OBITUARY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26177, 13 June 1946, Page 6

OBITUARY

MR ROBERT F. INDER A career full of interest in its associations with the early life of Central Otago has been brought to a close by the death of Mr Robert F. Inder, of Naseby, on Tuesday at the age of 90 years. Until a short time ago Mr Inder retained vivid memories of life on the gold diggings and other aspects of the early days of the Central. Born on January 2, 1856, at Martock, Somersetshire, England, Mr Inder was the son of Mr Walter Inder. When he was only two years old, the family decided to emigrate to the colonies, and sailed fbr Melbourne in the ship Saldana. Life in Victoria did not attract them very much, and after a few months there they went on to Fingal, Tasmania, where Mr Inder’s father went into business in partnership with his brother. With the discovery of gold Gabriel’s Gully in 1861, the brothers left for New Zealand with horses and drays, and very soon established themselves as carriers between Dunedin and Tuapeka. When the gold rush extended through Central Otago to the Dunstan, now Clyde, they returned to Tasmania and brought their families to the new country in the schooner Southern Cross towards the end of 1862. The journey through from Waikouaiti, where they sailed from Dunedin, to the Dunstan was made in a spring dray, and during the time they were on the road a child was born 1,0 Mr Inder’s aunt. Notwithstanding, the travellers kept on over a rough track, fording streams in the way, and eevntually reached the town of tents which was the Dunstan. The families

were at both the Fox’s (Arrowtown) and Hamilton’s (Waipiata) gold rushes, and after conducting business at both Hill’s Creek (Blackstone Hill) and Hamilton’s they went into business at the other end of the Maniototo plain at Naseby about 1866, by which time gold-seekers were becoming active there. Mr Robert Inder’s father conducted the Naseby business, and there thus began for the boy an association with the Naseby district which lasted until his death.

Robert was sent to the Otago Boys’ High School between 1870 and 1872, and from July, 1873, he was apprenticed to the Vulcan Foundry. Employment became scarce in the engineering trade, howevqr, and 'later he assisted in his father’s business of butchering, auctioneering, and farming .which was afterwards acquired by him and his brother. In 1888, Mr Inder was married to Miss Mary Ann Guffle, daughter of one of the earliest settlers in Shag Valley. Until his retirement some years ago, he was engaged in farming, which he undertook after he gave up his business in Naseby. He was a well and favourably known figure in Central Otago, having taken an active part in public life over a long period of years, and there could have been no greater tribute to the esteem in which he was held than the widespread expressions of goodwill and congratulation received when he and Mrs Inder celebrated their golden wedding at Naseby in May, 1938.

MRS BLANCHE BURKE

The special London correspondent of the New Zealand Press Association states that the death is announced of Mrs Blanche Burke, M.8.E., formerly superintendent of the New Zealand Prisoner of War Centre in London, and subsequently until last month housekeeper at the Fernleaf Club. She was well known to hundreds of New Zealanders She intended to settle in the Dominion with her husband.

MR W. J. COUTTS

(F.A.) AUCKLAND, June 12. Mr William Joseph Coutts, who, had been a director of Dominion Breweries, Ltd., since its inception, died suddenly to-day. Mr Coutts, whose family has been engaged in the brewing industry in New Zealand since the middle of last century, was born at'Cromwell in 1875 On the death of his father he became proprietor of the Standard Brewery at Palmerston North, and in 1907 he established the Cascade Brewery at Taihape, which was then the terminal of the uncompleted main trunk railway. In 1928 he founded, with his sons, the Waitemata Brewery at Otdhuhu, and this led to the formation of Dominion Breweries, Ltd.