By WAYNE THOMPSON
Orchardist. Born at Oratia, Waitakere, in 1930. Died last Sunday of liver cancer.
The fruit-packing shed on Gordon Sunde's Waitakere foothills orchard was the scene of earnest debates on socialist ideals, more often than not fuelled by bottles of full-bodied home-made wine.
It was the Westie version of cafe society
- without a salmon or what we now know as a chardonnay socialist in sight.
Mr Sunde forged his ideals for society while growing up on the orchard which was hacked out from hard Oratia scrubland by his father Dick - a former gumdigger from Dalmatia, Yugoslavia.
As a 17-year-old, Mr Sunde joined hundreds of volunteers from throughout the world who flocked to Yugoslavia to help to rebuild the country after it was ravaged by the Second World War.
While there he toiled on a highway project for two years, then saw another side to communism when he had to wait six months for permission to leave the country and travel back to New Zealand.
As soon as he was back in West Auckland Mr Sunde joined the Labour Party and became electorate right-hand-man for local MP and cabinet minister, Dr Martyn Findlay QC.
While running a dry-cleaning business in New Lynn until returning to the family's Shaw Rd orchard in 1969, he entered into the spirit of New Lynn's multicultural village atmosphere and often surprised his customers by greeting them in their native languages.
His scholarship of West Auckland's different races and people made him a sought-after speaker at weddings and funerals.
For 21 years he was on the executive of the Waitakere Licensing Trust. Under his chairmanship the trust avoided the financial troubles of many of their counterparts elsewhere in the country.
It continued to heartily bankroll the district's cultural, sporting and charitable activities.
He was president of the 600-strong Dalmatian Cultural Society and in recent years, as the bloodshed ravaged the country in which he spent so much time, he passionately blocked a move to exclude other people of Yugoslavia from the society's membership.
In 1998 he was elected to the Waitakere City Council as a member of the politically neutral Go Waitakere ticket.
During this time he campaigned to trim rates and allow reasonable use of private land in the foothills of the Waitakere Ranges.
Mr Sunde is survived by his wife Lorna, sons Lance and Rex, and five grandchildren.
