AJS writing
Charles and Rebecca's children
1890 was a hellish year for Rebecca. Her infant son, Ronald Vivien, died on 3 March, her husband on 17 June. Her uncle, David Gray, died on 7 June and his son, Rebecca’s cousin William, had died following an accident on 27 February. A lesser woman may have crumbled. Perhaps the most practical support came from brother-in-law, William Bain Anderson, who brought Rebecca and her sons into his household at Gordon House, Gore, until his move to Riwaka in 1895. Rebecca and her boys returned to Dunedin.
She did well by her sons. Newspaper reports of school results show the Anderson boys to be achieving well at first East Gore primary
school then Dunedin’s Normal School. There is a slight hiccup when both Fin and Stan are before the courts in 1896 for stealing property to wit: gardening tools then, the following day, tools, (10/- fine for Fin) and grapes (a caution for Stan) from the Hon. Richard Oliver, Dunedin City’s elected member of the NZ Legislative Council. But, hey. Boys will be boys.
Finlay Finlayson (1880-1971?)
Fin’s major claim to fame in the press was for his cycling success, including an early interview about a Muir Wilson challenging Fin's 4 hour 53 minute Oamaru-Dunedin record over 112 km/about 70 hilly miles. The challenger “must have met with a mishap”, as he did not complete the distance. Anyone who broke the record by the end of 1906 would receive a £3 medal; Fin said he was going to have a go. This achievement was recalled in 1939 when Fin visited Dunedin, staying with WD at Dunottar (WD’s address was 32 Lynwood Avenue, Dunottar, which seems to have been a sub-location of the suburb Maori Hill). The Otago Daily Times told its readership that Fin had been a well-known road cycle rider at the turn of the century. Fin commented that the bicycle was again very popular in Sydney, particularly among women.
WD, Stan, Fin, Les
Rebecca
In June 1910, the Otago Witness published a two-part article headed “A
Cycling Tour through the South Island and to Mount Cook”, authored by Fin. It tells of what to my eyes looks like an uncomfortable, not to say challenging, trip around the hinterland involving crossing turbulent rivers waist deep, bicycle held above his head. His machine eventually began to fall apart towards the end of the journey. For part of the way, he was joined by a couple of other cyclists; none of them carried provisions or camping gear. Instead, they found overnight accommodation or relied on the benevolence of homesteaders and musterers for their needs. He helpfully noted there was a telephone box on the side of the Waimakariri River for travellers to ring the hotel.
Earlier in the 1900s, Fin was in Riwaka, presumably helping uncle William after
cousin Wallace had headed off to mine gold in South Africa. His relocation may also have been a circuit breaker before he headed into a life of crime in Dunedin, William providing a strong male influence for his nephew. The probate records show Fin was "farmer's assistant" when he witnessed his uncle's will. There are some photos of Fin and his brothers and mother in Dunedin later in the 1900s but sometime around 1910/11, Fin moved to Sydney. His trade was mechanic and he lived the rest of his life in Paddington. My cousin, Barry, said he had looked for Fin’s house when he visited Sydney around the end of the twentieth century but found it had been demolished.
There is a record for a 1912 marriage of Finlay F Anderson and Honoria
(Theresa) O’Keefe in Sydney and there is a photo in WD’s album of Nora, Fin’s wife, who had been a ballet dancer/chorus girl in London; “Nora” must have been a diminutive of “Honoria”. A death notice in Dunedin’s newspapers for John Bain Anderson when he died in 1914 was from “his niece and nephew, in NSW”, presumably that was Fin and Nora. The couple had no children but a letter nephew Roland wrote to the children’s column in Dunedin’s Evening Star in 1932 describes a domestic life shared with a pet tiger snake. Apparently Fin fed the snake milk twice a day with a medicine dropper. It liked snuggling up to the warmth of the teapot and slithering around Fin’s hands. Rather him than me. There’s no indication of Nora’s thoughts on cohabiting with a venomous reptile. I have found no vital dates for Nora but her final entry is in the 1943 electoral roll. Fin’s last entry is 1968. The only F Anderson offered by Australia's death records around that time died in July 1971 and is buried in the Field of Mars Cemetery, North Ryde, NSW, but I have no way of knowing whether this is our Fin.
