Dorothy Louisa Laxton, nee Long, was born on December 4th 1920 in Gordonia Cape Province, South Africa, to parents Charles Christopher Long and Mary Henrietta Christina Bring.
Her French Huguenot ancestors, fleeing from religious persecution, arrived at the Cape in 1688 and established many of the vineyards in Constantia, Stellenbosch and Franschoek, which today produce some of the finest wines in the world.
As far as Dorothy was concerned Cape wines and Brandy are peerless.
One of her pioneer ancestors, an 1820 English settler, wheelwright, Richard Freemantle and one of his sons were killed by Xhosa as he was collecting wood for his employer.
Another was an Indian slave from Bengal who won his freedom from the Dutch East Company, and was given a parcel of land and later married the daughter of one of our Huguenot ancestors.
A Dutch ancestor acquired the house Kronendal in 1793 where her paternal grandfather, Dr Cornelis Brink, was born and next to which is buried her father and his sister Violet.
Dorothy made many pilgrimages to Kronendal and there was always a photo of the house somewhere in our home.
Dorothy's father died of Black Water Fever when she was only 6 months old. As you know, fathers are enormously important in the lives of girls and she never experienced the love of a father from a daughter.
She never stopped wondering what he was like.
I know that they are together now and are making up for lost time.
She was extremely close to her brother Frederick Horatio Long and they lived for some time with her father's parents on their Karakul farm in Upington where they went to school. She and Fred were English speaking and were given a hard time by Afrikaans children and teachers, descendants of the Boers who presumed that they were children or grandchildren of the English enemy who had interred their wives and children in concentration camps.
Little did they know that four of their mother Mary Brink's siblings had died in a Concentration Camp during the Boer War and that her maternal grandfather was one of the men either fighting with or tending to Boer Guerillas! In fact he was a bitter ender who left South Africa to live in SWA to escape British rule after the Boer War. Such was the history of South Africa, a nation divided against itself. English against Afrikaans, black against white, family against family.
Loy and I were brought up in an English speaking home and much of the nature of the family tree and family history was not discovered until recent times but it does explain so much about the nature of Dorothy.
She was ambitious and determined, she fought for her rights and was never afraid to express her views.
She had the blood of pioneers, fighters and survivors in her veins. She was proudly South African and she never relinquished her citizenship.
In the last days when getting her to drink water was a problem, the carers only had to say that the glass contained South African water and she would drink Adelaide water with relish.
Her own mother was ahead of her time as a result of her own experiences with death and divorce and the hardship that the family had endured sent her to boarding school where she excelled at bookkeeping, shorthand and the Afrikaans Snelskrif. After she graduated she worked at various accounting firms which valued her attention to detail and devotion to duty.
She also worked for the department of War Pensions and she was very proud of the fact that she was able to assist many veterans to gain assistance or pensions.
In 1941 she married Walter Harold Laxton, our beloved father, who was a loving and considerate husband who tried hard to make up to her for all the hardships she had endured in her childhood and adolescence.
She had four younger step brothers but they didn't always live together and they never usurped her beloved brother Fred in her affections.
Only two daughters were born to Dorothy and Walter, but she has 6 grandchildren and 10 great grand children, all of whom have been given the gift of living in this great land.
She and my father made a brave and life changing decision to settle in Australia for the sake of the future safety and well being of their two daughters.
Ahead of her time, and in true pioneering spirit, Dorothy at the age of 41, with Loy, drove all the way from Melbourne to start a new life in Adelaide. My father was yet to arrive in Australia and I had gone ahead by train for a nursing interview.
Even today I wouldn't consider driving to Melbourne alone or with a child!
Once in Adelaide she worked in various capacities with various firms including Touche Ross & co and Thomas Sara Macklin, where she assisted in an historic change over from hand written entries to computers.
Long before a well know bank showed pictures of grey haired people speeding off on motor bikes spending their children's inheritance, Dorothy was travelling to China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Namibia, Canada, South Africa, the various game reserves, the Okavango, Kenya and Rhodesia. She loved travelling in South Africa's answer to the Orient Express, The Blue Train.
I remember seeing her off as she sailed first class on the Angelino Lauro on a trip to South Africa not long after my father died. She went alone as she often did until she met her friend Ralph and they they enjoyed many adventures together including a trip around Australia in Ralph's blue camper van.
She was a great gardener and it can be said that she left each garden that she tended better than she found it.
She loved reading and she passed on her love of reading, history and literature to us.
She loved the Opera, and each year bought herself a season ticket to see and hear the great operas of Verdi, Puccini etc and the more modern operas of Gilbert & Sullivan.
For the gift of life, a good education, a love of reading and learning and the quality of life that we all enjoy in Australia, we your daughters and descendants thank you Mum.
3 comments:
Shellely Smylie
Beautiful tribute. I'm sure she is as proud of her girls as they are of her. xo
touching sentiments. She sounds like a really cool lady.
What a fantastic story to have down!
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