Colourful characters

Stand a while in the tree-crowded kloof of Rimer’s Creek, and listen to the silence. Bird song echoes through the green canopy mixed with the whisper of running water. But in the quiet you will catch the haunting sound of a vanished era; the plaintive twanging of a banjo, the creak of a wheel-barrow, the measured clop-clop of a donkeys hooves, and perhaps the clink of a prospecting hammer against rock. Barberton doesn’t have many ghosts, but it does have a tangible presence of the past, as if the vitality of the pioneers has soaked into the rocks and trees themselves.

Gold diggers and boom-town rats streamed into Barberton at the first sign of real gold. People with names as colourful as their careers, names like Charlie Tinker, Wheelbarrow Patterson, Northern Territory Jack and Canada Joe. There are stories, too of the beautiful and the brave. Cockney Liz, a canny barmaid who fleeced clientele in her local boom-town saloon, is being recognised today as an early icon of feminine independence. A film based on her life is in the pipeline; meanwhile a Sarah Bernhard-like photograph, said to be of her, can be found in books on the history of the area. You might even find a post-card reproduction of it in one of our shops.

Colourful characters come on four legs as well as two - like the dog that was the runt of the litter and became the hero of the book, Jock of the Bushveld. Author, and later business tycoon and politician Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, wrote of his adventures in the 1880’s on the transport-wagon route between Barberton and Delagoa Bay, now modern Maputo. A statue of the brave little animal stands in front of the municipal offices. He still inspires heroic endeavours; hence the Jock marathon, and the Staffie Rally.

Then there is the story about the intelligent mule that attended digger’s meetings and was a “respected citizen”. The mule was said to know all the prospector’s paths to their diggings, as well as all the bars in town. In those days that would have been like having a really friendly taxi-driver waiting outside the pub. A valuable beast indeed, also reputed to be quite immune to sickness. But one day it became very sick upon which Sir Harry Grauman offered the mule’s owner, a general dealer by the name of Harry Culverwell, five pounds for its chances. Culverwell accepted, whereupon the animal promptly recovered.