Stan is similarly elusive. The records show he was born in 1882, albeit his name not recorded. He achieved well at school, there was the unfortunate incident with the grapes (which shouldn’t have been laying/hanging around in temptation’s way), then WD’s note of his 1957 death in exotic climes (Pakistan) although the reliability of WD’s memoir is now highly suspect.
Aged 20, in 1902, Stan travelled to South Africa to begin his career in the mining
industry. After being granted his travel permit, he wrote to the Colonial Secretary in Wellington to ask whether he would have to produce the £100 necessary to land in that country. His concern was that “it will be rather awkward to carry it in gold” and that his mother “does not feel disposed to send (a bank draft) because of the certain amount of loss” it would cost. A woman after my own heart, greedy banks, ancestral bankers excepted. He was assured his ability to maintain himself on arrival waived that requirement. The permit application noted he had relatives in Johannesburg. Stan’s letter described his South African contacts (aunt Louisa Farrar?) as influential people. An item under “Personal” in the 30 August 1902 edition of Dunedin’s Evening Star reports a Stanley Anderson receiving a travel bag from fellow workers at Messrs Sargood, Son, and Ewen’s boot factory on the eve of his departure to South Africa. Sargood, Son, and Ewen is described in the Cyclopedia of NZ as “one of the oldest and most important houses in the soft good trade in the Colony”.
It pains me to report that it looks as though Stan actively fought for the segregation in South Africa that saw the first peoples dispossessed of their land, their status, and any access to the advantages enjoyed by the European colonisers. For example, in 1911 a Mines and Works Act was passed that prevented black Africans securing any work other
Stanley Charles (1882-1957?)
than manual labour as a strategy to keep labour costs to a minimum.
Captain Stan volunteered to serve in the South African forces in WWI, fighting in the German
West African campaign, perhaps alongside cousin Donald Edgar. The campaign was requested by the British government as part of the general hostilities with Germany and had mixed support within the South African military. While the Germans were defeated, Stan described the experience as unadulterated misery from beginning to end.
According to transit records (from Canada to Venezuela via New York) in 1930, Stan was a
metallurgist. The records also show that the enteric Stan contracted during his WWI service continued to rumble on during his life. His New York address was the Goldfields American Development Company, 233 Broadway. The GADC was a subsidiary of Consolidated Goldfields of South Africa, a multinational enterprise founded by Cecil Rhodes and others. I’m assuming Stan had worked for the latter while in South Africa. In the context of the times, it is possible to imagine his ideological support for the systemic oppression of a race of people who clearly (from a European perspective) had not taken advantage of the wealth that had lain dormant in their land and, equally clearly, whose rich and distinctive culture, so different to that of Europe, was judged to be inferior to that of the colonisers.
This photo (right) may have been during the years he lived in Dunedin with his mother,
Rebecca, in the 1930s. A December 1937 entry in the Evening Star’s personal column advised he was leaving Dunedin for a few weeks’ stay in Wellington (visiting brother Les?) before heading back abroad. Rebecca had died in June 1937, he may have stayed to help finalise her affairs although he was neither an executor of, nor named in, her will. The newspaper says he was a metallurgical chemist who had worked for several large gold mining companies, particularly in South America and South Africa. There is a record of him flying into New York, on a South African passport, from Johannesburg in 1947, his permanent address 36 Pallinghurst Road, Westcliffe, JNB (Wikipedia tells me this is "a wealthy suburb" with many old mansions). I have found nothing more about him. I hope more information about his life surfaces over time. A casual request of Mr Google about events in Pakistan in 1957 (assuming WD's year and place of Stan's death is roughly right) brought hits for partition but nothing about minerals exploration. A query of the twenty-first century Gold Fields Ltd brought advice that they have never operated in Pakistan, perhaps Stan was working for another company in 1957.
