Stuart Weir
Background
Stuart Weir entered Duntroon Military College straight after school and graduated in 1942. By the time of his enforced medical retirement from the Army in 1971, he had gained the distinction of being the only officer who had commanded troops in combat in four wars. As a platoon commander in Papua New Guinea in World War II, he was awarded the Military Cross for bravery. He served as a company commander in the Korean War, and as battalion commander in the Malayan Terrorist Emergency. As brigade commander in Vietnam, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. His peacetime roles included lecturing in military history while an instructor at Duntroon in the 1950s.
He married Loloma Green in 1944 and they had one son. Both Stuart and Loloma spent their childhood years in Fiji, Loloma as the daughter of a missionary and Stuart as the son of a manager for the Colonial Sugar Refining company. After their marriage, they moved about as required by the Army, living in Melbourne, Queenscliff and other parts of Victoria, Canberra and Brisbane as well as England and Malaya (as it was then known) with Stuart pursuing a keen interest in various aspects of local history wherever he went, particularly in Australia.
Buderim - life and community
Stuart and Loloma bought property in Buderim in 1971 with retirement in mind and made the move in 1977. Maintaining his long-held passion for history, Stuart joined the Buderim Historical Society and was a tireless worker over many years in various roles - historical researcher, gardener, painter, handyman, map compiler and author. Always keen to share his passion, he conducted walking tours of Buderim’s historic sites and led bus trips to historic sites in other regions.
In 1983, ‘The Year of the Tree’, he identified and listed Buderim’s historic trees, some of which were subsequently listed with the National Trust. In the same year, he compiled maps identifying Buderim’s historic sites – one for self-guided walking tours and another more suited to driving tours. In 1986, he painstakingly researched the origin of Buderim’s street names, and arranged publication of the booklet 'Beautiful Buderim: origin of the street' names from his own resources. Sales of both maps and the booklet benefited the Historical Society. His main research work focused on the lives of Buderim’s nineteenth-century pioneers. Drawing on records held in library archives in Brisbane, he compiled comprehensive notes which are now held at Buderim’s Pioneer Cottage as reference material for community use.
Stuart was a keen golfer but Pioneer Cottage was his main passion. He also loved and took great pride in the beauty of Buderim. When the Maroochy Council initiated a ‘Blot Spots’ project, he worked on identifying and personally cleaning up areas that needed tidying up. He was also very supportive of formative proposals for setting up a Buderim Foundation.
Stuart died in 2004. His ashes were buried under a frangipani tree in the grounds of Pioneer Cottage, where the fruits of much of the labour of his ‘retirement years’ are evident.
Donor: The Weir family
