Before reading about Lucy and some aspects of her life, it would be well worthwhile reading something she sent to us (Mike & James) some time ago (in 2004, as the email states):

From: Lucy Buxton [mailto:lubux@bigpond.com]
Sent: Monday, 6 September 2004 10:08 AM
To: Mike Agostini
Cc: James Agostini
Subject: Miss me but let me go

When I come to the end of the road and the sun has set for me,
I want no rites in a gloom-filled room. Why cry for a soul set free?
Miss me a little - but not too long, and not with your head held low,
Remember the love that we once shared. Miss me - but let me go.
For this is a journey that we all must take, and each must go alone,
It's all a part of the Master's plan, a step on the road to home.

N.B. The below article is an unedited version, since our editor is no longer with us, and we ask anyone reading this information to understand that there are likely to be mistakes and errors, mostly of a minor kind, mainly typographical as well as of syntax (which was Lucy’s special area of expertise) and the copy will be constantly reviewed and re-edited even as more is being written, because of how much there is to tell about Lucy and what she did with us as well as in other areas of her own.

LUCY JANE RACHEL DIGBY BUXTON 1947-2007

The story of someone whom many said was either and angel or else a saint.

Lucy Jane Rachel Digby Buxton, who left this mortal life we all still live, suddenly and very unexpectedly, some time during the mid to late afternoon of Friday, 2 March 2007. She was found lying on the floor of her own bathroom shortly after lunchtime the following day and had obviously been dead for some time by then. It appears to have been very sudden but also swift, for her features seemed soft and more peaceful than for some time. The cause of her death is still undetermined but initial indications suggest she had had a sudden and major stroke.

Her death came as a great shock to all, including many who only knew her as being the lady who kept cleaning up the world, around Vaucluse especially but almost any and everywhere else. For this was one of her many missions and habits, being extremely environmentally aware and consciously active constantly It seems she had been out walking, as was her usual daily habit, for her walking shoes were found placed neatly on her doormat, the keys to her apartment still in the door which was slightly ajar.
The details above are given because of the queries made by so many about how she died, but what is much more important was how Lucy lived.

Lucy lived mostly for the sake of others as well as the world wherever she was. Her kind and friendly, as well as very warm, gentle and loving nature was immediately obvious to any and all whoever met or even just saw her passing, especially when picking up pieces of paper, tin cans and rubbish of any kind, which would put together neatly and place where the garbage collectors would easily remove them. She did the same with people, frequently picking up those whose lives might have been something like the scattered items she chose to put together and often helped them avoid become human garbage themselves. Yet she sought no recognition or recompense, other than the knowledge that she was doing something that the God-Man who she worshipped had put her into this life, this time, to do worthwhile things for and with.

Lucy would hate and never have allowed such things to be written and made known publicly about her when she was alive, for she looked upon it in a manner similar to the way another, much more famous person, Mother Theresa, had spent most of her own life doing (and to be linked to this now beatified and probably soon to be sanctified and thus declared to be Saint of the Roman Catholic Church, is something our own Lucy would have rejected and laughed at, for sure).

Lucy was born on June 9th, 1947, into an old and aristocratic English family that can trace its ancestry back to William the Conqueror, on her mother’s side (which is where the name of Digby comes from, which she adopted by deed poll in recent times). Her father, Edmund, was once the Vicar of Wembly, a position indicative of his own social and clerical rankings, who would later become the Vicar of Millborne Port, which is where Lucy spent most of her childhood and earlier years, before becoming a border at the very solid establishment Sherborne School for Girls, from she went on to do her tertiary studies at the University of East Anglia, from which graduated, with second class honours in English Literature, before going overseas in her very early twenties, initially to Africa. There is a strong history of service to the Crown and its colonies in her family and one of her paternal ancestors was Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, who was very involved with and eventually also partly responsible, along with Sir William Wilberforce, whom he followed as leader of the Abolition Movement in the British House of Commons, for the abolition of African slavery within the then British Empire. Thomas Fowell Buxton thus made the family name famous, which it still is in England even today. His mother’s maiden name was Anna Hanbury, a member of the brewing family known then as Truman, Hanbury & Company, becoming a partner eventually and the business was renamed Truman, Hanbury, Buxton & Co. of which he would also eventually become the sole owner. Thomas Fowell Buxton would later also become a Member of Parliament for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, in 1918, where he remained until 1837. During which time he worked ceaselessly for the full abolition of slavery. As a result of which he has been memorialized, including monument to him in Westminster Abbey, with another in Victoria Tower in the form of the Buxton Memorial Fountain, originally in Parliament Square, but since removed to another location where it still stands. He became the First Baronet Buxton and his name is further remembered by Fowell Close, in Earlham, Norwich (which is the county where Lucy often said his family came from). There are several other equally solid family connections, including with the early Barclays Bank, but because of her own reluctance, Lucy seldom spoke about any of this. Yet she herself is still listed in Debrett’s Book of Peerages, as is all of her siblings and family, which of course is the original “Blue Book” of British society.

