Obituaries Australia

Mr. Harry Belfage, of Melbourne, who has passed away at the patriarchal age of eighty-seven, was a Labor veteran and stalwart. He was for upward of twenty-one years secretary of the Victorian branch of the Seamen's Union, and after that president of the branch for many years. Mr. Belfage had control of the Victorian destinies of the great maritime union at the time it had its stormiest meetings (and some of them were stormy), but his fiercest days were perhaps those immediately before the maritime strike of the early nineties.

The veteran got into calmer waters in 1922 when he was appointed to the Commonwealth Marine Board in succession to Mr. Tom Walsh. There, he fought just as hard and just as effectually for his old salt-water mates as when he was either secretary or president of their union. Mr. Belfrage was a true Laborite and unionist, who never once tailed those whose interests were in his hands in one way or another.