Wednesday 3 March 2021

From Bennachie to Bulawayo and Beyond


Sandy's generation at the family farm Huxterstone near Aberdeen, Scotland 1934

This blog is for the Robertson and Thompson clans on my father’s side: my grandfather David Mavor was a Robertson and my grandmother Elsie Jeannie was a Thompson. It also features the Jobling - Moriarty clans on my mother’s side later on.

While I find it fascinating to discover how we all came into being, of course writing a family history is fraught with danger. If I cause offence, none intended. If I miss something important out or there are errors, do tell!

As for me, I'm Tuppy aka Cheryl Margaret Robertson (married name Mandy), and am the younger daughter of Sandy Robertson.

Snippets:

  • Uncle Andy Thompson found gold in Southern Rhodesia in the 1920s.
  • My maternal grandfather CS Jobling had a state funeral there in 1934.
  • My maternal grandmother Mollie left central London in the 1920s to live in a rondavel in the middle of the African bush.
  • In 1944 my father's cousin Margaret Leslie Robertson secretly worked at Bletchley Park, home of the World War 11 codebreakers.
  • Auntie Elsie Cordell worked for Rhodesia’s Prime Minister Ian Douglas Smith in the 1960s. When I knew her she had a magnificent purple rinse mane; however when she was born she was covered in coarse black hair.
  • Auntie Erica and Uncle King Robertson received a letter from Queen Elizabeth II in 2013 for being married for 60 years.
  • My nephew Vaughan Robertson Johnstone was born 95 years later to the day (14th March) from when his great-grandfather David Mavor Robertson was born.

The Robertson & Thompson clans

Using memoirs written by my aunt Elsie Anderson Robertson (married Cordell), William Thompson Robertson (my uncle Bill) and writings my father James Alexander Robertson (Sandy) and his cousin Morris Thompson compiled together; plus contributions from Arthur Robertson (my uncle King) and his cousin Margaret Leslie Robertson (Melvin), I have attempted a précis of the early years.

Sandy was of a family of 7. From L-R: Leslie, Bill, Sandy, Elsie, Margaret; bottom of photo: King and Catherine



My great-grandparents - Robertson


My father’s grandfather was Alexander Troup Robertson, born at Auchmill, Bucksburn, on 19 August 1852, died 28 September 1924 at Drumoak Manse. His father was Alexander Robertson born at Fetteresso (Stonehaven) in 1819. His mother was Mary Smith.

On 18 July 1883 he married Bathia Leslie (born 2 June 1859, died 4 October 1940), at the free church in Kingswells. Both were buried in the churchyard in Drumoak, along with few other Robertson relatives including great-grandfather’s sisters Mary and Bella. All these places are in the Aberdeen district.

Alexander Troup, Bathia and four of their six children John, Alec, Mary (aka Polly) and David in the mid-1890s moved to a small farm or croft called Muiryheadless near the village of Insch, which lies in the shadow of the Bennachie range of hills in north eastern Scotland. The other two children Bella and Jim were born on the farm.

Insch was apparently created a town by Mary Queen of Scots in 1565. A leaflet entitled ‘Historic Insch’ by local resident Mrs Margaret G Clemo stated, "The name Insch is generally considered to be of Celtic origin and to signify an island," so it appears that at one time the village where the church stands had been surrounded by water.

My great grandparents eventually moved back to Drumoak, Aberdeen, to live with their minister son John and family, taking with them Troup's siblings Polly, Bella and Jim.

My great-grandparents – Thompson


Elsie Jeannie Thompson’s parents were William Thompson born 17 June 1864 at Old Machar, Aberdeen, died 24 March 1924; and Elsie Dingwall Anderson born around 1863 at Kingshill Farm, Countesswells, died 1936 - Dingwall was her mother’s maiden surname.

As a young man, William was sent to the Bennachie district by his seafaring father Andrew Thompson (born 1834; died 20 December 1888) to learn about farming. William’s father was, at different times, a master of two sailing ships - the Ella Beatrice (a barque) and the tea clipper Mary Stewart. 
A little bit about Andrew - he was unfortunate enough to run the Ella Beatrice aground in “very thick snowy weather and a hard gale blowing” just off the coast of Japan in February 1881. A naval court held at Kanagawa, Japan, suspended his certificate for a year but the family remember the incident more for the heroic deed of a cabin boy who, as the ship was sinking “..gathered up the ship’s Bible and Captain Thompson’s gold watch before she went down, without loss of life," wrote Sandy.

"Nothing is known of what happened to the watch, but the Bible was restored and put between new covers, and is today a treasured possession of Anne Findlay, a niece of Barbara Anderson.”

Captain Andrew Thompson married Catherine Booth Caird; they had five boys and a girl Catherine Ella Beatrice, the latter of whom was born aboard the Ella Beatrice in the South China Sea. She was quite a character who lived until she was 94, and was known to the next generations as Auntie Kate, her daughter being Barbara Anderson.

Andrew died aboard the Mary Stewart on 20 December 1888 and was buried at sea.
Auntie Kate (no clue as to the man she is with)

Back to great-grandfather William. His siblings were George Caird Thompson, b. 17 Jan 1862 Old Machar, Aberdeen, d. 28 Oct 1931; Andrew Thompson, b. 25 Mar 1867 Old Machar, Aberdeen, d. 29 Jun 1941 Australia; Alexander Caird Thompson, b? d. 18 May 1945; Thomas Thompson, b. 1873, Scotland, d. 4 Sep 1900 England; Catherine Ella Beatrice, b. 8 Oct 1875, d. 6 May 1969.

