STEWART Kerr was a man passionate about a number of things, none more so than the family he lived with and the environment he lived in.
Stewart was born on 26 April 1971 at Dandenong Hospital, grew up in Templestowe and died 43 years later, on 4 July in Healesville.
His wife, Sabine Ritz-Kerr, said that he was a friendly and passionate man, who she had encountered 13 years ago when he was running a pub-crawl for backpackers in Melbourne.
He was studying to be a masseuse at the time, and later fulfilled that dream, working in Healesville.
“I think he was always interested in massage and healing people,” she said.
Stewart was involved in a number of environmental organisations and pro-environment protests, and Sabine said the world around him was one of his biggest passions.
That, according to Sabine, rubbed off on his children, Alma and Frieda, who were already following in his footsteps and were keenly interested in the environment.
One of his biggest tasks in recent years was constructing a straw-bale studio on his property, which Sabine said was a group effort with a team of friends and family members.
Before settling down in Healesville, Sabine and Stewart spent a year travelling around Australia, and got married on the top of Mount Donna Buang in Warburton in January 2006.
Stewart had been living with cancer for over five years, and donated his body to Melbourne University for medical research after he died.
Rather than have a funeral, about 100 of Stewart’s friends and family instead gathered at the Badger Creek Hall on 12 July to have an event celebrating his life.
Sabine said the attendees all came along in bright colours, rather than dark funeral clothing.
“That’s always what he wanted – he loved life,” she said.
“We had a celebration of his life, with slideshows and mentioning all of his activities and all that he has done.”
She said her favourite thing about Stewart was simply his outlook on life.
“It was just his positivity – he was always positive and going for things,” she said.
“He was encouraging other people, and enabling other people to do things.”
Stewart Kerr is survived by his two brothers, Andrew and David, his sister, Brenda and his parents, Patricia and William.
