The Chronicle 2022

OBITUARIES

For those of us who had the good fortune of crossing paths with Dave over the years I’m sure we would agree that collectively we have lost a remarkable friend, acquaintance and quite simply, a solid contributing citizen. Meeting up with Dave always amounted to a refreshing experience whenever those paths crossed. May he Rest in Eternal Peace. A generous man with a great sense of humour, and a brilliant potjie chef with many campfire stories, Dave had a wide circle of lifelong friends, and contributed greatly to the community wherever he was based. He leaves his wife, three surviving daughters, six grandchildren, and an elder brother.

extent a recluse and our family shared in wishing him happiness and fulfilment but were saddened that this never happened. During this horrible week dealing with the bureaucracy of illness and death, we have uncovered some of the life of our brother we never knew. He seemed to have few friends; we agonised over what to do to celebrate his life? Would we have a wake? If so, who would come? His Will indicated the simplest of funerals, no services, no church and no medical prolongations that would lend indignity and pain to what turned out to be a horrible end, gasping for air after a long struggle with emphysema. Then an extraordinary coincidence occurred. My niece, Caitlin, messaged Michael from New Zealand. A friend had texted her from Durban to say that she had seen in an Instagram that Tina’s Hotel were arranging a farewell get together for David that very evening. We knew nothing of this at all and this underlined the disconnect between the various parts in David’s life. Tina’s is a small hotel in Kloof where David or ‘Doc’ as we have always known him, always came for drinks. It was his watering place. We’d known he went there but had no idea how often, for how many years or how many friends he had there. We went along to what turned out to be a most moving and revelatory wake. About thirty people, none of whom we knew, attended; the manager of the bar, Rachel, was a sweet person who knew Doc well. She gave a spontaneous eulogy. She explained that for years David would attend at Tina’s, he had a reserved stool at the bar, his own beer mug and shot glass kept behind the bar, a heater specially installed on the wall behind, for he felt the cold; he would sit there quietly on his own, pen in hand, with the newspaper, the crossword or sudoku on the go. Windhoek was his tipple and he always ended the visit with a shot of Zambucco. Everyone liked him. She described him as a gentle man and a gentleman, with a sense of humour and a kindliness. Everyone there agreed with these sentiments. They agreed he

BARBOUR, DAVID CHARLES Born 1947, Died 2022 Michaelhouse, 1961-1964

Dave Barbour was born in Johannesburg on 9 April 1947 and grew up on the family farm in Kranskop in the province of Natal. He went to school at Cordwalles and then Michaelhouse from 1961 to 1964 where he was in Farfield.

After school he farmed for some years in the Kranskop district.

He then worked for an international aviation company based in Harare in the field of crop spraying. This work entailed extensive travel in Africa, Madagascar and the Middle East as well as Europe. After that he worked for the forestry company Mondi for many years in northern KZN before moving to Brisbane where he was employed in the forestry industry. David married Cheryl Braithwaite in 1972, and they had four daughters, Janeen, Julie, Susan, and Kirsten. After a long and brave battle with intermittent bouts of cancer over many years Dave succumbed to the disease on 17 November 2022, at the Sunshine Coast hospital in Caloundra, Queensland. Les Ayliffe, Head Supply Chain, Forest Operations, Mondi, has written the following about Dave: “A salt of the earth kind, passionate, solutions oriented man with a big heart and quiet purposeful disposition now leaves a void filled with memories in his wake.” Over the course of Dave’s career he consistently left his mark in big and small ways, in a variety of places, within various operations and in the lives of a broad spectrum of people, mostly within South Africa and the broader continent and more recently in Australia.

BUCCELLATO, JOHN Born 1952, Died 2022 Michaelhouse, 1965-1969 CARTWRIGHT, DAVID Born 1957, Died 2022 Michaelhouse, 1971-1974

Excerpt taken from “The Green Diary”: My Brother David

Last week on Thursday 22 September I was to have met my brother, David, in London. We were to fly to Los Angeles to connect with a Princess cruise across the Pacific to New Zealand to visit our other brother, Michael and his family, not seen for seven years. But last week on that same day, Brother David died and a new and very sad journey has been undertaken to KwaZulu Natal instead. He was 65. You think that in life you know someone well, especially a brother, but in death you find out how little you really do. David was a private man; he was a bachelor who, though he wanted so badly to share his life, never found anyone to do so. He was lonely and to a certain It has been a great shock to us all.

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