Les was another Anderson to make his mark in the papers for the wrong reasons. His first appearances were for scholastic achievement. Dunedin’s Evening Star tells us he earned first class marks in both intermediate arithmetic and Latin in 1908. He went on to become a pharmacist - a profession also pursued by Les’s Oldfield cousins, brothers Louis Anderson O and James Robertson O.
Les married Phyllis (Phyl) Muriel Christina Walker (1893-1968) in 1915. Phyl was from an established,
well-respected family in Lawrence, Central Otago, which made a family member’s appearance in the newspapers all the more startling. Apparently, when members of Phyl’s family visited Dunedin from Lawrence, they occasionally left suitcases and other items they didn’t want to carry around at Les’s pharmacy in Stuart Street. One day in September 1917, Phyl’s sister, Mary, had done so and it was to Les’s horror, one imagines, that a dead baby was found inside her case when the police visited the pharmacy that evening (one report describes items in the suitcase labelled Trixie Walker, this may have been the diminutive she was known by - maybe of Beatrice, her second given name). Mary had travelled to Dunedin with her mother who had become concerned about her daughter’s health during the day - although apparently totally unaware of Mary’s pregnancy and delivery - and insisted she see a doctor: things escalated from there. To make matters worse, it came out during the subsequent trial that this was Mary’s second baby. Both had been born healthy and full-term, both had asphyxiated shortly after birth. Mary was acquitted of murdering her second baby but found guilty of “disposing of the body of the child with intent” and was sentenced to up to five years detention “for informative purposes”. It looks as though Mary’s pregnancies took her by surprise and she had no idea how to cope. The first birth was at Ashbourne Hall, a
Frank Leslie (1888-1946
private hospital at the time where Mary was a nurse. At the time of the second pregnancy, she was a “domestic at Dr Drennan’s” - he may have been the Professor A Murray Drennan who set up and headed the pathology department at the University of Otago. Mary overcame these years and eventually married Henry Richard Beuth (1886-1965), a carpenter, in 1935.
Les’s next public outing was his own doing. In 1925 he was managing the Friendly Societies’ Dispensary in Devonport, a seaside
suburb of Auckland. Red flags were waved about the quantity of opium he was handling - five times more than other chemists in the district and ten times more than any chemist in Auckland’s Queen St. Enquiries found he had forged the names (i.e., made up the identities) of A Gillon and W Smith in his retailer’s opium book. The opium dispensed to these imaginary customers was for his personal consumption. Not only that, but he had been substituting other substances for opium in prescriptions he was filling for real customers. Had anyone known, it could have been an early case study of the efficacy of a placebo for patients recovering from their conditions without actually having taken one of their medication’s active ingredients.
Then, having heard that charges were pending, Les skipped off from Devonport to Wellington. He was arrested on board the
Maunganui, travelling as GT Wallace, shortly before it was due to sail to Sydney. None of the newspaper reports says that Phyl was with him. When he first appeared in court, he asked that his name be suppressed but the magistrate said “no, not in a case of this nature”. Les’s defence was that he had become addicted to opium through self-medication to help him cope with the pressure of work. In the Supreme Court judge’s view, Les “had done nothing criminal in the ordinary sense of the word”. He sentenced Les to three years probation on condition he stayed off drugs, reported three times a week to police, and paid prosecution costs. Which, given the circumstances and his clear intention to vanish overseas, seems very reasonable. Until I found these reports in PapersPast, I don’t think anybody in later generations of our family knew anything about Les and Phyl’s troubles. I suspect the family rallied around, possibly understanding the stresses that brought him undone that maybe began with the publicity surrounding his sister-in-law’s court case. This, in turn, may have caused his move to Auckland to get as far away as possible to where his innocent association with the case was unknown. Phyl may have been completely unaware of Les’s problems until they were uncovered, and taken it badly. In 1928, Les’s address on the electoral roll is 46 Warrender Street, Dunedin North, which was his mother’s address. Phyl’s address was Murray Street, South Dunedin. They are together on subsequent rolls where their address is Petone, Lower Hutt (Wellington).
