Below is the fifth installment of John Lincoln's series on Cullinan based on his book 'Stories from a Diamond Mine'. As the title suggests it looks at the sporting activities and vibrant personalities of the village. Click here to view the series index.
The exact date is unknown, but one day in 1905 a group of Premier Mine employees got together to form the Premier Mine Golf Club. The area chosen would almost certainly have been the general area of the present-day Cullinan course.
The group of employees would probably have included William McHardy and AE Pack. McHardy was the first general manager of the mine and Pack the first engineer. McHardy would later become the first president and Pack the captain and champion of the golf club in 1907.
The early workers on the mine were a mixture of various races, first and second-generation South African nationals, and a large contingent from the British Isles. Some of these were soldiers who had stayed behind after the recently ended Boer War and others were from the mining camps of Kimberley.
There is evidence that the British nationals included large numbers of Scotsmen. As the inventors of the great game of golf, it would not be difficult to imagine that they would have had something to do with the formation of the golf club. In fact, William McHardy was born in Ballater in Scotland.
It appears that sport was an extremely important part of life in those early days, and pictorial evidence suggests that even as...
