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Alfred Burdett Mellor CBE (OCG 1933)
Alfred Mellor, was one of Australia's eminent stockbrokers and a stalwart of a leading Melbourne private school, has died at Caritas Christi Hospice in Kew, aged 95, after what could best be described as a fortunate life.
He was a chairman of the Stock Exchange of Melbourne during the 1960s, which saw a rapid increase in public participation in the stock market - including the Poseidon mining boom - and was chairman of the Australian Association of Stock Exchanges.
Equally important to him was his close association with Carey Baptist Grammar School from its opening day until his death 89 years later.
Alfred was born in the front room of the family home in Chaucer Crescent in Canterbury and into a privileged childhood. His mother, Annie, who had married Lesley Mellor, was a member of the Laycock family who owned woollen mills in South Melbourne and England that operated under the Laconia brand.
His childhood revolved around family days at his grandparents' house at Frognal, a stately home by Melbourne standards in Canterbury. In summer they repaired to Mileura, a cliff-top house at Portsea.
The Mellor family home featured a large garden and a garage populated by the latest Pontiacs or Oldsmobiles that were were refuelled from the family petrol bowser.
The house was within walking distance of the Canterbury Baptist Church, which Alfred attended three times each Sunday. This, he would later say, exposed him to "enough religion to last a lifetime".
In 1923, Alfred was one of 68 boys who attended the first day of Carey Baptist Grammar School in Kew, as a foundation scholar.
On leaving school in 1933, he was offered a place at the Laycock woollen mills in Bradford, England, but instead accepted an offer as a messenger at the leading stockbroker, J. B. Were & Sons.
A year later, aged 19, the proprietor, Staniforth Ricketson, offered Alfred a steamship ticket and a place in the London office on condition that he would fund his own way back to Australia.
Aged 21, he returned to J.B. Were in Melbourne, and in 1939 married Phyllis Garnham - a stenographer at the firm. They settled in a house surrounded by open farmland in North Balwyn.
In 1941, Alfred joined the AIF as a field gunner and saw active service in New Guinea. By the time he was demobbed in late 1945, he had reached the rank of lieutenant.
Before he went to war he had one son and by the time he was demobbed he was the father of four boys, including twins - their ages closely correlating with his army leave.
Alfred immediately established his own stockbroking firm and by 1949 was elected to the committee of the Stock Exchange of Melbourne, aged 33. He was elected chairman of the Melbourne exchange in 1960, and began working with the ANZ Bank in a joint venture to rehouse the stock exchange in a new high-rise building at 351 Collins Street with a vast, modern trading floor unencumbered by pillars, featuring chalkboards for posting bids and trades.
Alfred was later appointed chairman of the Australian Associated Stock Exchanges, and in 1966 he was made a Commander of the British Empire for his services to the finance industry.
His direct association with Carey Grammar was rekindled in 1949 when he joined the council of the Old Carey Grammarians Association, and joined the school council as the association's representative.
He was president of the OCGA three times. With Eric Dunshea, head of Dunlop Australia and president of the school council, Alfred embarked on an ambitious 15-year program of fund-raising under the names Towards a Greater Carey, Forward Carey and Onward Carey. These efforts resulted in a memorial assembly hall, world-class science block, a new preparatory school, a gymnasium, a complex of sports ovals and track and field facilities at Bulleen, as well as additional classrooms. Further development included a chapel and the Mellor Library.
Alfred was on the school council for 42 years and president from 1972 to 1981. In 1990, he established the school archives with his second wife, Ann (nee Walsh), whom he married in 1974 after he divorced Phyllis in 1971. He was still attending the school three days a week until late 2010. As honorary archivist he displayed a prodigious knowledge of former students and of the school's history. In his later years, he was seen as the patriarch of Carey Grammar. He had spent so much time at the school over his life that one long-standing senior master once remarked: "It seems to me that Alfred really never left Carey."
(Source: John Mellor)
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