough’. I suspect that Jeff in his practice did sometimes approach that miracle.

Jeff, as you yourself have written, ‘communication between individuals has complexity which can only partially be understood’, but you believed that ‘there is communication beyond the senses, in a never-ending existence, extending through the Universe’. Thank you Jeff, one of the dearest of men, for your never-failing warmth and steadiness.