Ines Ohlendorf
Background
Ines was born in 1909, a few years after her parents left the UK to run a coffee plantation at Tapachula, Mexico, near the Guatemalan border. She spent her early childhood there with her sister Grace and brother Ken. In 1916, their father died from typhoid, a disease that struck the whole family. In the same year, their intrepid mother took Ines and her siblings to England for schooling, a journey that involved travel by bullock wagon across country to the Gulf of Mexico, then by ship to England. After settling the children in school, she returned to Mexico but went back each year to accompany the children on summer vacation to Cornwall. Ines and her siblings spent 10 years at school in England, during which time their mother remarried and lived with her new husband on a large ranch. Ines and her siblings returned to Mexico in 1926-27 and lived at the ranch with their parents.
In 1932, Ines married entomologist Walter Ohlendorf, who was working at the ranch. Ines often joined Walter and other visiting entomologists on expeditions into the hinterland. She developed a keen interest in butterflies which she collected for display. After the expropriation of land holdings in 1938, Ines and Walter started up a small farm in Torreon, growing cotton and grapes. They divorced in 1949 and Ines then lived with her widowed mother in Mexico City, where she continued her interest in butterflies. She and her sister Grace’s stepson, Peter Jones, put together one of the best butterfly collections in Mexico. Ines gave it to Mexico’s natural history museum in 1965 when she and her mother left for Florida, where Grace and her husband had moved.
Like Ines and her siblings, Peter and his sister did their schooling in the UK while their parents were living in Mexico. Their birth mother died when they were quite young and Grace was their father’s second wife. Peter went back to Mexico after his schooling but his sister stayed in the UK and he did not see her again until 1976, when he, Grace and Ines visited her at Woombye. It was on this trip that they made their first visit to Buderim.
Life on Buderim
Ines and Grace visited Buderim again in 1978. In 1983, together with Peter, they bought a house in Sage Street, although he did not join them until 1985. Ines and Grace were soon part of the Buderim community, enjoying their weekly activities with the Bridge Club, and helping with Meals on Wheels – a regular commitment that Ines, with Peter’s assistance, kept up until she was nearly 90. Ines was also a member of the Sunshine Coast Art Group and was an accomplished and prolific painter. Her preferred medium was watercolour and favourite subjects included seascapes and floral displays.
Ines enjoyed Buderim and the friends she made in the community. Good friend and near neighbour Greta Savill described her as a quiet, self-effacing but generous woman. Peter Jones recalled the weekly picnics he shared with Ines, and her enjoyment of the delightful spots they discovered around Buderim and the wider Sunshine Coast and hinterland.
Ines died in 2003
Donor: Anonymous