As Lucy would already have said and can now also be heard saying “Enough of that nonsense”, since she seldom, if ever, traded on her family’s background, preferring to live and work like any otherwise ordinary person, with no pretences of any kind.

In Africa Lucy worked with the poor and underprivileged, as had her own much admired forbear, Sir Thomas. From there she traveled briefly to Singapore and then came on to Australia, intending only to visit and stay for a short time but, as things have obviously turned out, she would spend all the rest of her still so very short life here, which led to our own association, eventually, when she applied for a job that had been advertised, seeking someone to do some secretarial and typing work. Our family business then was called MGA Publications Pty. Ltd. Besides being a small offset printer we also engaged in publishing, starting with what then was the only magazine of its kind in Australia, titled Australasian Athletics, a subject of which Lucy had little or no knowledge, or even any real interest. She would soon start to learn, about not only athletics but also all aspects of both the printing and publishing businesses, however small this one may have been. When she started working with us, in 1970, both the printing and publishing businesses were vastly different from what they are today. Typesetting then was one of the more costly aspects of preparation for printing and publishing, not only for small magazines but anything else. Most typesetting at that time was done by the now almost unknown and unused letterpress method, using hand collated lead letters and symbols, thus the great costs. The advent at this time of the IBM Composer would soon enable almost anyone who could use an ordinary typewriter to set type that would then be photographed and copied onto aluminium plates for printing by the offset method in which lead type was not needed. On being asked to work using the Composer Lucy almost fainted, fearing not being able to do such a new and strange thing, but once persuaded she soon showed her ability to adapt to almost anything by becoming a most capable and competent typesetting, as well as also eventually layout artist, and, of course, at the same also becoming a very stringent sub-editor who made whatever anyone wrote and submitted into something of the highest professional standards in all possible ways. With just a few months and more so over the next few years Lucy would become the backbone and “engine room” for what was becoming quite an involved and much bigger publishing business, including magazines such as The Australian Journal of Sports Medicine, The Australian Council of Health Physical Education and Recreation Journal, Terpnos Logos (the official journal of the Australian Society of Clinical and Medical Hypnosis), along with the Athletics magazine and an increasing range of either quarterly or otherwise occasional journals, programs and publications of various kinds, as well as some amount of general printing work as well. All of which Lucy was integrally involved with as well as responsible for, meaning her meeting and getting to know as well as often becoming very friendly, and in some instances quite close with a wide range of different individuals, many being highly qualified medical and scientific people as well. Her love of people and quiet affability added immensely to the success then of this business, making me, as the owner, look good, much better than otherwise perhaps.

Then came Fun Runner magazine, which we started as the jogging and fun running boom was beginning, as also would marathons and even ultra-marathons as well. This we then would have printed by one of the bigger production houses, Hananprint, which today is known as Federal Printing Company. We also then had Australasian Athletics printed by them, meaning two monthly magazines, each of 48 pages, a colossal amount of work, which Lucy would handle the significant parts of not only production but also editorial, especially sub-editing as well as editing of all copy. In which she did a magnificent job, as everyone would know and should now again be reminded, because without the work that she did none of these things might have been quite as good as they became and maybe even not have been possible.

Then, when our family fortunes changed, as did our own lives, Lucy still remained with us, working as well as supporting myself and my family in every possible way, showing one of her many wonderful traits – absolute loyalty, which of course is also another aspect of what could only be called real love.

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