Noel Pharazyn

William Noel Pharazyn MC (10 April 1894 – 11 June 1980) was a New Zealand soldier, businessman, journalist, lecturer and trade unionist.

[2] A few days before his death it was announced he had bought 12,800,000 acres of cattle country in the northern part of South Australia.

[3] Ella Elgar, whose furniture collection was in the Dominion Museum,[4] was a daughter of his father's first marriage to Frances Margaret Buckland who died in Italy in 1883.

[10] The British Army reduced its establishment in 1923 (see Geddes Axe), so he took his gratuity and entered business in Australia but by the end of the 1920s had decided he had more important things to do.

[7] Though his wealth, military background, political, pastoral and business connections and manner might have suggested otherwise Pharazyn became a committed left-wing intellectual in the early 1930s.

In 1938 Pharazyn obtained election as secretary of the New Zealand Federated Clerical and Office Staff Employees' Association and became the union's main spokesperson.