Les lived an exemplary life post-addiction, dying in Petone on 31 March 1946. He is buried
(“presumably”, the record says, maybe cremated) in the Taita Cemetery - Old Section. His job title was “chemist”. Phyl returned to Lawrence where she lived for many years, sharing the house Willowbourne with her niece, Christine (Girlie) Cassels. She died in 1968 and is buried in Dunedin’s Andersons Bay Cemetery. Les and Phyl had two daughters.
Rebecca (Ecca) Joy A (1919-96) may have been named after Les’s mother, Rebecca. There are several
mentions of her in the newspaper archives. These include passing Sunday School examinations and in various concerts presented by the Wellington Girls’ College: in 1934 she appeared as the Spirit of Health. She and sister Veda (sic) were in a performance in St James’s Hall, Wellington by Mrs (Isabel) Halligan’s “well known students” in 1930 although the Hutt News report isn’t specific as to whether they were acting, dancing, or both. They were on the bill again in 1931.
Ecca married John Maurice “Moc" Robertson, an accountant, around 1939 (well, there’s a
picture of Moc in one of WD’s albums, dated 1939). The couple had four children. The family lived around the Hutt Valley, Wellington.
Diana Joy R (?) married pharmacist Murray Leonard Pearce (?). In 1981, the couple was living in
Yaldhurst, Canterbury.
Teacher Jacquiline W Robertson/Kahu (?); living at the same address in 1978 and 1981 was
Peter T Kahu (?), timber worker.
Nurse Susan (Lynnette) R (?), married pharmacist Donald Paul Sache (?).
Twin brother (John) Wayne Robertson (?) is an accountant. A Wayne Robertson, student at Victoria University of Wellington
1970-74 (our Wayne was a student on Wellington’s Electoral Roll in 1972) was with Peat Marwick, accountants in 1974 and is currently general manager at Full Equipped Ltd in Hamilton but whether this is our Wayne Robertson is unknown.
Davida (Vida) Fulton A (1922-97) was born in New Plymouth where Les was working at the time. She was named after her maternal
grandfather, David Walker (because the couple had wanted a son), her middle name was that of the doctor who delivered her: unhappily, Vida hated both names. Vida married Leslie Reginald Roughton (1921-2007), a carpenter. The couple were parents to:
teacher Christopher Leslie R (1948- );
Gretchen Leigh R (1952- ) who is married to Grahame B. Gretchen explained her parents lived for most of their married
life in Pinehaven, Hutt Valley, in the house built by her father.
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Ronald Vivian A (1889-1890)
Rebecca’s youngest son died in infancy following a week of gastroenteritis, just months before his father's death. He is buried with his parents in Dunedin’s Northern Cemetery. Thanks to my cousins' (Viki and Sandra) efforts, the plot now has family status with the remains of Charles' grandson, Roland, Roland's wife, Blanche, and Charles' great-grandson, Graeme, interred there.
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Phyl and Les
1940
Vida Alan Stella
Rebecca Ecca
Roland
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WD was Charles and Rebecca’s middle son. Like his brothers, he was a good student. Although Rebecca could not afford to send WD to high school, he continued his studies in the evening after putting in a full day, six days a week, at a pharmacy where he washed bottles. He is pictured working at a desk in the offices of Thos Paterson & Co, produce and fruit commission agents, in 1902 when he would have been around 16 years old. In one of his albums, there is a newspaper clipping about him being presented with a suitably inscribed silver-mounted wallet when he left Ross and Glendinning, a warehouse and clothing concern, in 1906 to take up a more responsible position.
This was the same year that he was among the few who earned a first class junior diploma in
mathematics and another in practical mathematics from Dunedin’s Technical (night) Classes. In 1908, he took third place among those with “the highest aggregate of marks in the Dominion” when he passed the Incorporated Institute of Accountants examinations, aged 22.
He joined J Rattray & Sons, general merchants and commission agents, the following year. He
impressed his employers sufficiently to be sent to establish a branch office in Invercargill in 1910. WD stayed with Rattray’s for the rest of his professional life (51 years), rising to become Chief Accountant and Company Secretary. He was elected a Director in 1938.
