HE TRAVELLED THE WORLD, BUT HE HAD A LOVE FOR NEW GUINEA  

A man who became especially well known in the Campbelltown district over the last 20 years when he lived in semi- retirement passed away, yet hardly resisting a long period of indifferent health.

    He was Edward LLewellyn Gordon (known as Gordon) Thomas, of Queen Street, Campbelltown.  While he was known by a great number, there were few but his closest friends, who knew of the varied career he had led. In fact, his cheerful greeting to all he met on his daily trips up and down Queen Street won him many friends who did'nt even know his name, and knew little of him except that he was  "the kindly gentleman with the goatee beard." It was only in his later years that ill health forced him to remain more at home, but he spent many hours looking from the upstairs window of his rooms in Benito Flats still the same man with his wave and greeting to those who passed by.    To tell the life of Gordon Thomas recounts part of the history of many countries.     He was born in Chicago, U.S.A. the son of a British Army Major.  Much of his early childhood was spent in England where the major part of his education was at St. Paul's School in London. He was expected to enter the diplomatic corps and went to Germany and Switzerland to study languages and complete his education.  Finances did not permit him entering this career.      He then went to Alberta, Canada where his father has retired as a rancher  ------------------ He learnt journalism from his father in 1906 ? on a paper run by his father-------The Camrose Mail.      Gorden Thomas later went through all of the southern states in the USA as a man able to take on any reasonalbe job to earn a dollar or two.  He next helped his father on a paper started by his father, The Vancouver Mail, but this venture failed.  Gordon Thomas set out for Australia as a ships's printer and nightwatchman on the Maltal.(?)      After  moving......... NSW.... the  Bellingham  Northern Courier  and after a year there accepted a position as printer with the Methodist Mission of Rabaul. He there met  the person who was later to become his wife.  She prede-ceased him  in 1960.     Gordon Thomas liked Rabaul, but not so much his job at the mission as he found that, in addition to his printing, it also included teaching school, preaching the gospel and a half dozen other talks.  His knowledge of German helped in what was then a German Colony. In 1912, he left the mission to take up trading and planting in Buka for a German concern.  He later joined the Burns Phlip Co. at Bougainville and was  placed in charge of 300 natives and two whites. When World War I began, he was treated decently as a  prisoner on parole until in Dec. 1914, the Australian Troops freed him. He joined the 19th Batallion and went to France where he suffered gassing and wounding.  After serving in the United Kingdom, he came back to Australia suffering from heart trouble. Doctors told him not to return to the tropics.     However, he soon headed for New Guinea as a plantation for the Gov...........four years and then took leave and went to Europe via the USA and Canada. He returned to Rabaul after six months as a memeber of a crew which drilled the first Australian oil well.      1925, a retired government printer started the Rabaul Times and Gordon Thomas became its editor. He.........health.....and writing short stories as Don Gordon for Sydney periodicals, including two novels and poems.     After a vacation to New Zealand in 1932, he returned to Rabaul as managing editor of the Rabaul Times.  Among the proudest of his possessions were copies of the (?????)"Times" produced after the 1937 devastating earth-quake and eruption.     The first air raid on Rabaul of the second World War came on January 4, 1950 and on January 21 of that year the white males and Asiatics who had not been evacuated earlier were sent to a hideout in the hills, "Refugee Gully".  Gordon Thomas stayed behind to maintain commmunications between the army and the civilians.  He returned to "Refugee Gully" at the last moment and the next day was one of a party of three unarmed civilians who surrendered to the Japanese. Most of the civilians and hundreds of Australian soldiers were sent away on the Montevideo Maru which was torpedoed off the Philippines without a single survivor.     Gordon Thomas was kept behind and found himself cook to a trio of ice work engineers who were kept to work in Rabaul.  A shortage of razor blades caused him to grow a  goatee beard, and he was known among the Japanese as Mr. Goat.     When Australian Troops arrived in Sept., 1945, he and the three engineers were the only four Australians to come alive out of Rabaul.  Gordon Thomas came to spend his retirement in Campbelltown, but while his life here may have been quieter than that which he had enjoyed previously, it was, none the less, a busy one.     He regularly contributed a column to The Pacific Islands Monthly,  known as Talk-Talk under the pen name of Tolala. For several years ,  he was the representative of the Campbelltown News which, in those early days, had its headquarters in Camden.  He became a familiar figure at local meetings, and his reports continued his philosophy of his New Guinea days of common sense and good humour.  Mr. Gordon Thomas was the foundation secretary of the Campbelltown Historical Society.