Malcolm Reid

A "remarkable Territorian", Malcolm Reid, has died surrounded by family, after a battle with Covid.  

Malcolm, known as `Mally' to his friends, leaves behind wife Beverley, three sons - Mark, Paul and Darren, his sister Beverley, and his beloved granddaughters.  

Malcolm was born in Charters Towers in Queensland on 25 May, 1949, and died in Canberra from Covid on 26 October, 2022.  

For 43 years he called Darwin home. Malcolm died a month shy of his 50th wedding anniversary.  

His son, Mark, spoke to the NT News about his larger than life father.  

"Mum and dad met in Darwin and got married there," Mark said. "Cyclone Tracy was a big event in their lives. They had to hide under a mattress in the toilet and when the cyclone passed there was nothing left of their house in Alawa. 

"Mum was evacuated to Perth and dad stayed behind to help clean up. I like to joke that I'm a cyclone baby, coming along nine months after the cyclone."  

The young couple had a pet store before specialising in aquariums. This was a successful business with Malcolm "forever making fish tanks and heading to Sydney to purchase rare fish" recalled Mark.  

Once the shine came off that business - Malcolm's mercurial nature meant boredom was not an option he was willing to entertain - he moved into the hotel game with his brother Jeff.  

"He was forever coming up with schemes and quite enjoyed the creative side of running a business," Mark said. "He bought a big double-hulled shark cat which he sailed up from Tasmania and then ran this as a ferry between Darwin and the peninsula where the hotel was. He called the ferry, the Billy J."  

Malcolm was self-taught and "forever tinkering on boats, doing the electrics." When his interest was piqued or a job needed doing, Malcolm would apply himself with a sense of perfectionism until he had achieved what he wanted.

Mark recalled when interest in skateboarding surged in the mid-1980s, and the pair "got talking about building a ramp."  

In no time, a substantial two-metre half-pipe ramp appeared in the backyard "with random skateboarder kids popping their heads over the fence and wanting to have a go on it."

Although Malcolm worked hard in his various businesses, Mark remembers the feeling of his father's focus on his sons.

"When he spent time with us, we always had his full attention," he said. "He was a big fan of camping trips and we'd head off to a bunch of different places where dad would teach us to fish and shoot. If he got an idea in his head, we'd all go and do it. That was just how it went.  

"We did a big road trip when my youngest brother was about six or eight weeks old, driving from Darwin down through to the north of Alice and then across to Brisbane and up to Cairns and then home."  

After hotels, Malcolm moved into commercial fishing and bought two large boats with enormous freezers and would spend a couple of weeks out in deep seas, before returning to port where the fish would be flown to the Sydney markets.  

"Dad would organise the crew, the cook, the deckies, and make sure they had supplies, the fuel, everything. So even when he wasn't out fishing, but was back in town, there was a lot of scrambling to get the next trip set up," Mark said. 

"He enjoyed it. He had all these systems where he would drop GPS markers in the ocean where there would be fish and so got good at knowing where fish were at any time of the year."  

On one of these fishing expeditions, Malcolm and his crew were caught in a cyclone and spent 24 hours struggling for survival.  

"He thought he was going to die," Mark said. 'They had to make a beeline for shelter with waves twice the size of the boat. The boat was going under and then popping up. I've been on fishing trips with dad when it's been rough and I've seen some pretty big seas but nothing like he described.

After commercial fishing, Malcolm shifted into the charter fishing business and bought a 60-footer which could sleep a dozen people.

"The Island Explorer was his pride and joy and the bane of his existence all at once," Mark said. "He would take people on tours for weeks at a time, over to the Kimberly and into deep waters for big game fishing."  

Mark recalled a "pretty great trip" with his dad taking Mark's wife and her family on the Island Explorer.  

When Malcolm was only 19, he worked on the oil rigs on the northwest shelf as a deep-sea diver.  

"He used to put on the big pressure suits with the big bell helmet and go down to where the drill hits the ocean floor and do welding and maintenance," said Mark.  

"He was one of the youngest ever to do that and got quite good danger pay because it was risky and inconvenient with long hours afterwards in decompression chambers."  