WD had many interests. Like Fin, he cycled and was a member of the Caversham Harriers.
The caption of a 1908 press picture he kept of the team says they had won the Edmond Cup, the Canterbury Inter-club Challenge Shield, the Port Chalmers to Dunedin Road Race, first and fastest time in the CSH Tea-mile Handicap, and second in the Otago Inter-club Cross Country Championship. He also enjoyed swimming. A 1910 viewing of Halley's Comet generated a lifelong interest in astronomy and science for which he won awards and was an energetic exponent in lectures, publications and broadcasts.
In his memoirs, WD wrote that he was nearly 30 with not much interest in the opposite sex
when he met young probationary nurse, Martha Brewster, in Invercargill. Martha was from a large family of Irish origin. It should be said here that she disliked her given name strongly enough to rename herself Peggy, so shall I. Peggy and WD married in Invercargill on Leap Day, 1916.
WD was a late entry to the war, called up in 1917. His record says he was a very willing recruit
and “apparently quite fit” as one would expect from his range of physical activities. WD stood 5 ft 103/4 inches (1.8m) tall and had grey eyes. He had had two operations: (i) to deal with a hernia in his right abdomen, and (ii) a distorted septum had needed attention to enable full nasal breathing. (I find this interesting because my septum is “very thin”, said the ENT person without explaining whether this is good, bad, or indifferent. My nose and its functioning is a minor irritation in my life, perhaps I can put it down to genetics.) Despite some marks on a dental chart indicating… something, fillings? he was certified dentally fit. His medical record notes that he completely recovered from a bout of influenza, with pneumonia, in 1918.
WD and Peggy had an active life, raising a family of three and pursuing their various interests. A
particular passion for WD was astronomy. His obituary (Otago Daily Times, 23 July 1962) ascribes this to his having seen Halley’s Comet pass overhead in 1910. Further, he “was director of the Astronomical Society in 1942 and was awarded the Murray Geddes Memorial Prize” for his work in 1954 and “The transit of Venus monument in Queenstown was built largely through his efforts”. In 1953, WD travelled to the US "to visit some of the great observatories and confer with scientists in those institutions”. It is a logical progression, then, that the house WD built at 70 Pacific Street, Maori Hill, was named Altair after the brightest star in the Aquila constellation and the twelfth brightest star in the night sky. He also played piano and bowls and maintained a productive and attractive garden, perhaps a genetic gift from grandfather David in Broughty Ferry.
WD was another Anderson touched with mental fragility. I remember being left to my own devices outside while my mother visited him during a stay in the Seacliffe mental hospital, just north of
William Douglas (Douglas or WD)(1886-1962)
Dunedin. I may be right in recalling he had been subject to ECT for depression. My mother told a story about Presbyterian elder WD attending a service in Dunedin’s Roman Catholic cathedral, for reasons inexplicable, during which he loudly demanded the priest face the congregation and speak English. In other contexts, it might be championed as freedom of liturgical expression but this was not the time or place. WD died of a heart attack in Dunedin’s First Church car park on his way home from a post-retirement visit to Rattray’s.
Roland, Stella, Alan ca1930
Alan Douglas A (1917-1942) won a Standard III merit award in 1926 while at
Maori Hill School then qualified for a junior national scholarship to Otago Boys High School in 1930. He was a clerk with the Bank of New South Wales when he enlisted in 1939. A 1942 newspaper item in the personal column reports he was well known in Dunedin’s tennis and badminton circles. My mother said WD banished Alan to the West Coast to work because of his poor handwriting - WD prided himself on his copperplate - but I’ve found no record of Alan being on the West Coast. WD’s zealotry about handwriting was evident in a letter he wrote to the Evening Star (23 March 1960) inviting “any expert of italics to come along and put our respective views to the test. I suggest fifty or any number of words to be written in competition by each of us, his in italics and mine in copperplate or cursive, the results to be judged impartially as regards to speed of execution, legibility and elegance”.
