Pic: Laurence and Verna Brinsmead – married 64 years.
Pic 2: On there 60th wedding anniversary with their children from left David from Condong, Calvin from Dubbo, Laurence and Verna, Nereda Haque (Olympia, USA) and Jenny Zwemer (Duranbah).
WHEN Laurence McPherson Brinsmead died of a stroke on 22 May the Tweed lost a quiet achiever and his family, a rock.
The older brother of former councillor Bob Brinsmead, Mr Brinsmead was well-known as a compassionate man and a jack of all trades.
“Dad used to say that Laurence was the one member of the family who could have done anything – at least he could do things that I could never do – build things, fix machinery whether it be the hay bailer or any mechanical device, fly an aeroplane – and across the ocean at that – dive off a high diving tower as a teenager and be a good nurse to someone who was sick,” Bob Brinsmead said of his brother.
“At 18 years of age he was accepted to train as a nurse at Wahroonga Hospital but the Manpower Wartime Authority decreed that given his training at the Burnley Horticultural College he had to stay in the essential service of growing potatoes.
“Someone once called him ‘nature’s gentleman’. He never had a mean or spiteful bone in his body. He was one of the boys who never fell out with any of the others, but was proud and loyal to them all the days of his life. He was dedicated to justice and fairness and doing what he thought was the right thing.”
Laurence McPherson Brinsmead was born in Nhill, Victoria, on 30 November 1925. He was the sixth child and the third son of Cedric John and Laura Elsie Brinsmead, farmers. He studied at Burnley Horticultural College, in Victoria and married Verna Joy Emmett on 7 March 1949 at the Seventh-Day Adventist church in Murwillumbah and were married for 64 years, raising four children.
In 1953, he, and his youngest brother, Bob, bought a cane farm at Mena Creek, near Innisfail, in North Queensland. In 1955 he built his first new home. In 1959, he sold the cane farm, and bought an unused farm at Bingil Bay, near Tully, where he grew bananas, and invented the horticultural sprayer which is widely used in all manner of orchards to this day.
At the end of 1963, the family moved back to the Tweed, where Laurence developed two cane farms at Chinderah, while living at Banora Point.
In 1969, he sold one of his cane farms in order to fund two years of self-supporting missionary work in the Philippines where he became a pilot. Upon the return of the family to Australia in 1971, he, with his sons, became the first cane-harvesting contractors in New South Wales. Within the year, he bought Palmer’s farm at Condong and Lundberg’s farm the following year, which resulted in him becoming New South Wales’ largest sugar producer.
He sold Palmer’s farm in 1979, and in 1981 he bought a farm on the river at Byangum, which fronted Kyogle Road, where he grew a great diversity of crops, and expanded his Arabian Stud.
He had many notable successes in the show rings up and down the east coast of Australia, the highlights of which were, “Champion Horse of Show” at Murwillumbah, “Supreme Champion Arabian” at Brisbane Royal Show, and, “Champion Arabian Stallion”, at the “Prestigious Victorian Classic” Arabian Show in Melbourne, where he also won the “Junior Weanling Colt” class, all of which bore testimony to his skills as trainer and breeder.
He is survived by his loving wife, four children, Calvin Laurence, Nereda Joy, David Noel, and Jennifer Ruth, 14 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren.
