Obituaries Australia

Western residents, heard with great regret, of the death, as the result of a road accident, of Mr. T. S. Rudkin, of Wagga, formerly Dubbo District Agronomist for the Department of Agriculture, at Dubbo, and previously stationed at Nyngan.

Mr. Rudkin was found by a passing truck driver, pinned under a wheel of his truck. He was taken to a doctor's surgery at Gundagai, where life was pronounced extinct.

When Constable Lynch, of Gundagai, investigated the accident, he found a lifting jack on the roadway, about 24 feet from the utility truck. A spare wheel, the tyre of which was bat, was in the back of the utility.

Police believe that Mr. Rudkin's utility punctured a tyre on the Hume Highway, three miles from Tumblong. They believe that he jacked up the back of the utility, changed wheels, and then threw the punctured tyre and wheel on to the back of the vehicle. This probably caused the truck to drop off the jack and roll backwards.

Mr. Rudkin, behind the utility, apparently tried to stop the vehicle from rolling, but was knocked over after it had travelled 21 to 24 feet.

The late Mr. Thomas Sidney Rudkin, who was 60 years of age, was Senior Agronomist and Agricultural Instructor in the Department of Agriculture. He first came to the West to take charge of the Nyngan Experiment Farm where he carried out much research work in both stock and plant departments.

He went to Dubbo in 1942 and in 1946 was transferred to Wagga.

Mr. Rudkin's monumental work at Dubbo during the war years will long be remembered, where he had practically a 24-hour a day task. He undertook the big task of organising the War Agricultural Committees, and arranging vegetable contracts with vegetable growers over a wide area of the Central West, on behalf of his department. He achieved a great amount of success in this work.

Mr. Rudkin was a returned soldier of the 1914-18 war, in which he was severely wounded.

His many friends in the Central West will regret the passing of a capable officer of the Department and a thorough gentleman, who served his country with distinction, in both war and peace.