In the services, Lance Bombardier Alan was a gunner serving with the
NZ Artillery’s 7th Anti-tank Regiment in various hot spots. It was during the El Alamein battle, after his unit was dive-bombed by the enemy, that he died. One bomb exploded close to Alan’s portee (a gun truck) under which he had dived for cover. Just a few minutes later, he would not have been there; other crew members who had taken a break to make a cuppa were on their way back to relieve him. To split hairs, it was not the bomb itself that killed Alan but the explosion that caused him to be "very badly knocked by the concussion and blast". The attending doctor explained that “the proper remedy for concussion and blast from bombs had not yet been found and they were not sure how the two affected the body so much, especially the heart” (quotes from a letter from an Army liaison officer to WD). Having said that, a condolence letter from a Captain Marbeck of Alan’s regiment says he was hit by bomb splinters. That letter also says Alan “has more courage than the average”. It should be noted that other comments in the letter imply they didn't waste time on niceties in those days so Alan's bravery was real rather than a compliment to make his bereaved parents feel better. The nieces and nephews who never knew him have not forgotten Alan and have gathered what documentation they can of his life. In 2007, my children and I visited his headstone in the Commonwealth War Cemetery at El Alamein, to pay all of our respects.
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Stella Irene A (1918-1991) was my mother. She also attended Maori Hill School
during her primary school years. She studied ballet and, in 1928, performed at Burns Hall in “Dance Varieties”, a concert presented by the Crossan Studio where Stella trained. She was in public performances of the Studio’s troupes in both 1927 and 1928, named as a shepherdess in 1928’s Po Beep Ballet. The Evening Star (13 December 1928) described the piece as “most impressively interpreted”, describing the dancers thus: “(they were) dressed appropriately, and each carried a crook. Their facial expression was excellent and their footwork concerted, and they fully conveyed by poetry of the limbs and facial movement the story of the old nursery rhyme”.
Stella’s next school was Archerfield, one of several private schools
delivering secondary education to girls in Dunedin at the time. Archerfield was based on the principles of Dr Truby King, the pioneer medico who founded New Zealand’s Plunket Society that supports infants’ physical development. The school had open-air classrooms and sleeping balconies which, in Dunedin’s climate, seem more like punishment than health promotion. In 1931, she was part of a group of young women who raised £3/2/10 for the Mayor’s Earthquake Relief Fund, part of the national response to the earthquake that demolished Napier in February that year.
Stella trained to be a hairdresser, which makes her
practice of having a barber cut my hair into a pudding basin shape with a parting on one side and a hair clip on the other through my primary school years all the more damaging to my self-esteem. As was the norm of the time, she left the paid workforce when she married William (Bill) Wilson (1914-85), a schoolteacher, in 1942.
Stella and Bill did not enjoy a happy marriage.
Throughout my childhood they were living separately in the same house. Eventually, Stella took me with her to live with Dutch migrant, Martin van Raalte (1916-1988), in 1962 after her parents had died. She and Martin married when her divorce from Bill was finalised in 1964. In her later years, Stella endured a condition that caused great pain in her legs and reduced her mobility. From time to time, to give Martin some respite from caring duties, Stella spent a week or so in hospital. This continued after he died and it was while she was in Waikari Hospital that she died, sitting up to eat breakfast. While her death certificate includes multiple sclerosis as a cause of her death, acutely it was an internal abdominal bleed (possibly the result of stomach ulcers caused by decades of aspirin consumption to control the pain in her legs) and congestive heart failure. Martin died three years before Stella: their ashes are interred together in Andersons Bay Cemetery. Stella and Bill had two children.
Alan W (1945) was born towards the end of August and lived
three days before dying of a congenital heart condition. At the time, Bill was on active war service in Papua New Guinea. The cause of Alan’s death was “immaturity/ syncope”, which seems to mean his heart hadn’t developed properly and there wasn’t enough blood getting to his brain. Stella was told by doctors that the cause of his death was “bad seed” which was a term used at the time for congenital conditions. I suspect she interpreted it, understandably, as meaning her son’s death was the fault of his father and this, coupled withhis albeit involuntary absence when she needed his support, may have begun the breakdown of their relationship.
