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been two.' If so, Richard the father (Dick) must have left Australia at the end of 1896.
Tom seems to have travelled to South Africa in 1891 or 92, as the deepening depression
spread and sank towards its nadir in 1893.
Although Melbourne directories name Tom as a householder in North Fitzroyin 1891; he was in
Brunswick in 1892-93; in Clifton Hill in 1894; and in North Fitzroy between 1895 to 1898, this
does not mean that he was actually in residence, only that he was the head of the household and
that a property was rented in his name. His wife, Catherine, is listed as being the proprietor of a
ham shop in North Fitzroy in 1897. But a ham and beef shop in North Carlton in 1899 is
registered under Tom's name.
If Tom went to South Africa in 1891 he would have sailed from Melbourne to Cape Town.
It seems that only two ships did this specific journey in 1891 - the Damascus in March, and the
Australasian in May - although other ships sailed to Cape Town from Sydney and Adelaide.
There were 52 passengers on the Damascus and 38 on the Australasian. But we will never
know if Tom was on either, or none, of these ships, as shipping registers at the Cape only listed
the names of first-class passengers and merely noted the numbers of those in steerage.
Moreover, as Tom and his brothers were British citizens, they would have been allowed free
entry into South Africa (another British colony) and no official records of their entry, or exit, will
exist.
Tom would not have lingered in Cape Town but, as with most other Australian immigrants,
would have made his way, partly by train, to
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Johannesburg in the Transvaal. And as both his brothers are associated with Johannesburg, it
seems likely that Tom, the first of them to cross the Indian Ocean, also settled there.
In September 1891 Tom was 32. A stonecutter by trade (which implies he worked in quarries
and did not shape stones, as a mason would), he had a wife and three children, the youngest of
whom, Thomas Gordon, had been born in January 1889, in the family home at 533 Nicholson
St.
What led Tom to South Africa? Was there some friend or relative who had gone before? Or
was he responding to some compelling advertisement in a Melbourne paper for men to work in
the South African gold and diamond mines, or to assist in the building of their cities in stone?
Gold and diamonds had been found in increasing quantities since the 1860's. But it was not until
March 1886 that a part-time prospector struck lucky on an outcrop of the gold-bearing reef of
the Witwatersrand (Ridge of White Waters) and sparked the greatest gold rush ever known.
Curiously, the discoverer was an Australian digger, called George Harrison - a stonemason by
trade. He had been employed to help renovate a homestead on a widow's farm and spent his
spare time fossicking about the wind-swept veld. The Witwatersrand was almost 6,000 feet
above sea-level, on a high plateau, which provided the future city with a fine climate, crisp and
generally dry. Pretoria, when built 35 miles to the north, was off that plateau and 1,600 feet
lower down.
Harrison, chipping away on a likely outcrop, picked up a piece of rock which, when crushed
and panned in a kitchen basin in the farmhouse, revealed a gleaming golden tail. He had a
contract with the owner of the land, GC Oosthuizen, who wrote to the Afrikaner president of
the Transvaal, Paul Kruger, saying that payable gold had been found on his farm, and Harrison
himself was persuaded to visit Kruger in July 1886 to confirm this fact. But it was not until
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