Tom’s intelligence was also noted by William Albert Clutterbuck, who was the founder of an engineering firm, Clutterbuck Bros, in Gawler, South Australia. Clutterbuck Bros had the biggest chaff trade in South Australia and also specialised in the sale of agricultural implements and equipment. William’s twin brother, Charles, co-founded the business with him although passed away not long after this in 1896.
William Albert Clutterbuck
Twenty years later, the firm developed and marketed the Clutterbuck Oil Engine, which was used to pump water, drive chaff-cutters, winowers, sheep shearing plants, circular saws and many other agricultural machines before electricity was so widely available. By this time there were branches of Clutterbuck Bros in most major rural centres throughout South Australia as well as interstate, including Bourke Street in Melbourne, Geraldton in WA and Sydney, NSW. As agents for Massey Harris, they sold heavy farm machinery such as harvesters, tractors, ploughs, rakes, drills, trucks and more. They were also contractors for artesian bores and irrigation plants - pretty much anything that a farmer might need, Clutterbuck Bros supplied!
"Clutterbuck" Oil Engine
At some point during Tom’s mid teens, William’s nephew who was the same age as young Tom, came out to Australia from Gloucestershire. This nephew’s family owned and ran the local grocery store just four doors down from Tom’s uncle, Henry Clutterbuck, in Parsonage Street, Dursley, so he may well have been aware of a young family member who had been orphaned and placed in foster care ‘somewhere in Victoria’.
At the same time, young Tom knew nothing of any uncle, or for that matter, any relatives in England at all.
As William became aware of Tom’s existence, the parallels to his own early years would no doubt have struck a chord of empathy with him. He knew only too well the challenges that faced a young lad trying to make it alone in the world having himself left home at the age of 12 to work in the coal mines in Wales. His modest engineering empire was built up solely on hard work, sweat and the sheer determination to make something of himself. After finally tracking down young Tom in Mirranatwa, and hearing of how highly his teacher spoke of his diligence and potential, William extended a benevolent hand to bring young Tom ‘back to the family’. He offered him the chance to further his education in Adelaide with the view to entering the family business, which by this time had expanded into mining superphosphate, alongside BHP Billiton Ltd, and a cement works that was later acquired by the Boral Group Ltd after William's death.
When Tom was approached by William, it immediately raised some very bitter and difficult feelings inside him. The deep hurt and betrayal he felt at his own parents’ apparent abandonment of him resurfaced and this was compounded by the realisation that there had been other members of the family who could have thrown him a lifeline in his time of early crisis at the orphanage, and didn’t. Instead, he had been left to fend for himself. He also staunchly refused to desert Miss Turner, who he saw as the one person who had taught him how to stand on his own two feet. So, despite the Clutterbuck Bros very generous offer, Tom flatly turned it down. He had a very strong mind of his own and his attitude was blunt. “You didn’t help me … I’m not going to help you!”