Obituaries Australia

Richard Peck, n.d.

from Pastoral Review, 14 April 1925

The death of Mr. Richard Oren Peck, late of Lebanon, Pascoe Vale, near Melbourne, and of the old and well-known stock and station agency firm of J. M. Peck and Sons, which occurred on the 16th March on his property, Mundroola, on the Acheron River, Victoria, was quite unexpected. On his last visit to Melbourne only some few days previously friends had remarked how wondrously well he looked, and right up to the time of his demise he attended to the work of the place in his usual busy manner. On the day of his death he rode quietly up the river bank for about a mile, and dismounting walked some 30 yards on level ground when he suddenly collapsed, the doctor's diagnosis being heart failure.

Richard Oren Peck was the second son of the late John Murray Peck, of Lebanon, Pascoe Yale, and was born close to the Moonee Ponds Creek in 1864. He was educated at Horton College, Tasmania, and finished at the Scotch College, on leaving which he went into the employ of the Melbourne house of Messrs. Robert Jowitt and Sons, of Leeds, a wool firm established about 1750, to learn the wool business. He remained with that firm for eleven years, working up to the position of buyer and sub-manager.

On the discovery of gold in the Murchison district of Western Australia he left the wool trade, and went to the Cue field in its very early days, and remained there for five years as manager of the Croesus Mine on behalf of a Melbourne syndicate.

On his return to Victoria in the nineties, he joined the firm of J. M. Peck and Sons, previously conducted by his father and brother, his expert knowledge of wool standing him in good stead in the business. Mr. Peck took an active part in the conduct of the firm till 1922, when the business was incorporated with the Australian, Mercantile, Land and Finance Company Limited. Though his elder brother and several of the other partners of J. M. Peck and Sons continued with the company, Mr. R. O. decided to retire from the business, but still live amongst sheep and cattle on his property in the Alexandra district with his old chum, Mr. Isaac Williams, who up till then had been managing Mundroola.

He was an enthusiastic flower gardener and followed his father's reputation in that respect. He was a member of the Council of the Victorian Rose Society for some time, and won one of their championships, but it was at Mundroola that his artistic taste was seen at its best, as he practically revolutionised that picturesque home on the mountain road, and many a tourist has pulled up to admire his beautiful garden and flowers on the bank of the swift running little river.

His happy and boyish nature won him a wide circle of friends, to whom his very sudden and unexpected death came as a great shock. He was buried, where he wished, among the mountains he loved so well, and many a good friend will sadly miss Dick Peck, for to all he was just "Dick."