Grand-daughter EMC recounts:
My grandfather (A.B.G. Johnston) was in the Real Estate business and evidently did very well buying and selling land in outer Melbourne. They lived in a very nice home in the suburb of Camberwell. My grandmother had a live-in maid, and when visitors came to the door the maid would open it. They would present their visiting card and the maid would take it in to my grandmother; if she approved, the maid, dressed in a uniform with starched white apron etc., would take the visitors into the drawing room.

In the late 1800s there was a serious recession which affected business and they moved from their grand house to Kew (I think). My grandfather and his brother Robert Johnston had a real estate business in Collins Street, Melbourne, and it was there for many years, carried on eventually by my father’s brothers, Byram and David Johnston. It was called A.B. & R.W. Johnston.

My grandfather’s sisters were very evangelical and for years ran a mission for Aboriginal people in South Australia.

I never met my Johnston grandfather (he died in 1924, soon after I was born). My grandmother (in Melbourne) suffered from Rheumatoid Arthritis. Once, when she was very ill and the doctor was giving her oxygen, she begged him to stop as she wanted to die, but he refused her request. She spent the last 10 years of her life in bed. I only saw her once. When I was about five, we went down to see her when she was dying. She held my hand, but I wasn’t very keen — afraid she would die while holding it.

The Melbourne Argus of 12 May 1924 death notice:
JOHNSTON — On the 10th May, at corner of Glenferrie road and Wellington street, Kew, Arthur Byram Gowan, the beloved husband of Rebecca and father of Francis, Byram, James, Sam, and David, aged 72 years. With Christ, which is far better — his desire.