Obituaries Australia

Mrs. Gertrude F. Mercer, who for a couple of years lived in Katoomba, where her daughter, Mrs. Don Mackay, has been a resident for 25 years, died last Tuesday, at Bondi, Sydney, in her 86th year, She was a member of an old military family; her father served with distinction in the Crimean war, and one of her uncles was the central figure of one episode in Fitchett's "Deeds That Won the Empire." Her grandfather. Sir Robert Ord, was A.D.C. to the Duke of Wellington, in Spain and at Waterloo.

Her own life was full of incident and vicissitude. In her girlhood she danced with the younger princes of Queen Victoria's family. She was finally educated in France. In Canada she became a girl heroine when she saved some children from drowning in a creek of a Great Lakes pool, on the Lachine Rapids.

On a voyage to Australia (where she became a belle of Adelaide, her uncle, Archdeacon Farr, being warden of St. Peter's College) her action in throwing overboard a lamp which had crashed from a bracket, and threatened to set the vessel on fire, put her in the role of heroine again.

Married in India, she acted for a period as hostess at Government House, Perth, where she and her husband stayed with her cousin [i.e. first cousin once removed], Sir Henry Ord, then Governor of West Australia.

Reverses brought her to poverty, but she had a remarkably cheerful disposition, and never grieved for a moment over anything she had lost.

She was a remarkably vigorous lady until within her last year, and at Katoomba, at 84, used, to enjoy a walk down to the Fails. Her vitality was a family characteristic. Her mother, "whose name, Elizabeth Ord, became well-known as a review writer, contributed her last article to the "Westminster Review" when she was 90, and died at 96. A foxhunting uncle, a retired general who had had a hard fighting career, died on the hunting field at the age of 80 — from a fall from a horse. During the last year of her life she lived with her son (Harold Mercer, the well-known writer) and her daughter-in-law, at Bondi.