Club says goodbye to stalwart

‘He would get on his gopher and drive across from the golf course to get to every veterans barbecue each month,’ club president Ben Stephen said.

‘He will be particularly missed at next month’s special general meeting because he was at all club meetings.’

Born in 1917, Mr Laverack spent his childhood at the family orchard near Karragullen in the Perth Hills, visiting his grandparents in Cottesloe before the family moved to the suburb in 1929.

He held his bronze medallion for 78 years after he joined the Cottesloe SLSC in 1936, during which he and fellow members Cecil Addison and Alex Prior maintained a surf lifesaving presence on Cottesloe Beach during the early years of World War II,

Mr Laverack joined the RAAF and served as an intelligence sergeant in Darwin.

About 1949, he started worked at Snaden’s Pianos in Perth before buying the company in 1968 and moving it to Nedlands, before it was sold in 1982.

‘David was always a very knowledgeable piano man who continued his interest and encouraged musicians,’ said Zenith Music owner Lionel Cranfield, who bought the land on which the business stands in 2002.

‘He was loved by piano tuners and there was a fair contingent at his funeral.’

Mr Laverack never learnt to play. ‘His mother wanted to teach him but he found it more fun shooting parrots in the orchard for three pence each,’ daughter Margaret Kent said.

Mr Laverack leaves his wife Nora, daughters Margaret and Diana, three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.