A Tree for Georgia

A very good friend of ours, Georgia Paton, who I used to work with at University of Newcastle, died in December 2011 from lymphoma. Georgia, originally from Scotland, died in Germany where she, her husband Andy, and their three boys were living. Georgia was also a close friend to several of my friends who read this blog.

Georgia was a beautiful person - kind, creative, very bright, collegial, friendly, and she had a great sense of humour. I used to give a guest lecture for her popular culture class on Mardi Gras each year and she provided me with valuable feedback on several of my draft articles. We had a hoot travelling around Malaysia together in the mid 90s sometime ostensibly doing a reccy for a student fieldtrip that didn't end up eventuating.  She was not really used to the kinds of accommodation I tend to stay in and we sometimes encountered rather large spiders in our room. I can still remember her admonishing me in her broad Scottish accent for suggesting that she be more rational about her irrational fear of spiders.

Steve and I planted this magnolia for her today.

Some of Georgia's publications are as follows:

Young, G. and Brown, P. (1993) 'From bushmen to Bondi Beach: the social construction of 'malestream' images of Australia in tourism advertising', paper presented at the Leisure in Different Worlds International Conference, University of Loughborough, UK.

Rowe, D. and Paton, G. (1998) 'The beach: Image and environment', World Leisure and Recreation, 37, 2:38-41.

Stevenson, D. and Paton, G. (2001) 'Representing decline: the role of the arts in framing discourses of deindustrialisation', Media International Australia, No.100:129-146.