Don Charlwood – the Frankston Connection By Peter McCullough
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f a poll was taken to determine Frankston's favourite son, author Don Charlwood would have to be a strong contender. The fact that the café at the Frankston Library is called the 'Charlwood Café' would tend to support that view. However his family tree contains at least two other members who made significant contributions in their respective fields: his grandfather (John Cameron) was something of an entrepreneur in the early days of Frankston, and an uncle (John Alexander 'Joker' Cameron) served as a Farrier Sergeant in the Boer War and on return played VFL football with South Melbourne. Their stories were just too compelling to ignore so the Don Charlwood story starts with a brief pen portrait of these two ancestors. *** John Cameron “Veterinary surgeon, coach builder, implement maker, blacksmith, trimmer, painter.” So ran the advertisement in the first Standard newspaper on 5 October, 1889. It showed that the early community of Frankston had to be ready to tackle anything. John Cameron, son of John and Mary Cameron, was born in 1843 in a small Scottish highland village below Ben Nevis. He was still a very young boy when his father died and his mother remarried; with her new husband and three children she set sail for Australia. They arrived in Melbourne in 1850 and were met by Angus Cameron, John's uncle, who had a farm at Moonee Ponds. They were also welcomed by another uncle, Donald Cameron, who was farming and horse breeding on 650 acres at Craigieburn. When he arrived in Melbourne John could only speak Gaelic. At that time there were many Gaelic-speaking settlers in the colony. With the formation of the Presbytery of Melbourne in 1842 concern was expressed for the welfare of these groups, and the Free Presbyterian Church opened the Free Presbyterian Chalmers
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December 2019