Vale: Bob Edwards 1908 – 2016

One of Warkworth’s oldest residents, Bob Edwards, died last month at the age of 108.Bob grew up in Bournemouth, England. When featured as a Local Folk in Mahurangi Matters in 2014, he said one of his earliest memories was hearing talk in the town about how WWI would be ‘over by Christmas’ – his father was later killed in the Battle of the Somme.

He moved to New Zealand when he was 19 after seeing a poster advertising the colonies and got a job on Greens farm in Matakana.

“There was no road north – just a series of horse and cart tracks. Orewa was a mass of lupins and we had to travel north along the seafront,” he said.

After marrying in 1930, he had three children and started a farm at Omaha Flats, which was “full of holes that had been left behind by the gum diggers”. The family was able to make a living from 20 dairy cows and he also started carting kauri gum to Auckland for £10 a ton, which was a 12-hour round-trip due to the state of the road.

During WWII he worked building engines at a Remuera workshop, but was moved to drive the Gubbs bus after he developed asthma. He later started running the Gubbs ferry service between Kawau Island and Sandspit.

After his first marriage ended, he met his second wife, Lesley, while running the ferry service and the couple bought 15-acres on Kawau. They left to run the motorcamp at Taipa and later spent two years as caretakers on Moturoa Island in the Bay of Islands. They went on to run the ferry service in Rawene for 18 years and retired to Kaitaia.

The couple returned to Mahurangi and moved in to Summerset Falls Retirement Village in Warkworth a few years ago.

Friends and family celebrated his life at an informal service at The Bridgehouse last month.