William learned about agriculture from farmer Mr Anderson, a distant relative (but not connected with the Andersons mentioned earlier), of Mill o’ Wester Coull farm some 25km from Insch. William later married Mr Anderson's daughter Elsie Dingwall Anderson, in 1880. 

She was an artist, and one of her drawings is still with family in Australia. Sandy said, “One shows a barefoot young woman with a wheatsheaf. The other is of a cottage, or farmhouse.”
The wheatsheaf drawing

A bearer of 13 children!!!


Of William and Elsie Dingwall Thompson’s 13 children (the elder five were born at Mill o’ Wester Coull and the other four at Ladywell Farm near Insch), four died in infancy: two of diphtheria and a baby girl of multiple burns after a cat upset an oil lamp over the infant’s cot.

The surviving nine offspring were John, George, Andy (Andrew), Elsie Jeannie (my grandmother), Bill (William), Charlie (Charles Caird), Peggy (Maggie Wilken Thompson), Bob (Robert) and Arthur.

Referring to the previously mentioned leaflet ‘Historic Insch’, there was one reference to Ladywell. “It was the venue for the Upper Garioch Champion ploughing match in 1893. This is known because the ploughmen recovered from their labours of the day by joining in the celebrations marking the inauguration of a drinking fountain near the Station Hotel,” writes Sandy.

As a purely observational sideline, Sandy said that some of the family would have been more familiar with Bennachie Pure Highland Malt than the liquid that came out of that fountain. “It came in a bottle that carried the happy claim “there’s nae sair heids in Bennachie” (there are no sore heads in Bennachie).”

WW1


After World War 1 economic conditions in Scotland were dire. Among the millions who left the country in the decade after 1918 were five Thompson brothers who, writes Sandy, “were driven by a normal youthful urge to see the world and tame it, but unemployment - or certainly the lack of prospects - was the most powerful spur.”
The Thompson family during World War 1. Back: L-R: Andy, George, Elsie Jeannie, Bill, John.
Front: L-R: Charlie, William (father), Peggy, Bob, Arthur, Elsie Dingwall

  • John the eldest emigrated to New Zealand to farm. Had a son Charles and daughter Mona (Hendricks).
  • George ‘Dod’ Thompson, went to India for most of his life; he was involved in banking. King remembers posting letters to ‘Allahabad Bank, Lahore, Punjab, India’. He eventually returned to Scotland. Married to Betty. Son Ian; daughters Muriel and Jean (married Poultney) lived in Rhodesia later on.
  • Andy went to Southern Rhodesia in 1922. He found gold, and with fellow Scot Jimmy Forbes operated several mines there. Of note were the Piper Moss near Kwe Kwe and the Big Ben in Gwanda. In the early years they were quarrying stone for the Rhodesia Railways at Daisyfield and later turned to producing bricks. Married Marion Woods on May 2, 1931; children Audrey (now Boynton) and twins Andrew and Margaret (Negus).
  • Charlie joined his brother in 1926 after a few years in the West Indies planting sugar on an estate in Cuba. He was the life and soul of the party. Married Dorothy; children Dinky (Dianne) and Billy.
  • Arthur at 16 was apprenticed to a bank and in 1925 became an associate member of the Institute of Bankers in Scotland. Later on he went to plant rubber in Sumatra. He joined his brothers in the gold businesses in Southern Rhodesia 1933. Married Janet Olwen Morris; children Morris and Arthur David. The latter's kids are: Andrew Wayne Thompson, Ilona Thompson and Lara Janet Holderness.
The two that stayed in the UK were Bob, who became a physician in Tamworth, Staffordshire and married Betty; and Bill the oldest, was a farmer at Stonyford near Tarland in Aberdeenshire. He married Margaret; their children were George, Molly and Bill.
Peggy went with her sister Elsie Jeannie to Africa, see later.

Buchan Doric


Sandy said that the Thompsons spoke Buchan Doric, a dialect little known outside the country north-west of Aberdeen. "It is in its way as earthy as the Burns dialect, and certainly as capable of conveying every nuance of often bawdy bucolic humour. The Thompson brothers of Rhodesia revelled in it. They laughed a lot, not least at themselves, but never more than when the story was of simple country folk scoring off the posher kind.”

Sandy wrote of my great-grandfather William Thompson. 
“He was a diabetic, and in the days before insulin was discovered little could be done about it, save to follow a very strict diet. Molly (daughter of Bill of Stonyford) remembers sitting on his knee at the dining room table (at Prospect Cottage, in the village of Insch, after his retirement from Ladywell). She was watching him turn the pages of this stamp albums when from his pocket he produced a paper bag of ‘sweeties’ – usually a confection called satin cushions - and popped one into Mollie’s mouth, one into his own, saying: ‘Noo, dinna tell your granny’.”

