Obituaries Australia

We observe, with the keen regret of personal friendship, that in the telegrams from Western Australia on Wednesday the death of Mr. P. P. J. [Philip Patrick Joseph Rowe], journalist, was announced from Coolgardie. Mr. Rowe was by birth and long residence a Victorian, but before Coolgardie became famous as a goldfield he proceeded to Perth, accompanied by his aged parents. In the capital of the far Western colony he found an opening for his talents that did not present itself here, for soon after his arrival he become manager and editor of a newly-started journal, the chief object of which was to promote the interests of the working classes. He was an advanced democrat, though not one who wildly aspired to improve upon the laws that should  govern a Christian State. There was that limitation to his political theories, but nevertheless, his earnestness and impatience as a reformer proved fatal to his own interests. From journalism in Perth he removed to Coolgardie, and his high reputation as a man of integrity having preceded him, he was entrusted with important mining commissions which, at the time of his death, bade fair to very amply reward his intelligence and labours. Some few years ago Mr. Rowe was a member of the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin at St. Patrick's College, and the sodality may be proud of him, for there was no incident of his career before man that was a discredit to it, and it is known to his friends that in his domestic relations he was a pattern of filial piety, In a hard struggle with fortune, which in this colony extended over several years, his concern was not for his own welfare or even chiefly for it, and up to the last he remained faithful to a high sense of duty to his own disadvantage in a worldly sense. At the residence of the good son who has now been called to his account his father died a year or two past, and in the newly formed home of the deceased at Coolgardie there are now left lamenting his death a mother, stricken with age, and a wife, who has been widowed early in her married life. And in the prospect that presents itself to them in their bereavement there is no solace to be found. For more than a kind word they will, we fear, be dependent on sympathy.