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Depot 14 was reached on 19 September, and three days were spent preparing to retreat. He had been unfortunate
in striking a particularly dry season. On the way back the old problem of avoiding the other expeditions re-occurred.
In the Musgrave Ranges he came across the outward track of Giles on 21 October and presumed he had come
out from the Neales, the route he had decided to follow. It was therefore necessary for him to travel north of the
Musgraves. The journey was slow due to the everlasting search for water. Harry’s Reservoir and Marryat yielded
good supplies, but very little was found until Tuesday 18 November when a creek was reached which Gosse named
the Alberga. However, even the water here failed as they continued eastward so it was decided to try to make for
the Carpamoongana waterhole on Hamilton Creek. After several misadventures this was reached on 12 December.
Having refreshed themselves they followed the creek down to the telegraph line and on 19 December reached the
Charlotte Waters Telegraph Station where they were well received by Mr C Giles, stationmaster. William was able
to supply information on some 150 000 square kilometres of country hitherto unknown to Europeans even though
he had failed in his objective of reaching Perth. When he received a telegram at Charlotte Waters asking if he were
prepared to continue in the field, he replied that it was impossible to obtain stores and furthermore the horses and
non-European members of the party were completely worn out.
Upon returning to Adelaide he was made Deputy Surveyor-General, but was not rewarded with the gold medal
of the Royal Geographical Society as Giles, Warburton and Forrest were. However, at the reception to John Forrest,
after his successful crossing from west to east, Forrest paid tribute to his careful marking of permanent water.
Forrest said, ‘One place he marked Springs and if he had been mistaken there we would have lost our lives’.
In 1874 Gosse married Agnes Hay, settled down in Dequettville Terrace, Adelaide and raised a family of two
sons and a daughter. In 1888 he became ill, was granted twelve months leave of absence, and died from a sudden
haemorrhage one month after, on 12 August 1881, at the age of 38.
He was a professional surveyor and lacked the zeal for exploration that drove Stuart, Giles, and Warburton,
but his discovery of Ayers Rock will perpetuate his memory.
F Gosse, The Gosses, 1981; G Rawson, Desert Journeys, 1948, Report and Diary of Mr W C Gosse’s Central and Western Exploring Expedition,
1873, V & P (SA), 1874, 2 (48).
J R and T J FLEMING, Vol 1.GOY, CHRISTOPHER THOMAS FROW (1897–1982), Presbyterian minister, was born on 21 December
1897 in Sydney, New South Wales, one of five children of Thomas Goy and his wife Ellen Anne, nee Frow.
Thomas Goy’s family had originally migrated from Lincolnshire and he worked as a missioner with the Harrington
Street Mission (Sydney) and later with the Home Mission Department of the Presbyterian Church in New South
Wales. His vigorous style of preaching and organising ability was passed on to his son Chris, as he was generally
known.
Chris attended the primary school at Fort Street and developed into a tall well-built man with an engaging
personality and great self-confidence His ability as a raconteur became legendary and some of the stories he told
about his own experiences became entangled with those of others so that at times he did not attempt to separate
one from the other. As a young man he assisted his parents on their poultry farm but in 1915 with Bob Hodgkisson,
a close friend who was to become his brother-in-law, he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force. This act took
place while his parents were temporarily absent and Chris advanced his age to make sure that he would be accepted.
He was trained as a wireless operator and served in Mesopotamia with the 1st Australian Wireless Squadron, with
a major responsibility being the care of the horses used by his unit.
After the war Goy was occupied with some commercial ventures but in 1924 he realised his mother’s dearest
hopes when he offered for training as a minister of the Presbyterian Church. He studied under the Home Mission
training scheme that required extra-mural studies while serving as a missioner in a country parish. He was sent
to Tullibigeal in New South Wales to pioneer a parish that included Ungarie and Lake Cargelligo. Here he had to
improvise in regard to places of worship and to organise the building of a manse. He had been married in Coffs
Harbour on 16 September 1920 to Irene Dagmar Petersen and on 19 September 1921 their first child Dorothy was
born, so the provision of a home was important. It was in Tullibigeal that he was provided with his first motorcar,
a model ‘T’ Ford. He quickly learned to do roadside repairs in an area where distances were great and garages few.
It was in Tullibigeal also that he first became a member of the Masonic Order in which he was to rise to the office
of Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge in Victoria. He also became involved in various community affairs
arising from the drought problem of 1924–25.
At the beginning of 1928, having completed the studies required to enter the Theological College, he and his family
moved to Sydney where he was appointed to assist the Reverend A M Olgilvie, minister of the Beecroft-Thornleigh
parish. He completed his theological studies at St Andrew’s College in 1930, winning the prize for Greek studies.
He was called to the Parish of Cootamundra and was ordained in that parish. The Cootamundra parish was well
established but it still provided Goy with a challenge. The town needed a new church and he discovered that at
Wallendbeen there was a stone house built by Alexander MacKay, known as ‘Granite House’. The building was
then jointly owned by Major General Alexander MacKay and Donald MacKay, sons of the original owner, and
was being used as a barn. Goy successfully negotiated with the owners for the building to be taken apart stone by
stone and erected as a church in Cootamundra. When the building was opened and dedicated on 16 December 1936
it included a bell, which was the first church bell brought to Australia and had been originally in the Scots Church,
Sydney, a building demolished to make way for the approaches to the Harbour Bridge. To mark this historic link
the church was named Scots Church and has been referred to as ‘a poem in granite’.