My grandparents - Robertson


David Mavor Robertson was born on 14 March 1892 at 86 Auchmill, Bucksburn in Aberdeen, died in Rhodesia in 1965. Elsie Jeannie Thompson was born in Coull, Aberdeen on 11 July 1891, died in Southern Rhodesia on 29 February 1952. David was the 4th of six children born to Alexander Troup and Bathia Leslie.
The family moved from Aberdeen to Muiryheadless farm near Insch in the mid-1890s. 
As a young man our Grandpa David Mavor worked in Canada as a lumberjack. He was also a sniper in Italy with the 2nd Gordon Highlanders during World War 1, supporting the Italians in 1917 against the Austrians. He always refused to eat sadza or mealie (maize) meal porridge after the many months of eating polenta on army rations, according to my Inyati cousins.
After the armistice, from a demob camp on the Isle of Wight he handed in his rifle alongside some fellow soldiers, then walked back to Scotland, the British authorities having proposed sending them to suppress the rebellion in Ireland. He said that he had nothing against the Irish. Apparently people along the way were friendly and welcoming, fed the returnees and let them sleep in barns. He never got his service medals or pension. 
While at Muiryheadless David married Elsie Jeannie Thompson (known as Jeannie) and took over Muiryheadless from his father. Here three of their seven children were born: Elsie (6 Feb 1922), Leslie (24 Aug 1923) and William (28 Dec 1924).
My grandparents' wedding day. David was 6ft 1”, Jeannie 5ft 11”  

Elsie described the rumpus she inadvertently caused on 6 February 1922 at Muiryheadless. 
“As the first born, my appearance appalled and saddened my parents for coarse black hair grew from my ears, nose and cheeks. Imagine the horror, contemplating the future; theirs and mine. I gather I became acceptable when the hair all fell out a couple of days later.”

Elsie, Bill, Leslie 1925/26

The other siblings were born in Aberdeenshire: Margaret (20 Jan 1927), King (18 Dec 1928), Catherine (?1929) and Sandy (4 October 1932). My Dad was born in Newhills parish five miles from Aberdeen city. He was named after their Roman Catholic uncle Father Jimmy Robertson, who was staying with the family when Sandy first hollered. In the late 1930s Jimmy famously walked to Scotland from Rome after completing his training to be a priest.

Elsie said that King was so nicknamed “..to pacify him when he was inconsolably outraged at not being chosen to succeed King George V”. Sandy told me that as a child King emphatically declared that he was “the King of the Castle” because his name was Arthur.

By the year 1927 the family including my great-grandmother Elsie Dingwall and Peggy Thompson had moved to East Huxterstone in the Kingswells district to an 89-acre property four miles out of Aberdeen.

My great-grandfather William Thompson had already died of diabetes on 24 March 1924.

Elsie Dingwall lived with the Robertson family until she died in 1936. Peggy also lived with them and accompanied them to Africa. 

Huxterstone


The property was “tough to hoe,” said Bill and was “within sighting distance of Kingshill Farm, Countesswells" where Elsie Dingwall was born.

Said Elsie, “The name Huxterstone derived from the lonely massive round stone in one of the fields (parks we called them) on which hucksters in days gone by used to rest on their way into the town with their wares. The stone was lonely in the sense the fields around were pure soil, which showed up a lovely wet chocolate-sauce colour under the plough.”
Huxterstone, the family home in the Kingswells
area near Aberdeen around 1927




The homestead was a two-storey farmhouse built in the latter half of the 1800s of thick granite walls and a slate roof. Dairying was the main operation; the milk being delivered door-to-door in Aberdeen by David in a Model A or T Ford.

Said Bill, “I well remember encouraging him to get the thing going at 40mph sometimes, on the way home from delivering. That always created great excitement. Later he sold the milk in bulk….."

“The milking process started at five in the morning and again at five in the afternoon. I used to, at the age of 10, milk a few cows in the morning and evening.”
Bill at the Braemar Games 1936

Other jobs “were harvesting potatoes, singling turnips, in the evening feeding fowls, chopping wood and on occasion taking a sow on a walk to Cairnery Piggery to be serviced.
I frequently baked oatcakes or did a bit of ironing. Another pastime was knitting. My specialty was cushion covers for some reason.”

Elsie said she never heard her mother complain. “As well as chores in the house, milk-house, outside kitchen and washhouse, she used to help with the milking, leaning her head covered in a cloth bonnet against the cow's side."

"As well as humans (we numbered 14 at our peak) who had to be fed three times a day, there was poultry at all stages, turkeys in season and pigs. When crockery got broken, it was great fun to take big stones and smash it into tiny pieces as grit for the turkeys and hens.”
Bill, Leslie, Elsie, Margaret 1930

The family, a house servant and mostly illiterate hired hands made up the 14. Bill occasionally wrote letters for them while they dictated, usually to their wives or girlfriends.

He said, “Although I was not aware of it really it must have been a major job to keep that lot fed and housed in those depressed times. My mother worked herself ragged in the process although everybody – young and old – had to weigh in and lend a hand at all sorts of chores."

"The staple diet was of course oatmeal in the various forms of porridge, oatcakes, brose and even soup with a cupful or so of hare’s blood thrown in for seasoning. Oats. ‘A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people’. Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary.”
 Charlie, Arthur, Peggy, Elsie Dingwall at Inyanga
Southern Rhodesia 1935

Auntie Peg went to Africa to see her brothers a couple of times, in 1935 taking her mother Elsie Dingwall (72 by then) with her. Among many adventures was a sight-seeing flight over the Victoria Falls, quite something in those days.