Andrea Joy W (me) was born in 1949. I went to High Street
School, now demolished, for my primary education then to Otago Girls High School although my schooling ended just before I turned 15 and just before I was expelled. If you must know, I was acting out my family's distress to
Andrea and Stella, Timaru, ca1954
the degree that much of my adolescence was spent in institutions. I married Englishman William (Bill) Shoebridge (1944-) in 1969 in Christchurch. We lived in Dunedin for a couple of years, where our children were born, before moving back to Christchurch where I became involved with the NZ Homemakers Union. The NZHU lobbied for political outcomes such as the inclusion of non-earning adults in NZ’s Accident Compensation and Superannuation schemes. I remembering presenting a submission about equal opportunity to a Parliamentary enquiry and running a workshop on post-natal depression at the women’s conference held in Christchurch in the mid-1970s. We also ran playgroups and established Folk Arts and Crafts, a handcrafts outlet originally in the base of the Lichfield Street carpark. I think, of all our activities, only the handcrafts outlet survives some 40-odd years later, albeit at a different site after the Cashel Street premises were pulverised by one of the Christchurch earthquakes. To my surprise, I became first the NZHU’s Christchurch co-ordinator then the national co-ordinator when founder Julie Cameron resigned. From this base, I evolved.
At the end of 1977, we moved to Perth, Western Australia. Bill and I divorced in 1983. Shortly after moving to Perth, I
returned to the education I’d turned my back on as a teenager and eventually earned a PhD in critical psychology after a diverse career in public health advocacy, political activism, administration, the public service and university life. I have two children.
Josephine Zara S (1970- ) left Australia to see the world in 1990 and is now married to Robert Scobie MacD (1970-). They live in Fort
Augustus, Scotland - not far from where the Finlaysons set out for the opposite side of the globe over a century and a half ago - with their sons, Dean Anderson MacD (1998-) and Evan John MacD (2001-). They own the village garage and Josephine keeps herself fit striding around the village each day delivering the post for the Royal Mail.
Karl Eugene S (1971- ) is a principal policy officer in Western Australia’s public service. He married Singaporean Janice Ann Santa
Maria (1971-) in 2004 (coincidentally on an anniversary of WD’s birthday) the couple subsequently divorced in 2014. They are parents of Charles Alan S (2006- ). Karl and Charles live in Perth, Western Australia.
Roland Chase A (1922-2007. Roland’s middle name remembers his paternal grandmother’s (Rebecca) name from her second marriage to
Oamaru soft drink manufacturer, Frances John Chase. Rebecca was known as Grandma Chase to her grandchildren. Roland first burst into public attention, as far as I’ve found, in 1932 when he won an under-10 violin solo playing “A Lake and a Fairy Boat”; there was a violin in the house I grew up in that my mother said belonged to Roland although why it wasn’t with him remains unknown. His proficiency playing the violin continued to be reported over the years as he progressed through the grades. Also in 1932, two letters he wrote to Brother Bill (a children’s column in Dunedin’s Evening Star newspaper) were published. The first was about a trip to the fish hatcheries on Otago Peninsula; the second about Uncle Fin and the tiger snake. In 1935, his broken right ankle, caused by him cycling into a slow-moving car, hit perhaps not the headlines but certainly page seven of the Boxing Day edition of the Evening Star.
This escapade adds nuance to a couple of 1937 snaps in WD’s album of Roland pedalling as he is seated backwards on his bicycle, going so fast as to be a blur.
Roland went to Maori Hill School then Otago Boys High School before
entering his working life as an office clerk. His career was interrupted by WWII during which he served in New Zealand’s Defence Forces, specifically in the Air Force. He was stationed in Wales when he met local girl Blanche May Dolman (1921-2008). They married and lived in New Zealand where Roland resumed his life in civvie street as a civil servant in NZ’s Inland Revenue Department. He and Blanche were parents to four children.
