A celebration of the life of Lance Ferris
ABOVE: Jason and Rochelle Ferris, Mark Matthews and Marny Bonner at today’s commemoration service for Lance Ferris.
The life of Australian Seabird Rescue (ASR) founder Lance Ferris was celebrated today in a public commemoration at the ASR headquarters in Ballina.
Lance died last weekend after suffering a stroke. He was aged 60.
Hundreds of people gathered at the ASR headquarters to hear speaker after speaker, including Member for Ballina Don Page and Mayor Phillip Silver, praise the work of Lance.
Lance’s children Jason and Rochelle and partner Marny Bonner gave moving and at times amusing speeches as they reminisced about life with the person known as ‘The Pelican Man’.
Speakers from around Australia, including one from Western Australia, told how they were inspired to follow in Lance’s footsteps.
After retiring from the Police Force in 1980, Lance committed himself to community service, including working for many years as a teachers’ aide at special schools in Lismore and Ballina and later with troubled youth.
However, he will be best remembered as the ‘Pelican Man’. He and Marny Bonner and Mark Matthews founded Australian Seabird Rescue. They now have trained and mentored pelican and seabird rescue teams in South Australia, Western Australia, Victoria as well as branches on the NSW Central and South Coasts.
Mark Matthews, who co-founded ASR with Lance in the late 1980s, told Ballina Info of the service’s humble beginnings.
He remembered how on early pelican rescue missions, between them they had enough money to buy a pie each.
But they needed fish to lure the pelicans, so a big decision had to be made: A pie for them, or fish for the birds.
The problem was solved by buying and sharing one pie, and spending the remaining money on the fish.
Mark also recounted how they didn’t have a boat, and how they got strange looks by knocking on stangers’ doors and sheepishly asking them: “You own a boat, don’t you? Can we borrow it?”
Thankfully, people obliged and pelicans were rescued.
Another person who was with ASR from the start is 97-year-old Jim McDonald, pictured right, who lives at Crowley Village.
Jim told he had been studying pelicans since 1938 and how he met Lance through knowing Marny’s father.
With the help of Jim’s research into pelicans, their movements and corresponding weather patterns, Lance and Mark were able track the movements of pelicans and monitor their health.
Jim had a radio base at his Crowley Village unit, and two-way radio was used to co-ordinate rescue missions. The invention of mobile phones has now made that much easier.
“You have to realise that we started with nothing,” Jim, said.
He described Lance Ferris as a dedicated person who never gave up — a summation that was repeated often by speakers at the service.
Marny Bonner told those in attendance that Lance’s work would continue, while other speakers said that Lance’s death would make ASR stronger.
BELOW: Scenes from today’s commemorative service for Lance Ferris.
