Gustavus Von Tempsky - Early Life

Early Life

Gustav von Tempsky was born in Braunsberg, Prussia (now Braniewo, Poland) into a Prussian noble family of Polish origin. The family had branches in Silesia and elsewhere and had a long military tradition. Von Tempsky was brought up in Liegnitz in Lower Silesia. After this time he was sent to a junior cadet school in Potsdam and then a cadet school in Berlin. His cousin was the German writer Valeska von Gallwitz. In 1844 he was commissioned into his father’s regiment in the Royal Prussian Army, possibly the Garde-Fusilier Regiment (in which his brother, Benno Waldemar von Tempsky was a second lieutenant).

In 1846, tiring of routine, he left the regiment after only nine months for the Prussian settlement on the Mosquito Coast of Central America. He accepted a commission to command a force of Mosquito Indians, which had been set up by Britain. In 1850 he went to the new California goldfields, but did not strike gold. In 1853 he returned to the Prussian Colony, via Mexico, Guatemala and Salvador, and later wrote a book, Mitla, about his journey. He had been courting Emelia Ross Bell at the nearby British settlement of Bluefields (or Blewfields) before he left, but her father did not approve, probably because of his youth and lack of prospects. After his return, on 9 July 1855 at Bluefields, he married Emelia, the elder daughter of the British government agent from Scotland, James Stanislaus Bell. In 1858 a son, Louis von Tempski, was born in Glasgow, Scotland. The family emigrated from Liverpool to Victoria, Australia on the ship 'Sirocco' arriving in Port Melbourne on the 1st August 1858, with young two sons, Randal age 2, and Louis, age 1. Two more children were registered as born on the Bendigo goldfields. The above-mentioned Louis von Tempsky's birth is registered at Sandhurst, Victoria for 1858, and Lina von Tempsky, born 1859 at Sandhurst. In Melbourne, Major von Tempsky made vigorous approaches to lead the proposed Trans-Continental Exploring Expedition, but his suite was ill-favoured by the committee, in the main because of the English prejudice of leading members, who chose Robert O'Hara Burke to lead in von Tempsky's stead. The venture became known as the Burke & Wills expedition, with the well-known and fatal outcomes. In the aftermath, von Tempsky took his family via the ship 'Benjamin Heape' across the Tasman to New Zealand, departing Melbourne on the 13th Feb 1862.