Gilbert (Gil) Charles Docking was aged 23 when he enlisted in the Second World War as a Flight Lieutenant with the RAAF. He enlisted in Melbourne on 9 October 1942. Seven years prior to this, he was a graduate from Melbourne Boys High and had won a scholarship to study Industrial Design at the Royal Melbourne Technical Art School. By 1938 he had his first job as an industrial designer at a glass factory. Around this time, his Methodist family were becoming increasingly disturbed by reports from Nazi Germany. Docking saw the Methodist church as an organisation working to improve social conditions, and he entered the training college in Kew, Melbourne, for Methodist Home Missionaries. As a 20 year old newly trained pastor, he first served in the remote town of Swifts Creek in Eastern Victoria; later moving to the Melbourne suburb of Bayswater. Docking’s arguments for peace couldn’t compete with the immediate threat of war on Australian soil, so at this point he enlisted in the RAAF.

Flight Lieutenant Gilbert Charles Docking was posted to Australian Coastal Command Squadron 455, in Langham, Norfolk. Flying in a Beaufighter, his patrols across the English Channel were fairly routine until his plane was hit off the Dutch coast on 13 June 1944. Docking was the navigator, and the pilot was Keith Carmody (later well-known Australian cricketer). Carmody and Docking were thrown from the plane and spent the next 24 hours in the North Sea in a rubber dingy. They were sighted and picked up by the crew of a German motor torpedo boat. Both were transported to the Prisoner of War camp Stalag Luft III-A, located in Luckenwalde, on the border of Germany and Poland. Docking and Carmody remained interned until liberated by Russian forces in 1945. Docking discharged on 13 February 1946.

Following the war Docking returned to the art world. He enrolled to study Fine Arts and Theology at Queen’s College, University of Melbourne. In 1951 he became Education Officer at the National Gallery of Victoria. This position involved touring Victoria with travelling exhibitions. The outstanding success of the travelling shows led to the establishment of regional art galleries across Victoria. On the back of this success, Docking was invited to establish the Newcastle Art Gallery. The gallery first opened in 1957 in the War Memorial Cultural Centre in Newcastle’s CBD. Docking was the Director for seven years, when he left, the gallery was already recognised as the leading provincial art gallery in Australia.

In 1965 he left Newcastle for New Zealand, where he was appointed Director of the Auckland Art Gallery. In 1972 he moved to Sydney, to the Art Gallery of NSW. He worked initially as the Senior Education Officer, and in 1974 became the Deputy Director.

Docking retired in 1982. In retirement he focussed on curating the works of Sheila (Shay) Lawson, his wife. Shay and Gil set up two foundations, one in Melbourne and one in Sydney, to help young artists. In 2014 Gil was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM), for service to the arts.

Gil Docking died on 17 November 2015, aged 96. He was seated in his favourite chair, at home in Paddington.