Sandra Leslie A (1946- ) was in the public service when she met and
married student then radio inspector Brian George D (1945- ), one of whose passions is barbershop singing for which he received a 20-year service award in 2017. Sandra has practised very accomplished folk art for many years. The couple lives in Christchurch. Three daughters were born to Sandra and Brian.
Angela Mary D (1976- ) married Bruce George McA (1964- ) in 2001.
LinkedIn reports that Bruce has a wide range of business orientated skills in which he consults, trains and mentors. The couple are parents of Callum Bruce D McA (2003- ) and Amelie Katherine D McA (2005- ).
A librarian by profession, Lynda Jane D (1969- ) married Christopher
(Chris) Maxwell Mynott T (1970- ) in 2000. They are parents of April Niamh D T (2003- ) and Leo Maxwell Brian D T (2005- ). The family lives in Auckland.
Sandra and Brian’s third daughter, Katherine Lucy D (1980-1982) did not survive infancy but her presence is always felt by her family.
Blanche and Roland
Barry Douglas A (1948-2013) was an electrical engineer. When he was in Perth in the early 2000s, he explained that he worked full-
on, managing short-term projects (the Perth-based one was the construction of an off-shore oil platform), to earn the wherewithal to pursue his love of wind surfing in places like Phuket for much longer periods of time. Barry married Alicia (Alice) Malinay (1964- ). Barry died prematurely; the immediate cause of death was a heart attack but he had several serious ill-health conditions he was contending with. Barry and Alice had a son; Barry had a daughter from an earlier relationship.

Geraldine (Geri) Faye McL (1973- ) is mother of Lachlan Henry McG (1995- ), Sean Liam Henry McG (1997- ) and Matias
Gordon D (2019- ). Geri has a PhD and, in 2019, is a university-based public health Research Fellow as well as managing director of a data management and statistical analysis service as well as maintaining her research role.

Barry Roland A (1993- ). As most parents are, Barry Snr was very proud of his namesake son so that when Barry Jnr (BJ)
created a song track during his final high school year, Barry Snr sent it far and wide. Understandably so, it was very good; it is in my music library and every time it shuffles into the air I tell Charles that is his cousin singing (when I spoke with him in 2014, BJ mused about royalties that may be due). The only information I have found about BJ is that he became the shift manager for a Tauranga resort in 2017. 

Graeme Elliott A (1949-2012) (right) shared Barry’s love of windsurfing - indeed,
for most water sports. He also loved music, playing in a band while he was a university student then expanding his interest into sound engineering. He married Terri Dickson (no relation, I don’t think, to any of our Dicksons) who brought her son, Levi, to the marriage. The couple parted around 2007 and Graeme stayed on Macleay Island, Brisbane, becoming a valued member of the community.
He had been ill for some time when he died, far too young. He was
described as ‘a real gentleman’ at his funeral where his love of good food, fine wine, and his shoe collection that rivalled that of Imelda Marcos (or so the story goes) was remembered. I have a memory of a lovely evening in Brisbane many years ago when Graeme collected my friend, Barbara, and me in a convertible with the top down to share at least the fine wine and good food at a nearby Paddington restaurant. I don’t remember anything about shoes. At the funeral, his friends sang him a song especially written to
celebrate his life. His remains were brought to the family plot in Dunedin’s Northern Cemetery. 

Viki Suzanne A (1953- ) lives in Roxburgh, Central Otago, with her husband, Bevan F (1956- ). After an extensive career in business
administration, Viki now has her own business in Roxburgh. While Viki and Bevan have no child of their marriage, they shared parenting Bevan’s now adult sons, Aaron F and Jade F.
At the end of this family map, I realise that of all David Anderson's children, grandchildren, and subsequent generations, BJ is the sole male to continue this branch of the Anderson name. No pressure, BJ, but it’s over to you.
WD, Viki, Andrea, Stella, Barry, Graeme, Blanche, Sandra, Roland
(front)
Altair, 1962