OBITUARY.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18651, 21 August 1930, Page 12

OBITUARY.

SIR GEORGE HUNTER. By Telegraph—Press Association. WELLINGTON, August 20. The death is announced of Sir George Hunter, M.P. for Waipawa, who had been in ill-health for some time. The funeral service of Sir George Hunter will be held here in St. Peter’s Church to-morrow morning, after which the body will be taken by the 9.15 train to Waipukurau, where the funeral is to take place. Sir George Hunter was seventy-one years of age. He was a very popular man with all sections of the community, both in and out of Parliament. Sir George Hunter was of a cheerful disposition, and was noted for his generosity where charitable causes were concerned. Matters affecting the welfare of returned soldiers always met with his ready sympathy, his most notable donation being a gift of land to the value of £30,000 for soldier settlement. He was born at Wellington in 1859, and was a son of the late Mr George Hunter, first Mayor of Wellington. As a youngman, Sir George studied farming, and later started out on his own account at Porangahau, Hawke's Bay. He was first returned for the Waipawa electorate in 1897, but retired two years later. He again successfully contested the seat in 1911, and remained its member until the time of his death. He was a member of the Waipawa County Council for many years, and was president of the Council of Agriculture. He was also, at one time, president of the Hawke’s Bay A. and P. Association. The late Sir George Hunter was for many years closely associated with racing affairs in the Dominion, and on more than one occasion he had charge of a Gaming Amendment Bill in Parliament. He did good work for the Racing Conference, frequently acting [as an appeal judge. In recent years he had not been prominent as an owner, but his horses raced prominently in important events at an earlier period. With Cynisca, first raced in partnership with the late George, then Mr G. H. Clifford, he won the Wellington Cup three years in succession, also the Hawke’s Bay Cup with the same mare. Searchlight was another Hawke’s Bay Cup winner in his colours, while Whisper won the Egmont Cup and Sirius and Indigo the Napier Cup. In 1914 his three-year-old, Indigo, dead-heated with Warstep in the New Zealand Cup, and a year later won the Metropolitan Handicap, a race in which he had previously been successful with Whisper and Cynisca, while other successes at Riccarton included the Jockey Club Handicap with Bliss, and the Oaks with Mungista.