Malcolm was a fighter, not a fatalist.  

"He was never someone who'd say, what will be will be," Mark said. "If there was something he could do, he'd do it. He didn't let fate be in control, as it were."

Mark, who works as a 'computer nerd' for Apple in Canberra said, 'Where I am today is particularly due to dad's curiosity and self-driven learning. He'd heard that computers were all the rage and got an early Commodore computer that I learnt to program when I was seven.

"We weren't allowed to have games, but we had books that told you how to make games. So I've been programming for the last forty years. That's testament to his curiosity. There wasn't really anything he felt he couldn't have a go at. That's definitely something he passed onto all three of us." 

Mark's two other brothers are "a computer nerd too" and a psychologist.   

"Mum and dad brought different aspects of parenting to the table," Mark said. "Through dad's businesses we didn't really want for much. Even when times were tough for the business, they made sure we had a pretty comfortable life when we were growing up so we could focus on school."  

With Malcolm such an active man and with no interest in sitting still or relaxing, the family was concerned that he might not take to retirement, but after the arrival of the granddaughters in Canberra, the decision was made to relocate eight years ago.  

"We had to make sure he had a constant supply of projects on the boil to keep him from going into a bit of a funk," Mark said.  

Malcolm adapted well as he swapped the shorts and thongs of the Territory for beanies, scarves and gloves, and embraced gardening and various construction and landscaping projects around the home and garden.

Malcolm was bull headed, larger than life, quick to laugh and "when he got going, he was loud and garrulous", Mark said.

"He was a ball of energy. He never liked sitting still or reading books and constantly had the cogs turning over in his head thinking about something. And although he could get quite hyper-focused on an idea, get very into it with a lot of enthusiasm, he was always quick to have a laugh at things."  

Malcolm contracted Covid and died in hospital with his family around him.  

"We felt we had said and done everything we needed to say and so we didn't have a service for him," Mark said. "He was calling the shots up until the end. My brothers and I spent a lot of time with mum when he passed and my cousin Russell and dad's sister Beverley held a memorial for his mates and family up there in Darwin."  

Mates remember adventures with Mally Reid

Those who gathered at the Casuarina All Sports Club two weeks after the passing of their mate Mally, recalled the adventures of a man they described as a "remarkable Territorian'.  

Bill Boustead spoke of times spear fishing in the mangroves as youngsters. He also recalled Cyclone Tracy when: "Mally rang and said, 'Hey it's looking bad, have you got any tape? I want to tape up all the windows.' I gave him the tape and it was a bit before dark and starting to get a bit nasty … as he backed out our driveway the wind was blowing so bad … he sideswiped the little Mini Minor and I thought I'm going to get blamed for that, but it didn't matter, the next day the house had blown away."  

Dan Dowling recalled a fishing trip where the boat was surrounded by sharks and the men were trying to land their catch. "Mally was trying to gaff it and he fell overboard and I don't think he ever got wet, he was back in the boat that fast," he laughed.  

Frazer Henry recalled a time when Mally and Bill Boustead were missing. A plane was called into service, along with a speedboat and six meat pies, and a rescue mission was activated.  

Neville spoke of skipping school to go fishing and getting the cane from the headmaster as a consequence. "That's how far back Mal's passion for fishing went," he said and quickly moved on to memories of other fishing excursions in their youth.  

"There were dead crocodiles lying every few minutes after the crocodile hunters had been through. We were paddling around in a little kayak, chasing black bream. I shudder to think of that time at the Merri River," he recalled.  

"We'd left our fishing spot way up the creek far too late and the tide raced in at close to five knots and we wouldn't be much more than ten at the time swimming across that raging current. But we got our gear back."

Russell Reid, Malcolm's nephew, described the distinctive look of his uncle's home: "It wasn't Mally's place if there weren't outboard motors pulled to bits all over the driveway."  

He also remembered the advice his uncle gave him when he started working at the aquarium as a young man:  

"'If you're going to do a job, bloody do it right,' he said."  

"He had a single-minded focus. When he focused on something, he did it right."  

Russell said his Uncle Malcolm "loved it in Canberra, but he always had Darwin in his heart."