Matthew Condon

In the plane on the way to Sydney for his funeral, I couldn’t stop thinking about the photograph of him taken in ­Brisbane’s Botanic Gardens. It’s the late 1960s and there he is, just a boy, with his chestnut hair parted to the right. He’s wearing a collared shirt buttoned to the top and a grey pullover. He’s standing in front of the lagoon at the Alice Street end of the gardens, and behind him is the ­fountain and a black swan.