When in London many years ago a great friend of mine was one of the world’s real gentlemen who I later discovered was related to Sir Michael Bruxner after whom our Bruxner Highway was named.
My friend in question was David Bruxner, a tall and robust soldier of rank in the British Army who initially, and unbeknown to me, later played a prominent role in helping to save my life when I worked in Africa after WWll as a journalist and foreign correspondent.
David and I initially had a strong academic interest in politics just as his uncle, Sir Frederick, did as a prominent Australian politician, parliamentarian, former Minister of Transport and man of the land.
Affectionately known as “The Colonel” throughout his years of service, David’s illustrious relative was born at Sandilands in 1882 as the second son of a British pioneer who promptly settled here in Northern New South Wales. Sir Frederick later became a Clarence Valley grazier and Australian Army officer in addition to his many years of civil service to his country.
All this was, of course, unknown to me in 1953 when I accompanied the late Queen Elizabeth, the first Queen Mother, and her granddaughter, Princess Margaret, on a tour of Southern Rhodesia.
As a member of the Press Corps, I was invited to a special banquet and ball when we were in that country’s capital city of Salisbury.
To my great surprise and delight, I found on arrival at the event that David had been amazingly chosen to chaperone Princess Margaret on this and other occasions during the remainder of the royal tour. This, I immediately thought to myself, was no doubt due to his stature and quiet but strong military bearing while also carrying the appearance of a pukka English gentleman.
After renewing in Rhodesia our former friendship from London, David and I regularly corresponded with each other. As he had returned to Britain after the royal tour in Africa, I invited him to visit me at my then headquarters at Nairobi in Kenya.
He took me up on this on three different occasions, each time explaining that he would break a much longer journey from the U.K. to visit his Bruxner relatives in Australia. It was, however, only after I had eventually settled in Yamba in 1969 that I learned who David had been visiting in this country after staying as my guest in Africa. I also then found out that David had another Bruxner family relative, a judge in Victoria.
My main memory of David the soldier, who sadly passed on a few years ago, involved his accompanying me on a media assignment to a desolate part of Kenya’s Highlands country, well-known at the time as a hiding place for highly wanted Mau Mau terrorists.
We accompanied a squad of British troops to what was a thickly forested destination near the Aberdare Mountains. When I stepped out of my car with David next to me, he suddenly pushed me down with a violent and urgent shove, almost in anger. But, in a split second, I suddenly realised that this was a life-saving action on his part as my vehicle received a terrorist sniper’s bullet just behind where I had been standing.
There is no doubt that David thankfully saved my life and possibly his own by pushing me aside and then throwing himself down next to me. I have always taken this very gallant act as one from a true friend and gentleman.
The sniper was fortunately apprehended in a nearby tree by the soldiers who we had accompanied on this one of my many similar ventures into Mau Mau held territory. After interrogation, the now hapless terrorist claimed he was a lieutenant to “General China,” a Mau Mau fighter who continually taunted the British with hand-written posters proclaiming, “My Daddy wouldn’t buy me a Mau Mau.”
After leaving Africa following my almost two decades of working there, I continued to correspond with a man who undoubtedly saved both our lives. After his visits to me en route to Northern New South Wales, David had become a substantial art dealer in London with a branch office in Hong Kong. When he died, he was reported to have left a significant collection of valuable artworks.
My memory of David Bruxner, my straight and tall friend, was interestingly stirred again some years later here on the Clarence when talking with a local long-time resident, Sally Huxtable, the widow of another one-time close friend of mine, Dr John Huxtable.
In talking about Sally’s memory of living for a time with John in Hong Kong, she mentioned that one of John’s sisters had enjoyed a close friendship in that city with one art dealer, David Bruxner, my soldierly Goliath. As they say, all stories go around in circles!