Warmth, ‘nononsense’ ‘Doing the right things’ part of philosophy attitude helped others
Port stalwart
A PERMANENT fixture of the Port Chalmers community has been farewelled after a life of service and giving to others.
Kathleen May Munro (nee Driver), known as Kath, was remembered in the packed Port Chalmers Hall after her death in Dunedin Hospital on June 18.
The 97yearold community stalwart offered endless love and support to her family, friends and anyone who needed help.
She was born on May 23, 1923 at Nurse Wilson’s Home in Constitution St, Port Chalmers, to Frederick Driver and Catherine Long.
One of six siblings, she was the greatgranddaughter of Richard Driver, the first pilot in Otago Harbour.
As a 5yearold, she and her siblings would walk 1.6km through paddocks, along the road and down the hill from the family farm at Heyward Point to the singleteacher Lower Harbour School.
Aged 11, Mrs Munro and younger sister Freda contracted scarlet fever, spending six weeks in the fever hospital at Logan Park.
She was left with a weakened heart and was no longer able to walk the long distance to school, so moved to her grandparents’ home at Purakaunui and attended school there.
She was asked by her father to leave school in December 1936, aged 13, and work on the farm, making hay, thinning turnips and milking cows.
At 15, she began work as a home help in a Port Chalmers home and met future husband Stuart Munro at a Christian Endeavour Camp.
Initially liking his best friend better, she soon warmed to Stuart and the pair were married on December 22, 1944 at St Stephen’s Church in North East Valley.
Mr Munro served overseas at the end of the war. Mrs Munro continued to work while he was gone.
Upon his return, the pair had six children: Graeme, Alan, David, Joy, Maurice and baby Alexa Clare, who died at just two days old.
Mr Munro became the local policeman for Port Chalmers and the pair lived happily with their children until 1968, when Stuart died suddenly of a heart attack, after 24 years of marriage.
Mrs Munro was left to feed and raise five children, the youngest of whom, 9yearold Maurice, had Down syndrome.
‘‘She was a warm, steady, loving mother to her five children,’’ funeral celebrant and friend Merle Andrew said.
Mrs Munro swung into action, knowing she needed to provide for her family, spending 18 months as a cleaner for the borough council.
She then began working night shifts as a warden at the Dunedin Women’s Prison, beginning at 11pm and returning home at 7am to get Maurice ready for his taxi which took him to Sara Cohen School.
Friend and fellow councillor Chris Spiers said Maurice was ‘‘the jewel in Kath’s crown’’, and despite being born in a time where many other children with Down syndrome were treated as inferior, Maurice was always an equal.
He prompted Mrs Munro’s move away from prison work, when at 11 he developed scoliosis and required more intensive care.
An advertisement in a newspaper for a house mother at a halfway house for former patients of a psychiatric hospital led to her gaining the position and moving in with Maurice and the 10 residents of the home.
She joked she had gone from being a mother of five to a mother of 15.
Six years after her husband’s death, Mrs Munro decided to stand for election to the Port Chalmers Borough Council.
‘‘I remember thinking ‘you know, they could do with a jolly woman on that council and I’m sure she would bring a different viewpoint’’’, she told the Otago Daily Times in a 1995 article.
She was the only woman elected, receiving the secondhighest number of votes, and went from cleaning its halls to making decisions in them.
Three years later, she topped the polls and was elected deputy mayor of the borough.
‘‘She was a tall woman standing at six feet . . . she had a presence in every room she went into,’’ granddaughter Clare MunroWest said.
Serving under former Port Chalmers mayor Sir John Thorn, the pair were notorious for their heated debates.
‘‘You’d hear her on the phone to him from the other side of the house . . . she had no problem kicking against authority,’’ Ms MunroWest said.
Her service to the community did not stop there — she went on to become chairwoman of the Port Chalmers Community
Board, was on the Dunedin Hospital Board, was president of the Police Wives Association for a time and joined Idea Services (formerly IHC) in 1960, instrumental in its Dunedin branch.
She was also part of the Koputai Women’s Institute.
A jack of all trades, she started and ran a cake shop, Katie’s
Oven, with son Graeme for a number of years, preparing scones and pikelets for the wharfies early each morning.
