Les Marney remembered for loving life and feeding the community

He was 80 years old.

Mr Marney was born in Cairns, and spent his early years there learning to be self-sufficient.

He was still young when his siblings and father moved to Huskisson, and then to Bomaderry where his father was working as a mechanic, and Les earned pocket money washing the mechanics' clothes.

Mr Marney became one of Nowra High School's first students, but left at the age of 15 to start an apprenticeship with baker Roger Maconachie.

That meant riding his bike from Bomaderry to Nowra in the early hours of the day to meet the 2am start that went with a baker's working hours, until he managed to find board closer to work.

He also spent time working for Ron Van Den Berg, where he met John Reminis Senior, who described Mr Marney as "the new gun pasty cook in Nowra that everybody wanted to employ".

At school Mr Marney developed a passion for sport, taking part in gymnastics, tennis swimming and later rugby league with the Nowra Warriors.

Mr Reminis said Mr Marney "was only five foot six, but he played with the attitude of a 10 foot giant".

That brought him undone when aged in his early 20s and playing for the Warriors against the Newtown Jets.

When tackling a much larger opponent Mr Marney suffered a severe back injury, requiring spinal fusion surgery and six months in plaster.

After that work was hard to find, and Mr Marney became assistant manager at the Nowra KFC store when it opened in Kinghorne Street, and later he and wife of 61 years Denise opened a mixed business in Plunkett Street.

But the call of baking was always there, and Les opened Marney's Pie Shop in the Normal Ross Arcade - located on the site now occupied by Nowra's Aldi store.

That was followed by a small shop in Bomaderry near the railway station, and eventually expanding to take over a bakery at South Nowra.

In between was plenty of time on the water - surfing at Culburra beach, spearfishing at Honeymoon Bay and waterskiing on the Shoalhaven River.

Marney's Pies was a household name in the Shoalhaven and beyond for 23 years, with Denise recalling how customers would call from Sydney ahead of travelling to the Shoalhaven, making sure Les would set aside some of his oyster pies for them to pick up.

At the time Marney's pies had a large workforce, giving several young bakers their start in the field.

While Les and Denise "built their life around the bakery", according to Mr Reminis, the business had to be sold when Mr Marney needed further back surgery at the age of 50.

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After that he ran a video store for six years and worked on and off at different bakeries, before retiring at the age of 70 after suffering a mild heart attack.

But that didn't mean life was easy, with Les and Denise losing their son Craig in 2017.

There were many sides to Mr Marney, who was on the board of directors at the Shoalhaven Ex-Services Club for 14 years.

"He was a fisherman, he was a pastry cook, he was a good father, he was a hard worker," Mrs Marney said.

She recalled her husband's softer side that was shown in the way he regularly fed the magpies that came tapping on his kitchen window if he was slow coming forth with food.

Mr Marney is survived by wife Denise, son Glen, and Glen and Craig's families.