Elsie Dingwall Thompson at Inyanga 1935
 
“She also landed up in a vehicle stranded in the middle of a flooding river and was piggy-backed out to the bank astride an African passenger,” wrote Elsie.

Catherine 


Catherine died aged six in 1935, Elsie believed due to a hole in the heart, Bill thought perhaps rheumatic fever. He said, “I vividly remember attending her funeral with my father on a cold winter’s day in the snow. Women did not go to funerals in Scotland in those days. She was buried in Newhills cemetery, which was another place revisited by us in 1977.”

[My parents, Bill and Molly toured Scotland in a camper van that year. The Four Mile House is a good landmark for it is just across the brae from Huxterstone”, said Bill.]

Peggy and her mum Elsie returned from Southern Rhodesia after Cathie's death. A year later (1936), my great-grandmother died of peritonitis in Keppelstone Nursing Home in Aberdeen.

My mum's photo album - the 1977 visit

Diphtheria


During those post-Great Depression years Elsie did not feel any hardships but understood that hard cash was a grim problem all over Britain. The north east of England and parts of Scotland were of course greatly affected by the economic decline, with the loss of hundreds of jobs.

In 1936 and early 1937 half the family fell ill, first with scarlet fever and soon after that, with diphtheria. Some family members including Jeannie and Bill were sent to the Aboyne Isolation Hospital.

“Everything, simply everything, had to be washed with disinfectant or destroyed. The washing lines were full for the umpteenth time and the green was covered in white things…. Auntie Peg was very energetic about seeing that all was done properly,” said Elise, for she burned everything that could have been contaminated with the bacteria.

“Because Dad was a dairy farmer, although the milking still went on, all of it had to be poured away.”

Bill said “..the water supply was contaminated by effluent discharged into the stream which was our main water supply. All recovered completely with the exception of my elder brother Leslie who, as a result of the second infection, ended up needing a mastoid operation which left him deaf for the rest of his short life.”

Auntie Peg was a teacher and had a great influence in the lives of all the family. She read stories, introduced them to books and libraries, took them to pantomimes, organised picnics, Christmas parties at home and often took them out in her little car.

“At the suggestion of my uncles in Rhodesia, my parents were persuaded to move the whole family to Africa,” says Bill. “We left Huxterstone with I think, few regrets in late 1937.”

Grampa David left earlier to find a farm in Southern Rhodesia while the family squashed into rented accommodation in the top half of a house at 54 King Street in Aberdeen, sharing one toilet in the back yard with the other occupants of the house.

Kingswells today


Kingswells Parish Church in November 2007 taken
by Mick Kelsey, my brother-in-law




The Four Mile pub Bill mentioned


I wonder if this is all that remains of the farm?!


Voyage to Africa


My grandmother Jeannie, the six Robertson kids and Peggy Thompson left Scotland under the 1820 Settler Scheme and sailed on the SS Durham Castle steam passenger ship of the Union Castle Line from London’s East India Docks to Cape Town via the west coast of Africa.

Bill wrote, “The great day came in May 1938 when we set off on the trip to Africa. It was no small undertaking for my mother and Peg to set sail with six children for foreign shores. Peg had of course done it before but not with such a large contingent." 

"We left Aberdeen by train and headed for Glasgow which was currently holding the huge Empire Exhibition. This we examined in some detail and then took the train for London.”

“We spent about a week in London during which time the indefatigable Peg took us all round the sights and famous places in the city.” 

They stayed in a boarding house in Tavistock Square - three floors up and no lifts - near St Pancras station from which they would catch a train for the East India Docks.

“An incident which caused me and the others some anxious moments occurred on the morning of our departure when I became lost in London. I had been dispatched to post some last-minute letters at a post office the location of which I knew, being nearby."

"I must have been away for 15 minutes and returned to the boarding house only to find the others had left. Searched the nearby streets but did not find them – they had taken a different route to the post office. Imagine the panic. Eight passages to Cape Town booked and paid for now in jeopardy and no spare cash for such an emergency."

“I had the presence of mind to head for the station and asked someone for directions. Found my way there with little difficulty and took up post outside the entrance. After a while Peg appeared in a taxi. They had been cruising around the streets desperately looking for me. Happy reunion and no time for recriminations. We all got safely on the train to the docks, just in time."
Bill said, “The Durham Castle was our home for the next three weeks and all enjoyed the experience tremendously, especially older sister Elsie who was then 16.”

King adds, “We made one stop at Las Palmas and walked about the place, looking into a church where a service was in progress. I remember being embarrassed, thinking we were intruders.”

Bill liked the paw paws (papayas) and other exotic tropical goodies of the Canary Islands. “Goodbye to the land of oatmeal,” he wrote.

The ship also stopped at Lobito Bay in Angola, then went on to Cape Town where the 1820 Settler people met, fed and watered them.

[In January 1940 the ship, then HMS Durham Castle as she was requisitioned by the Admiralty during World War II, was hit by a mine and sunk off the coast at Cromarty, Scotland.]

From Cape Town they boarded the train which took three days to reach Bulawayo. “The strange names of stopping places along the way fascinated us - Lobatse, Mahalapye and Palapye,” said Elsie.

