Fergus John Smith Reid

FERGUS Reid did not live long enough to fulfil his ambition of becoming a high school geography and physical education teacher in western Queensland.

However, he was an educator until the end.

In the last days of his 15-month battle with bowel cancer, he was keen to spread the message about early detection and to help his sister, Lucy, raise money for research.

Fergus was still a teenager when he developed symptoms of bowel cancer.

But it took three months after he first saw a doctor about gastrointestinal problems for him to be diagnosed with the disease.

Just weeks before he died, aged 21 years, six months and 17 days, he and his mum, Helen Smith, told his story to The Courier-Mail to highlight the increasing rates of young people worldwide developing bowel cancer.

But a story also emerged of an artistic young man with a sense of humour, who loved children, fishing, playing sport, the Carlton AFL team, family holidays on North Stradbroke Island – and pirates.

In March, he celebrated his 21st birthday with a pirate theme, telling friends and family he had experienced more fun in his 21 years than most people hope for in 80.

The youngest of three children, Fergus grew up on the family's Burbank acreage Marawah, where his mother, an architect, grew vegetables and reared chickens.

It was, his father David says, a childhood out of the pages of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, spent swimming and fishing in Marawah's dam, canoeing and building cubbies in the bush.

A tree on the property became Fergus's first pirate ship "with white sheets fluttering from all the boughs and ropes to let him climb from branch to branch".

His interest in pirates developed when young. "He would draw pirate ships in great detail, talking to, and becoming the characters in them," his mother told his memorial service. "That has always been part of his imagination."

In a scrapbook he decided to make for his family after learning his illness was terminal, Fergus spoke about the childhood bike races he shared with older brother, Dugald.

They would cycle flat out to the top of the street to catch the bus, both vying for the "yellow jersey".

"You wouldn't let me win but you would make sure I was never too far behind so you kept me interested," he wrote. "Maybe I should have tried the same with our five-day Test matches in the backyard."

His sister, Lucy, recalls a brother who taught her how to kick a ball "every time" and who would thread yabbies on to her hook when they went fishing "every time".

"Thanks for declaring yourself a feminist in front of your friends and for pulling up your mates who weren't," she said at his funeral.

"Thanks for talking and laughing and for reassuring me that 'I just haven't met anyone worthy yet'. Thanks for your recommendations of who is worthy."

Fergus was the school captain at Mansfield State High, where his geography teacher Janelle Williamson described him as a student with an intelligent mind who had a compassion for people less fortunate and with a moral integrity "worthy of world heritage listing".

He was also a larrikin who went to extraordinary lengths to win the final, Year 12 end-of-term trivia quiz. An "extra large chocolate Freddo" was at stake.

"The last set of questions was not geography-based but one of my choosing," Ms Williamson recalled. "Somehow on the day, he knew not only the breed but the names of my two dogs. I really couldn't remember ever even mentioning them to the class.

"After Fergus had passed away my husband owned up to answering a phone call and being asked to check the computer for the question sheet. Ferg only wanted the final set of questions. He was confident with the geography ones."

With a background of bird calls, Ferg died at Marawah, where he had so many fond memories as a child.

He is survived by his father David, mother Helen, brother Dugald and sister Lucy.