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The best known McCombs were David, who was the frontman for The Triffids, and his father Harold, who was a reputed plastic surgeon. Harold had four sons, three of whom were associated with the band: David, Robert and the other one. The fourth son was John. He was in my English class in about 1971 at Christ Church Grammar School, and was already a distinctive individual.
Garry Gillard lost touch with him after the early 1970s and in 2022 discovered that he taught Environmental Science at Murdoch University in the early 1980s. He died 2015.
Philip Gabriel, in Facebook, wrote:
John was a Lecturer at Murdoch University in the early/mid 80's, and from whom I took some environmental science guidance. An elegant, articulate and calmly assertive man who lived through his thoughtful views. More should have been known of him. Very sad news.
The editor of that page wrote:
We have some sad news, being announced with the permission of David's brother, Robert McComb. John McComb (pictured) who many Triffids fans will have seen read letters from Dave at 'The Secret in the Shape of a Song', died last week after a battle with cancer. We were honoured to meet John at the McComb family home in Perth, interview him about David's life and his impressions and thoughts of his brother, and also have him read a letters and written material by Dave for 'Love in Bright Landscapes.' Dave wrote 'Spanish Blue' after the formative experience of staying with John in PNG in the early '80s. Thoughts to John's wife Mery, and brothers Rob and Peter. John had a gentle spark in the eye and gladness and generosity in his kind heart. Anyone was lucky to meet the guy, and so were we. R.I.P.
References and Links
- The photo is from Facebook.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 5 May, 2022 and hosted at freotopia.org/people/mccombjohn.html (it was last updated on 13 March, 2024), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.