Steaming through Botswana (then it was the British protectorate of Bechuanaland), King saw “… piccanins running alongside in hope of pennies or food, some of them quite starkers. This disturbed me and I prayed that on the farm we were bound for all would be properly clothed; my prayers were not answered but I got over that in due course."

“The countryside was quite quite different from what I had been accustomed to, but I was prepared for that.”

On 8 June 1938 they arrived in Bulawayo via the Plumtree border post, to be met by David Robertson and the Thompson uncles.

Charlie Thompson

Aisleby


David rented a 3,000 acres farm of bush country about seven miles from Bulawayo called Aisleby. The house was originally the stables and had cement floors that needed constant polishing.

[The property is now the main Bulawayo sewerage farm, which is also a haven for wild birds – in one morning when I went to visit in October 2016 with a local birdwatching group I saw 68 different species. There were a few run-down buildings, but I wouldn’t know if the original farmhouse was still there.]

Aisleby farm in October 2016

A dairy herd was built up. Milking by hand began before dawn, then milk was delivered each day to private customers in town by Africans on bicycles and surplus went to the Bulawayo Creamery. “There was no shortage of African labour so the chores we were used to doing in Scotland were no longer the order of the day,” Bill said.

King had mixed feelings about the seven or eight years spent at Aisleby. “On one hand it was a paradise for juvenile undertakings like fishing, slaughter by catapult, shooting; on the other hand, it was a hellhole of malaria and certainly bilharzia in the Umgusa River, half a mile from the homestead.”


Small boys with dung on their feet


For six-year-old Sandy, it was fun to have kids of similar age to play with.

“What my new little dark friends made of the peculiar sheet-white and scraggy crumb that was thrust into their company will not have been recorded by any of them… They may have been intrigued, more likely amused, but realised at once that communication was going to be tricky because the new boy on the farm could scarcely speak simple English, never mind the vernacular, and when he opened his mouth at all it was to produce an incomprehensible mutter in the broad Scots dialect of distant Aberdeenshire,” he wrote.

Despite that, they got to know each other and introduced Sandy to the mysteries of life. They joined forces for the day’s mischiefs in the stables.

“The only no-go area was the dairy, a large, whitewashed hut where there was a cream separator, buckets and cans and some nefarious things that were sterilised in clouds of steam. This was also the place where milk was poured into sterilised bottles. Small boys with dung on their feet were particularly unwelcome,” said Sandy.

“Stealing molasses was part of the farmyard fun. The lovely gooey stuff arrived in 200 litre drums. It was poured, somewhat diluted, into chopped maize stover (mealie stalks) in a huge underground silo to sweeten the stuff for cattle feeds. This silage, together with the crushed maize seed, was served separately to the herd in their troughs, was the supplement that kept the milk flowing.”

Sandy with his first kill aged 13

“We were too young to try smoking. Most of the farm workers took nicotine, or worse, in one form or another,” and everyone seemed to take snuff then.

The homestead


Leslie, Bill, King and Sandy slept in a dormitory-type room behind the dining-room, off which was an enormous bathroom - their first home with a bathroom. A Rhodesian boiler (a 44-gallon drum encased in brick housing, with a fireplace below the drum, the fire fed with wood) outside the window supplied the bathroom and the kitchen with hot water.

“The kitchen was a museum piece - cement floor, wood stove which kept the corrugated iron ceiling black, a tiny window with the sink under it and a huge table. Out at the back door was a meat safe which was used until a paraffin refrigerator was installed in the pantry off the kitchen. A path from the kitchen led to the wash-house and next door the mealie store, from which the African staff collected their weekly ration of mealie meal,” wrote Elsie.

Despite taking quinine regularly, they all succumbed to malaria. Margaret was extremely ill and lost most of her hair. “We all hoped when it grew back again it would be curly again, but this was not to be,” said Elsie.
After the first bout of malaria each bed was supplied with a mosquito net. “Woe betide any of us who dared to slip into bed without taking it down even on stuffy nights when no breath of air seemed available.”

David contracted a serious bout of cerebral malaria which very nearly cost him his life.

Food for the pot


Bill provided meat for the pot using some firearms left behind by the previous tenants, including an ancient 303 rifle and a shotgun. 

“The first buck I ever killed was a sable and later a kudu, very welcome for feeding a large family and farm hands. Guinea fowl were plentiful, but I have to admit to being unwilling to go home empty handed, so on occasion I would wait for darkness to fall and shoot a pair or so out of the tree where they were roosting. Times were hard and there were bellies to be filled.”

Every day the children were dropped at school in Bulawayo by Elsie driving the family’s second-hand Studebaker sedan David bought for £200. At that time she was a secretary at Webb, Low & Barry solicitors where she was paid, “the princely sum of £8 per month”. 
A memorable purchase using her hard-earned savings was a new Vito mattress, enabling her to discard the hated coir mattress. 
[I was particularly interested in this because for our 7th birthday gifts our parents upgraded my and sister Netta’s flat, hard, black and white striped prison-like coir and horsehair mattress to luxury sprung mattresses. Netta, being a year older, received hers before me which was most infuriating!]