In 1988, she was awarded a Queen’s Service Medal for her contribution to the community, and in 1990 was on the New Year’s honours list.
On the night of the Aramoana tragedy in November 1990, Mrs Munro showed what she was made of as a community leader, opening nearby halls and providing support to others despite losing friends herself in the massacre.
‘‘Her motto was to do it until it was done . . . she was nononsense and just got on with things,’’ Ms MunroWest said.
She was chairwoman of the Port Chalmers Community Board until her retirement in 1999 and in her later years was a renowned funeral and marriage celebrant.
‘‘Kath will always be remembered when people reminisce about earlier days and life in Port Chalmers,’’ Ms Andrew said.
Firstborn son Graeme Munro said he was grateful to move in and spend the Covid19 lockdown with his mother at the Glendale Retirement Home earlier this year, and said their time together was precious.
‘‘We had time to look back at how things worked out for the best.’’
Younger brother Fred Driver said his sister’s life was one of ‘‘happiness, tragedy and community service’’.
‘‘Whenever I return to Port Chalmers, I’m not Fred Driver, I’m Kathleen’s brother even though we moved north 60 years ago.
‘‘She was a splendid wife and mother, motherinlaw, sister, grandmother and greatgrandmother . . . and a great tea drinker.’’
She outlived three of her six children and was a widow for 52 years.
‘‘Kath once told me happiness kept you sweet, trials kept you strong, success kept you going,’’ Ms Andrew said.
‘‘Life will not go on the same without her,’’ Mr Spiers said.
‘‘The fact she has left behind a place that cannot be filled is a high tribute to the uniqueness of her soul.’’
Mrs Munro is survived by three of her children, seven grandchildren and 14 greatgrandchildren.
— Emma Perry
Poultry giant
POULTRY pioneer, horse racing giant and philanthropist Bob Ingham was guided by his family’s philosophy of ‘‘doing the right things and doing things right’’.
He died in Sydney on September 22, aged 88.
The Ingham family empire began with 17ha, a rooster and six hens in 1918.
In 1953, Bob Ingham and his brother Jack inherited a small chicken breeding business from their father Walter and created an Australasian powerhouse, its poultry operations extending all over Australia and New Zealand.
Inghams Enterprises became Australia’s largest poultry producer, employing up to 9000 workers in the late 2000s.
The company thrived by entering into supply arrangements with major retail and quickservice restaurant customers, to ultimately cater to shifting consumer preferences towards valueenhanced poultry products.
The family’s extraordinary business success allowed the Ingham brothers to indulge their passion for horse racing through Inghams Enterprises.
They established the largest Australianowned thoroughbred stud and raced, among others, champions Octagonal and his son Lonhro, the horses’ distinctive cerise colours becoming well known on the racing circuit.
Bob Ingham sold the Inghams Bloodstock operation in March 2008 to the Australian arm of the global Darley Stud, owned by Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.
At half a billion dollars it was the biggest deal recorded in the global history of thoroughbred racing and breeding at the time.
‘‘Once approached by Darley, I decided it was an opportunity that I should accept,’’ Mr Ingham said at the time.
It encompassed two thoroughbred studs, training operations at Flemington in Melbourne and Warwick Farm in Sydney, 230 employees and about 1000 horses.
Inghams Enterprises, which was headquartered in the southwestern Sydney suburb of Casula, was later sold by Mr Ingham to global private equity firm TPG for $A880 million in 2013.
In 2014, Business Review
Weekly assessed Mr Ingham’s net worth as being more than
$A1 billion.
His philanthropy was also well known and he gave millions of dollars to community and health causes. His vision for an independent specialist centre for health and medical research facility in Sydney was realised in 2012 when the Ingham Institute for Applied Medical Research was opened.
The Ingham Institute, a notforprofit medical research organisation for Sydney’s southwest, undertakes medical research specifically for the needs of the local population and wider Australia. The institute’s five research streams are cancer research, clinical services, population and health services research, injury and rehabilitation and mental health.
Mr Ingham’s wife, Norma, died 10 years ago. He is survived by his children Lyn, Debbie, Robby, and John, as well as 10 grandchildren and three greatgrandchildren. — AAP