People Australia

Terence Patrick Walsh (1908-1977) telegraphist and trade union official

Birth: 1908 at Coonamble, New South Wales, son of native-born parents Walter Walsh (1873-1912), tailor, and Ada, née Stanger (1873-1954). Marriage: 1931 at Wallaabadah, NSW, to Quirindi-born Kathleen Margaret Jenkins (1910-1979), a typist. They had one daughter and three sons. Death: 26 April 1977 in Royal Prince Alfred Hospital at Camperdown, Sydney; usual residence Llangollan Avenue, Enfield. Religion: Catholic. 

• Official and leader of the Amalgamated Postal Officers’ Union from 1939 to 1967. Member of the union’s federal executive. Secretary of the NSW branch from 1954, elected federal secretary about 1960.
• Union representative on Amenities Committee, Food Advisory Committee, PMG Relief Committee.
• Also prominent in Australian Labor Party, NSW branch. Delegate to State Conference; sometime senior vice president of Enfield branch of the ALP.
• Retired from the Post Office in December 1968.
• An ‘energetic and enthusiastic unionist’.
• One of his sons Gerald Patrick (Gerry) Walsh (1934-2014), a university lecturer and historian, was the Australian Dictionary of Biography’s most prolific contributor.
• Cause of death: renal failure (days), carcinoma of bladder (years), hypertension (years) and cerebro-vascular disease (years).

Sources
The Australian Postal Clerk, 28 May 196?; Frank Waters, Postal Unions & Politics; a history of the Amalgamated Postal Workers’ Union of Australia (Denis Murphy, ed.) (St Lucia, 1978), p 166.