Margaret was dropped at Eveline Girls’ School (Peggy later became head of English there), Leslie and Bill to Milton Senior, King to Milton Junior and Sandy to Coglan.

“At Milton we came in for a certain amount of ragging because of our Scots accents and somewhat long short pants. That soon passed over as did the accents,” said Bill. 

During her lunch hour Elsie would reverse the procedure round the schools, then drive to the outskirts of town to Lady Stanley Avenue where they would wait for a two-wheeled mule cart driven by farmhand Tom. 

“Tom handed me my lunch prepared by Mother and the family piled into the donkey cart, Leslie or Bill taking the reins (there were usually two donkeys) and set off for home,” she said.

“The road home passed Emmet's compound where King once acquired a young monkey which he took home ‘on appro’, knowing well he'd never be allowed to keep it. The monkey bit him on the cheek and King was taken to casualty to have the wound cauterised. That was soon after he had boiled some lead and mistakenly poured some of it on his foot. King's exploits were always more spectacular and therefore more memorable.”

WW2 


Along came the Second World War in 1939 and so followed years of shortages of goods and labour.
Bill said, “Petrol and tyres were a continual problem. At the end of the school year in 1940 I was recruited by uncle Arthur Thompson to work for a month as a mill supervisor on night shift at the Big Ben Mine just out of Gwanda. The job was not complicated, just requiring somebody to be in charge of the mill hands during the night."

"My aunt Janet provided me with a nightly box of beetroot sandwiches and a flask of tea. The biggest difficulty was keeping awake and doing regular chemical tests on the gold recovery system. At the end of the month I received a cheque of £40, more money than I was ever used to.”

In that year Peg, teaching in Bulawayo at the time, married her Scottish beau Sandy Craig, a young ship’s engineer-turned-miner from the village of Inverurie, Aberdeenshire, not far from the Thompsons original stamping grounds.

I think he was a partner in the Thompson brothers mines but left to find his own gold at Legion Mine about 100 miles from Bulawayo. Yet King said, “Auntie Peg met Sandy Craig on the Piper Moss mine. Craig was estranged from the Thompsons on the matter of whether he was a partner in the mine.”

They produced a daughter Jean Craig in 1942, a talented artist now living in Petersfield, England. She married Lynn Travers-Dade and had daughters Lara and Tanya.

Peg & Sandy Craig


Legion Mine homestead


In the early 1940s Sandy remembered helping to wrap up food parcels which were posted to relatives and friends struggling in Scotland. He also attended air raid drills at Milton Junior School. “A siren went off and whoosh! We all rushed outside to look for the enemy aircraft. They did not come, as it happened.”

Uncle Charlie, Margaret & Andrew Thompson
L-R: Peg, Janet, Jean, David, &
 Morris Thompson

During World War II British Royal Air Force trainees were also stationed around Bulawayo, Gwelo and Salisbury, Sandy noticing their “fancy blue uniforms” and the fact that Elsie was fond of one.
“My first love affair blossomed at Aisleby and whilst I don't think the family opinion of him was as I'd have liked, Ramsay was a quiet, kind and gentle boy in the RAAF and stationed at Guinea Fowl Training School at Gwelo. We spent many happy evenings dancing in the McMurray Hall of the Grand Hotel in Bulawayo,” she said.

Unbeknown to them at the time was that my father's cousin Margaret Leslie Robertson (born 30 May 1924 at Drumoak Aberdeen, daughter of minister John Robertson and sibling of my grandpa David Mavor; she married John Middleton Melvin) was called up in 1944 mid-studying at university in Aberdeen to work at the secret intelligence establishment of Bletchley Park, home of the World War 11 codebreakers.
 She wrote that it was where “no-one knew what anyone else did”, referring to it as "Station X”. https://bletchleypark.org.uk/roll-of-honour/7776

Around 1961-1962
Greg Mandy at Bletchley Park 2019


Bill


Bill with his parents 1942/3


Bill 1943


The Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS) was a huge joint military aircrew training programme created by the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand during World War II. From May 1940 until March 1954 the Royal Air Force had a presence in Southern Rhodesia via the Rhodesian Air Training Group that trained aircrew from many countries including Australia (RAAF).

Bill, who had been articled to a firm of chartered accountants Scot, Russell, Murray and Pugh at a salary of £5 per month, was recruited into the army in 1943 and did his training through this EATS scheme. He ended up at Park River Camp in Umtali for a divining and maintenance course.

In WW2 many German, Austrian and Italian ‘enemy aliens’ as well as Polish and Iraqi refugees were interned in Southern Rhodesia in what were generally referred to as Prisoners of War camps, but these were apparently really internment camps. One such camp in Fort Victoria (Masvingo), held mostly Italians civilians brought in from North Africa. Part of Bill’s training included a stint in this camp.

“They were divided into two factions, pro-Mussolini and the rest. The trouble was that they fought with each other and had a nasty habit of throwing opponents onto the electric fence. We were sent with armoured cars to keep them in order,” he said.

He later travelled by ship from Durban to London, the Port of Aden and to Cairo, training with the Durham Light Infantry at that time camped in Mena below the pyramids. Bill also fought with the South Africans at Monte Cassino, returning to Southern Rhodesia with nothing except a German pistol (or revolver), all his kit having been stolen in Egypt!

