EWA & the death of Alec Shand

Barrister Alec Shand has died. His colourful life is well covered in Mark McGinness' obituary.

Outside the Northern Rivers where he had a farm and practiced in his later years, Alec Shand was not well known in New England. Yet he occupied a niche in New England history.

I don't know what it was about the Shands, but they were all larger than life. This was certainly true of Alec's uncle Don Shand.

John Athison's piece in the Australian Dictionary of Biography draws out some of the colour of the man. In 1947, Don founded East West Airlines, the airline seen by so many New Englanders as their airline. Alec's father, John Wentworth Shand, became a board member.  

Now what I had not realised is that Alec later became a board member. There is actually in my mind a degree of confusion here. Mark's obituary refers to Alec as Don's cousin. He was in fact Don's nephew. So I'm not quite sure how father and son fitted together in the history of East West.

I have written a number of posts on EWA. I will do an overview post at a later point.