Ross Smith Public Memorial Celebration - 18 November 2016 9.30 am

Guests are also invited to gather following the services at Club Redfern (opposite Redfern station) for their own lunch, refreshments and sharing of stories.

A smaller more formal cremation service will be held for close friends at a later date once all statuary investigations & process regarding Ross’s estate are complete.

The organising committee request In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to Waterloo Neighbourhood Advisory Board. They are Auspiced by Counterpoint Community Services Inc. Funds raised will be used to support tenant participation projects guided by the NAB.

We are still seeking tribute stories and media that could be used at the service and/or online please send them to info@counterpointcs.org.au

Should you need more information please call Mike or Laura at the Factory on 9698 9569

You can download the poster for the Memorial Service here.

Below are some more details from an email circulated by Counbterpoint Community Services on 21st October 2016:

Condolence Book, Memories, and stories

We have been overwhelmed by the number of kind messages and people coming into the Centre to give their condolences, there is no denying that Ross Smith was a great Community advocate who will be greatly missed far beyond Waterloo. We will continue to run the condolence book at the Factory so if you have not already made an entry please drop into the Factory and do so.

We also ask for his friends to contribute by sending through known stories of Ross, imagery, press clippings, digital media etc that we could utilise at a service, online and in places like the South Sydney Herald who also want to commemorate Ross. These can be emailed to us at info@counterpointcs.org.au or handed into our offices at the Factory Community Centre or South Sydney Community Aid.

Problems with locating Family

We know that you are all awaiting news about funeral arrangements for Ross Smith and some of you have expressed concern about the lack of information.

Counterpoint has for last three weeks been running a skeleton staff team during one of our busiest periods and we apologise that we have not been in contact about this earlier.  In addition, We are no closer to knowing what might happen as far as a funeral as the police have so far been unable to locate any relatives.

We spoke to the Glebe Coroner’s office on Friday 14th October and at that point, the post mortem had been complete, the formal report would take some time yet. If relatives were known the body could be released for a funeral but there is a minimum amount of time before the corner could even consider releasing Ross to his friends for a funeral. In the absence of family, the State of NSW may have to provide a very basic burial or cremation service.

If you do have any information from your discussion with Ross about his family, please let us know immediately so we can pass this on to the investigating police officers.

A suggested Community Commemoration for Ross

Given the above Counterpoint, Staff team has met initially with some of Ross’s known immediate friends we are proposing to have a public celebration of Ross’s life early in November.   It is proposed this service will be a non-religious service however facilitated by his friends at South Sydney Uniting church/SSH team in Waterloo. 

We are acutely aware that Ross has a large network of friends and that he had regular dealings with hundreds of people. We suspect that many more will want to say something than there might be time for hence the call for people to put down stories and memories that might be shared either at a service or in other ways.

In preparing a Commemoration we are looking for a range of speakers that will reflect the key groups the Ross had connections with and to ask them to contribute to the organising and hosting of this celebration.

Some of those identified initially include:

•             Immediate family (if traced) and his personal friends

•             Community Centre networks he was involved in

•             Local and state wide resident groups

•             Australian Labor Party (state MP -local branch, local Government,  and Federal)

•             State and local Government civil service reps

•             Other volunteer groups – EG:  REDWatch – South Sydney Herald , Odd Jobbers etc

So if you are part of any of these known networks above, we ask because of the enormity of most of them, which you discuss amongst your self’s who may be the best contact that can liaise between us and that particular network. Please let us know as soon as possible who the best person for us to contact. For the ease of organising and good communication and given the volume of potential people, it is essential that small amount ‘key’ people are identified to work with us otherwise it will potentially become unmanageable.

We do apologise in advance for any omissions in the above initial list. It goes without saying we aware of the diversity of connections Ross has and Counterpoint does not have or desire a monopoly on this celebration, and individual networks could organise their own event if desired.  However, we are seeking as much collaboration on this as possible so we can give his life the best memorial celebration possible.

We will announce the date, time and venue once we have put together a representative working group to plan the event and secure an appropriate place to host this in the city.

Please feel free to pass this on to networks who we may not be aware of.

Thanking you for your ongoing support,

Best Regards

Mike and Team

Michael M Shreenan

Executive Officer

Counterpoint Community Services INC

Base: The Factory Community Centre

67 Raglan St Waterloo 2017

Ph: 9698 9569 Fax: 9310 4141

Mobile: 0413124615