He finally returned home after more than three years away and at some point went farming in the Marula district of Matabeleland. He married Molly Whitehead in January 1954 and they produced three offspring – Ian, Graham and Louise (the Marulas). We spent many wonderful holidays at Garth Farm.

When writing these memoirs in the mid-1990s Bill said, “After 57 years in the place, I have found no reason to change my impression that Africa is a savage continent. Savage in geography, but so beautiful in many places, savage in climate of floods and drought and savage in its people, who more and more are intent on killing each other in horrific numbers."

Bill and Molly married in January 1954


Bennachie


While Bill was busy in the war the family left Aisleby as David was not fit enough to continue, moving to a 13-acre property on the Shiloh Road east of Bulawayo, with the cattle being grazed on a neighbouring property. They called their new home Bennachie.

Jeannie, who by now had diabetes, raised poultry. “She had hundreds of chickens there which Piper, the dog, took a fancy to chasing but never eating. Mother cured him by tying a dead pullet to his tail. The look of despair on that dog's face had to be seen to be appreciated and when we all got home late afternoon, protested the length of punishment and Mother relented and released Piper,” her daughter wrote.

[I identified with this as my mum Jenny did similarly with our curly tailed mongrel named Belinda who kept killing our ducks. A dead bird was tied around the dog’s neck and she was banished outside. It was quite disgusting. I protested but was told this was the way it was done. Belinda never learned.]
Grampa David Mavor Robertson

Grandma Elsie Jeannie Robertson

Leslie


In 1946 Leslie died as a result of a mining accident when working for Forbes & Thompson. Elsie said that he heard a curious noise from the mill and rushed to investigate.

“Finding a 4lb hammer wedged between the mill stamps, he tried to extricate it with a long piece of iron. It dislodged and hit him in the face. He was brought into Bulawayo by ambulance, Auntie Janet accompanying him, and died two days later, having suffered terrible injuries, including the loss of one eye.”

“Dr Robertson, not of our kin, did operate and wrote a tremendous letter of sympathy to Mum and Dad, explaining what Leslie's recovery would have meant,” said Elsie.

King


King joined the Native Affairs Department responsible for the welfare of Africans living on tribal trust lands, and his first posting was to Inyati, the second to Matobo and later to Gutu, way out in the bush.
Elsie said King on Sundays would travel with a companion by bicycle from Gutu to Buhera on a dirt road “to play tennis and then sample the hospitality offered, wobbling back to Gutu on the same dirt road in the dark”.

He married Daphne Erica Guard on 2 May 1953 at St Stephen’s Church in Que Que, Southern Rhodesia. They had three girls – Fay, Susan and Nicola (the Inyatis).

King & Erica Guard in 1953

Erica with Fay, Susan and holding Nicola

Elsie


Towards the end of the family's Bennachie period Elsie met Tony Cordell (George Anthony) at the Drill Hall in Bulawayo where they played badminton. He hailed from London but was advised to go to the Eastern Cape for health reasons, then ended up in Bulawayo. 

“Mother's observation when she first met Tony – ‘that laddie's nae gaan tae live lang’ proved true, although he wasn't exactly a laddie when he died at the age of 50,” said Elsie.

They were married on 5 March 1949, son David arrived in February of 1950 and Beverley in September of 1951 (the Cordells).
L-R: Sandy, Grampa David, Bill, Margaret with David Cordell, Elsie with Beverley, 1953

Elsie Cordell

Tony Cordell

Rannoch


In 1949 Grandpa and Grandma Robertson moved to a nine-acre property they named Rannoch, at 6 Hill Road, Lochview, Bulawayo.
Jeannie died of diabetes related problems on the last day of February 1952, a leap year, aged 61.

My parents Sandy and Jenny moved into Rannoch a few years later, building an annex on the back for Grampa. They possibly moved in around end 1958 because when my sister Netta was born they had been renting a place called Rocky Lodge, which my mum hated because it was full of snakes.

Netta and I grew up at Rannoch until I was about 11 years old. I remember Grampa’s room at the back of the house, it had a distinct aroma of his cigars. I still love the earthy smell of raw, tobacco drying in barns. Netta remembers his XXXX mints.

Grampa died of cancer possibly in 1967.
Grampa David Robertson with grandson David Cordell

Rannoch in Lochview on the outskirts of Bulawayo


Margaret

Margaret Robertson (Loder)

Margaret became a teacher and her first post was at Baines School in Bulawayo. She married builder Doug Loder on 20 August 1966. They had a boy named Keith, born in 1967.

Her last teaching post was as headmistress of Carmel School. In 1978 the family went on holiday to Kariba. 

On September 3 the scheduled passenger Air Rhodesia Viscount Hunyani in which they were travelling, on its return to Salisbury, was shot down by ZIPRA (the communist Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army led by Joshua Nkomo), operatives using a SAM 7 missile. This was during the Rhodesian Bush War that dragged on from July 1964 to December 1979.

The terrorists followed up this crime against humanity by killing some of the few survivors. Eight other passengers survived. 

(About four months later the same group shot down another civilian aircraft - Air Rhodesia Viscount Umniati using the same method – and killed all aboard. the thing was, world leaders largely ignored these events.)

