Shep's Place Family Tree

Chris had perfect musical pitch and became the tenor soloist and choir master. He had never had a lesson nor could he read music, but any music heard once could be played faultlessly. He was a member of the Bach Society and sketched beautifully. He was an inventive teller of tales which his own small boy found much superior to Kipling's Jungle Stories or even "Wind in the Willows". After his mother's death, the two brothers having gone their separate ways, the Unley home became "The House of Silence", and with dog Finnigan as his sole companion, Chris went on endless walks in his free time. But, in 1908 the Lakeman family appeared at the church when he was 23 and all loneliness was at an end when he met 17 years old Olive. One other interest was his membership of the St. Andrew's Literary Society, quite famous in its day.

Christopher enlisted in the First A.I.F. on 5 Oct 1916. His age was 31, his military description was height 5 feet 7 1/2 inches, complexion medium, eyes grey, hair brown. His unit was the 51st Battery, 13th Field Artillery. He was offered training for a commission but he refused being anxious to go overseas. His service was to last 3 years 12 days - 2 years and 259 days were spent overseas. Before embarkation, his training kept him in Victoria, and to bid him farewell Olive and his sister Jeanie went to Melbourne. She returned with a five diamond engagement ring and a blue and white Wedgwood necklace, but it was an engagement which lasted six years.

His ship was the "Orontes" which went via Durban where the convoy was held up for a time and South African families entertained the soldiers. German submarines were a menace in the Atlantic and the convoy scattered. The "Orontes" reached Britain safely. At London, before his unit was sent to France he met the last surviving son of Charles Dickens of literary fame, Sir Henry Fielding Dickens. A highlight of his stay. The great offensive of April to June 1917 with the famous actions of Bullecourt, Messine, Hill 60, and in Autumn, Passchendale with 20,000 Australians dead, but Chris led a charmed life except for the gas attack, but he was to suffer shattered nerves in the years to come. He was at Amiens ‎(the battle)‎ in 1918 at the Somme when the Australians in trench warfare drove the Germans back seven miles. He was at Amiens on 11 Nov 1918 at War's ending.

He contracted the deadly Spanish flu so was left behind when his battalion was marched off to Belgium and he did not rejoin them, but as Sergeant Gibson he was put to dealing with embarkation problems of troops returning to his own country. Leave was to Edinburgh, his birthplace, Bournemouth England, and with a Gibson Uncle at Reading, and finally Adelaide was reached 16 Oct 1919. The horrors endured had left him restless and unsettled. His father at Hamley Bridge with new wife Agnes and no home to go to. He eventually went to work for his brother James Alexander as departmental manager of James own furniture store in Hindley Street, not a congenial position but he held it until 1926.

He and Olive married in 1922, contentedly occupied the house they built at Lower Mitcham, a pleasant locality until the tide of commercialism swept up to them at the edge of the foothills. Work situations were dogged by ill fortune, permanency of his interesting and stimulating work at the Bankruptcy Court was denied him when the Commonwealth took over from the State, so in 1930 they went to Lyrup, River Murray, to brother Milne Gibson who had a dried fruit industry. The company folded, and the Chris Gibsons returned home, and 1931 was a nightmare year of 8 operations. Olive was his nurse. The Depression had arrived.

For several years Chris had only sporadic work until 1939 when he obtained a permanent position at Keswick Barracks with a good salary. This lasted over 10 years to retirement in 1950. He was replaced by one Captain, one Lieutenant and two N.C.O.s. Pleasant years followed until his sight failed and his extensive reading and long walks ended. From 1961 he was in and out of the Repatriation Hospital all too frequently. Cancer had invaded his war weakened body and he died in 1962.

A Scot by birth, an Australian by adoption, a man of keen intellect and literary interests, accountant, musician, artist and soldier.