NEAR DEATH

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21952, 13 May 1933, Page 17

NEAR DEATH

PLANS OWN FUNERAL SYDNEY MAN'S COURAGE. (From Oua Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, May 4. Remarkable courage is being displayed by a Sydney man who, warned that he cannot live for many months, and that he may die at any moment, has contracted for his own funeral and cremation so that his wife, who has no friends in Australia, will be spared any worry in that connection. He awaits the call with all the calm and resignation that his painwiacked body will permit. There nothing morbid: about this brave victim of circumstances. “ I thought I get the business over while I was able,’ he said, and he is convinced that no funeral could have been more economically ar ranged. . ■ ... The hero of this drama in real life is Robert Wales, of Ashfield, a suburb of Sydney. Three years ago Mr Wales fell 30 feet from the scaffolding of a city building, and his spine was fractured. He was taken to the Royal South Sydney Hospital, and he was treated there for live months. Paralysis set in as a result of the injury, and many doctors and specialists tried to arrest it, but they tried in vain. At last they admitted that they were beaten and that they could do noliing with the victim. He went home knowing that he could not live long, and now an early death is inevitable. For three years Mr Wales has lived with his little family in their neat home, and he has been a happy spirit among the Diggers and friends who go, not so much to cheer him, but to be cheered. For Mr Wales is a gifted conversationalist and full of good humour. As a sailor in the British Navy from 1009 he travelled to all parts of the world, and his reminiscences arc now the delight of his listeners. At Jutland he fought on H.M.S. Collingwood. Australia attracted him after the war, and he found a happy life in Sydney, working continuously, marrying, and being blessed with two child, cn. “We just got beyond the burdens of early married life,” he explained the other day. “Everything seemed to bo going along smoothly. Debts were paid, and one day I said to my wife, ‘lf we keep going like this we will soon have that little car I promised you.’ That day I fell. . . . Well, we haven’t got the car yet. I cannot complain, though. I have had a very full life and a very happy one, and I know I am going to peace and rest. All the same, it will hurt to say good-bye.”