I went to the memorial service at The Anglican Cathedral of St Mary and All Saints in Salisbury on 8 September 1978 with my parents. The heartfelt, unprecedented sermon delivered by the Very Reverend John da Costa, Anglican Dean of Salisbury, condemned the acts and particularly the response from world leaders, church leaders and politicians. It became known as 'The Deafening Silence' sermon. I don’t think Margaret’s remaining siblings ever came to terms with it.

My second cousin, Morris Thompson in Bulawayo (son of Arthur and Janet Thompson), said Margaret was a very popular headmistress at Carmel School in Bulawayo at the time of her death. The school erected a drinking fountain there in her memory. The bush war that resulted in an “independent” Zimbabwe in April 1980, changed the course of so many people’s lives.
Doug Loder with Keith, Sandy & Peg Craig

Sandy 

Around 1950 Sandy went to Salisbury to become a cadet journalist on The Rhodesia Herald
He married my Mum Jenny Jobling in 1957, Netta was born on 2 April 1958 and by the time I was born on 3 May 1959 they had moved into Rannoch with Grampa David Robertson.

Jenny on the sand court!

Our childhood at Rannoch in the dry dusty Matabeleland bush dotted with acacia thorn trees was simple, carefree, yet orderly. My Dad and Grampa built a swimming pool where we spent many summers and school holidays, often with our cousins. He also built a sand tennis court.

The cousins Christmas 1964 at Rannoch

Grampa with Fay, Tuppy, Sue, Nicky, Netta 1965

My parents were pretty sociable so hosted many day and evening parties, theme dinners, special celebrations and family weekends at Rannoch.

My dad’s colleague Aubrey McDowall said at Sandy’s funeral in Cape Town in 2007, “He had a great zest for life and laughter which he never lost, even when his health was failing. His hospitality and parties were legendary, and when he sat down at the piano none dare resist his demand to join in the singing.”


L-R: Keith held by Margaret, Ian, Louise, Sue, David, Tuppy, Bev
On ground: Nicky, Graham, Netta, (dog Belinda), Fay. Easter 1969

Early memories at Rannoch: 

Tuppy
Netta

  • Netta nearly setting fire to an entire row of Christmas trees behind the house. She was always getting into trouble. She still has the stainless steel scissors that have a nick on the side where she poked them into an electric plug socket.
  • Walking to Lochview Primary School with our neighbours the Williams twins Jill and May. We would also spend hours at their house building forts.
  • Being embarrassed with having to wear brown school shoes that had the toes cut off so they would last for a few more months. Thing was, my white sock peeked out like beacons. We weren’t exactly flush on a journalist’s salary.
  • Hot summer nights sitting on the red polished verandah while crickets zinged incessantly around us under clear star-flecked skies.
  • Getting paid a tickey (the Rhodesian threepence piece) for removing tufts of those flat three-cornered devil thorns from the ground using a spade.
  • Oofi, my dad’s gardener. Sandy said, “Oofi has put up with me far longer than anyone else alive. His place in my life has been unique" - and that was not only as a loyal and patient helper but as a friend, an ear, an advisor and a shoulder-to-cry-on.
  • My mum playing the piano in the afternoon. She was a good artist and also played the squeeze box (accordion) in The Foot Tappers band with Mike Barker.
  • Hosting Caroline aka Oz (Strathern) and Richard Bates for a year or so as they lived on a farm in Nyamandlovu and there was some issue about going to boarding school. It was like having a nice big family. My mother stood no nonsense though - she was a stickler for discipline, timings and when it came to food, exact quantities – never too much, never too little.
    Oofi with my eldest two
    Gregory & Stephanie 
King, Elsie and the cousins at Rannoch

We left Rannoch in 1970 when my Dad became editor of The Sunday Mail in Salisbury. We lived in Highlands at 6 Denham Close.
We returned to Bulawayo in 1975 when Sandy became editor of The Chronicle, to live at 65 Fortune’s Gate Road, Matsheumhlope. 
Netta left home in 1976 to do her nursing training at Andrew Fleming Hospital in Salisbury. I left in 1978 to train as a journalist at The Rhodesia Herald, also in Salisbury.

My parents left Zimbabwe in 1981 when The Chronicle was ‘restructured’. He was the wrong colour for an editor in the new Zimbabwe. They went to live in Irene, South Africa, my dad working on The Pretoria News.

They returned to Zimbabwe in 1985 as Sandy took early retirement at the age of 55, and bought a property in the Vumba where he tried to raise goats. And soon gave up that idea!

Hogmanay 1 Jan 1992 Vumba. Sandy &
King recite the Tam o' Shanter

Some cousins December 1988 Vumba; Robin and my Zimb wedding party







The cousins


Many of those born in Southern Rhodesia which became Rhodesia and then Zimbabwe scattered to other parts of the world, for different reasons. They went to United Kingdom, Australia, the United Arab Emirates (me), South Africa and some also stayed put.

This space is for them to add to. Or not!

[Next up: My maternal grandparents, Jobling & Moriarty]

1 comment:

  1. FYI sometimes people cannot comment here if they are using Safari browser or an Apple device apparently. I really don't know if that is fact or fiction! Alternatively send me an email.

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From Bennachie to Bulawayo and Beyond

Sandy's generation at the family farm Huxterstone near Aberdeen, Scotland 1934 This blog is for the Robertson and Thompson clans on my f...