WHEEL OF FORTUNE

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 33, 8 August 1923, Page 9

WHEEL OF FORTUNE

STRANGE TURNS IN SYDNEY

£40,000 AWAITING AN OWNER.

iraou our ows correspondent;.)

SYDNEY, Ist August. Two revelations of the past week go to show that one never knows in Sydney's bustling crowds what man of rank in bushman's clothes or who of fortune in penury's guise one may rub shoulders with. '

Nobody who knew him suspected Jack Stuart, the efficient and hard-working head gardener at the beautiful home of theMacDowella at Killara, one of Sydney's select suburbs, of particularly great expectations. A muscular man of middle age, he came to Sydney more than 20 years ago, and took up land in New South Wales, but adverse seasons pretty well ruined him, and he roamed the world till the eve of the war saw him back in Australia, and the call for volunteers found him amongst the first. A strenuous time in the ranks left his health impaired, and on his return he sought an outdoor job, and the .MacDowells engaged him with the utmost satisfaction to both parties. Day in and day out he was to be seen in his old' cabbage-tree, hat hard at work in the well-kept garden, till one morning he awakes to find himself Low Stuart of Ballater, with castles and estatee in Aberdeenshire and a, rent roll, of £2000 a year. But no sudden revo'utio i ii.the wheel of fortune can turn Jack Sluart'o head, and he calmly go^s on with his digging and mowing, :anc. will continue' to do so until the family solicitor, who is coming out on the Osterley, arrives. Such ifi the-story of a man who has gained a fortune. Another nine days' wonder concerns one who has left a fortune. Nobody who knew the old man Martin Edward Burke, who eked out a lonely life at a Darlinghurst boarding-house and was generally supposed to live on a small pension, su?peoted him of possessing big bank accounts and scrip. When.the old bachelor—he was over 80 years of age became: very^ ill a few weeks ago, the people in the house were at a loss to know what to do, and at length he was conveyed ;to the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, where he subsequently died. He' had no intimate friends and no relations, were known, so the Public Trustee took over what were believed to be the small possessions of the intestate. The young clerk who went to take charge of the effects, however, soon became astonished at what he found, and reported to his office facts which resulted in letters of' administration being granted last Friday to the Public Trustee over an estate valued at just under £40,000 in shares and bank deposits. Little is known of the old man's history, of how lie acquired this large sum. The Public Trustee believes that he can trace hia placo of birth in Ireland, and will search for his next-of-kin. Burke is supposed to have come to Australia nearly half a century ago, and was for years in the postal service, being postmaster at a small branch office in Sydney when he retired.