About 7.5 km from the edge of Parys, on the right-hand side of the road to Vredefort, is a monument. The plaque reads as follows: In memory of George Gatherer Philip, A.R.M., Vredefort District, who was killed by lightning in the road opposite this cairn, 26th November 1906, erected by his friends. G.G. Philip was born as the son of a solicitor in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1877. He came to South Africa with the British army during the Anglo-Boer war and stayed on after peace had been declared.
As a solicitor’s son, he would have had some training in legal matters. He joined the Justice Department and was posted as an assistant magistrate in Parys. In Parys, he got engaged to Isobel Golan, a teacher who also originated from Edinburgh. On that fateful day, he had been at a periodical court in Vredefort.
Coming back from there in a horse-drawn Spider, at around 15:00, they got into a severe thunderstorm. With him was another passenger, James Collie, an accountant with the Colonial Treasury Department. A lightning bolt struck the vehicle, killing Philip and the horse, throwing Collie off the cart and knocking him unconscious. His remains were buried in the old section of the cemetery. I tried to locate the gravestone but was repelled by the utterly overgrown, neglected part of the graveyard. Not only is it neglected, but it is also used as a rubbish dump and a source of building sand, making it look as if grave robbers are at work.
