ONE of the Warwick district’s oldest citizens has passed away, ending a remarkable but lucky life of hard work.
Unwell for just one day at home, Douglas Bruce Ross Mackenzie passed away last month peacefully at the age of 96.
“Dad was out in the paddock with me fencing just days before he died,“ said Bruce’s younger son and full-time carer councillor Jamie Mackenzie.
“At age 94, he rebuilt cattle yards, cutting and lugging 14-foot ironbark posts.”
Bruce Mackenzie was Killarney’s oldest citizen.
His mother was one of the district’s pioneering families, arriving in Brisbane from the Scottish Highlands during the 1840s when it was a tiny settlement of 600 people.
Bruce’s Killarney home is on land selected by his grandfather Andrew Canning who established the silver service Royal Hotel nearby, often entertaining early governors who came for trout fishing.
Bruce’s father, William Ross Mackenzie, was a commercial traveller, gold mine owner, flour mill manager and businessman.
Born in Rockhampton in 1918, Bruce’s earliest memories were of queues of funeral cortege with victims of the Spanish flu that spread from returning World War I soldiers.
Bruce’s elder brother and esteemed business partner for more than 70 years was the late Cr Andrew Ferrier Ross Mackenzie.
His younger brother, the late Dr William Keith Ross Mackenzie, an oral surgeon on Wickham Terrace, was the first to graduate from the University of Queensland with dual degrees in medicine and dentistry in the war years.
Bruce attended the Killarney State School and travelled by the rail to school in Warwick for three years.
With his father and brother Ferrier, Bruce started business in 1936 as Mackenzies’ Emporium supplying groceries, drapery, footwear and hardware, the first school uniforms, floor coverings, furniture, bedding, haberdashery, dress materials and manchester to the Killarney district and employed seven staff for more than 45 years.
With the belief that ‘honest hard work hasn’t hurt anyone’, Bruce enjoyed a busy life with various skills in cinemas, as a rental manager and grazier.
He loved letter writing. By chance, Bruce admired a photo of the Tasmanian nurse in the New Guinea jungle, was given her address and they started the exchange of many letters.
Bruce and Pat met at the end of World War II, married in 1947, and lived happily in Killarney for 50 years before her sudden death in 1997.
Bruce retained a positive outlook on life marvelling at road improvements, new energy innovations, current events and his family’s career achievements.
He has had a lifelong interest in aircraft and travel since flying with Sir Kingsford Smith in Sydney as a boy, visiting New Zealand in the 1930s and on active service in New Guinea in World War II.
Since 1962, there have been 17 overseas trips for Bruce to Europe, USA and to see his family in China, the Middle East and Canada as well as diverse sites from Sweden, Kuwait to Rio de Janeiro.
At age 90, he rode camels in Egypt and toured Greece and travelled to Russia in 2011.
This time last year, he sailed across the Indian Ocean to Sri Lanka.
Bruce often advocated that people should ‘count their blessings’.
“We smile that he made it thus far,” Jamie Mackenzie said “after many near misses in life ranging from busters off childhood ponies, dodging bullets in warfare, standing on a stingray buried in the Tallebudgera sands, being stung by a swarm of bees and falls at home in recent times.
“Bruce was a kind gentlemen but not consciously a public figure who took an avid interest the Killarney’s progress and current events.
Bruce appreciated the open spaces, fresh food, clear skies and clean air of home.
He is survived by four of his six children, 10 grandchildren and a great-granddaughter born in London just a few weeks ago.
