When Leon Krasker made his first trip from Britain to Broome and back in 1907 did he go see Mark Rubin for advice on how to become a successful pearl buyer and pearl dealer?
At different times Leon listed himself as being based in Broome and Shark Bay, then called Sharks Bay as it was so named by explorer and pirate William Dampier after he arrived there in August 1699, as well as at 99 Hay Street, Subiaco in Perth, Western Australia.
Mark Rubin had several addresses in Western Australia by the time Leon Krasker arrived:
The image above is a screenshot of the search results for “Leon Krasker” at a popular genealogy Web site that I recently accessed at the State Library of New South Wales. I’ll be heading off there again soon to continue my research and fill in some of the many gaps I’ve found at all such Web sites that I have accessed so far.
The “Shark Bay Pioneer Krasker Family Tree” looks the most promising though this partly redacted preview contains some odd errors.
For example, Leon Krasker’s name according to every official document he filled in and signed has him as exactly that, Leon Krasker, as he had Australianized his first name by removing the accent acute from the e, altering Léon to Leon.
No official document has him as also being Louis or Kersker and there is the verifiable fact that he was born in 1877 in Tulcea, Romania and not Tula in Russia.
Leon’s wife, whom he married in Paris on 26 May 1904, was Mathilde Krasker née Rubel and she was born in 1880 in Chernivtsi, a town now in Ukraine although it was in Austria and named Czernowitz when she was born.
These details are subject to confirmation by official documents.
The Krasker family had two addresses in Western Australia from where they most likely lived and worked given the nature of their pearl trading business and the needs of their children: 99 Hay Street, Subiaco and 25 Knight Terrace, Denham in Shark Bay 800 kilometers to the north of Perth.
Mathilde Krasker was named simply that and not somehow also named “Macherie”: the note Leon left for her when he was dying on the track between Denham and Herald Bight in Shark Bay in 1916 addressed her as ma chérie, that is, my dear or my darling.
“Louis Leon Léon Krasker Kersker” – Leon Krasker’s name after he removed the accent acute from the letter e was exactly that, Leon Krasker, and that is how he spelled it on official documents.
“Matilde Mathilde Macherie Matilda Rubel” – Mathilde Krasker’s name after she married Leon Krasker was exactly that, Mathilde Krasker, and that is how she spelled it on official documents. Her maiden surname was Rubel though her parents appear to have changed it to Norman after moving westwards from eastern Europe.
“Marriage: Worcestershire, England” – The weight of evidence currently points to the marriage between Mathilde and Leon Krasker having been conducted in Paris and not Worcestershire, but that can be confirmed with potential access to their marriage certificate if such a record is still in existence.
“Birth: Tula, Russia” – Léon Krasker was born in Tulcea, Romania.
Georgette Krasker and Marie Krasker in The W.A. Record, Saturday 14 January 1921, page 6, Results of the Schools: Alliance Francaise Examination, Trinity College of Music. Image courtesy of Trove at the National Library of Australia, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/212402545
Leon, George, Georgette, Stephanie and Marie Krasker in Kalgoorlie Miner, The Blackwood Times, The Daily News & The West Australian
Like the Krasker children I was taken to a small, remote town in Western Australialocated between desert and sea and with a junior high school that could be described as mediocre at best.
It did accidentally introduce me to photography, a mixed blessing given what happened when I tried to turn a hobby of stills photography into the profession of cinematography at a place that could loosely be described as an art school in the state’s capital city.
That was more than half a century after Mathilde, Leon, George, Georgette and Marie arrived in Perth from London, then headed off north to Shark Bay and its declining pearl fishing industry with the aim of making their fortune as traders in pearls for personal adornment and pearl shells for carving into buttons.
Denham and its main pearling lugger beachheads of Herald Bight and Monkey Mia were at the end of their boom years when fortunes could be made from pearling and turned into agricultural empires like those of the legendary Mark Rubin, tales of whom had inspired Leon and Mathilde to chance it down under.
As soon as my family arrived in our new town and home-to-be, my shock and disappointment were acute and I realized that the top-quality education I had taken for granted in Brisbane and that was to be my launch pad to the world was no more and the next few years were to be a struggle.
Brisbane was, of course, no comparison to the London and before that, Paris, that the Kraskers had left but I had suddenly lost exposure to good libraries, live musical performances, an art gallery and a museum, immersive education in multiple languages and an extended family that was not particularly close but nonetheless gave me a feeling of belonging and a history of sorts.
I have no idea what Mathilde and her children were thinking when their ship entered Fremantle, nor their impressions of Subiaco and then Denham in Shark Bay after the 800-kilometer trip there but Leon had already scoped out Western Australia during his voyage there in 1907.
He surely told them of the challenges to be expected in Shark Bay and spoke of his hopes of matching the fortune Mark Rubin had made further north in Broome.
In establishing two addresses in Western Australia, 25 Knight Terrace in Denham and 99 Hay Street in Subiaco, was Leon Krasker giving his children the hope of better things than what a tiny town in remote Shark Bay could offer and were they are least partially schooled in the state capital?
While I don’t have all the facts at hand, clues are available in the press clippings above.
George’s Christian Brothers College examination results, Georgette’s Alliance Française medals and prizes, and Marie’s music theory and pianoforte honours are evidence of their engagement with the educational opportunities available in Perth and possibly Denham while Stephanie, first of the two children born in Western Australia, corresponded with Auntie Nell of The Daily News Children’s Column and donated to its Sunshine League Cot Fund charity.
Leon Krasker, too, engaged in charitable endeavours, giving to the YMCA’s fundraising campaign in 1916 in the middle of the Great War only months before his tragic death on the track between Denham and Herald Bight.
So far though I haven’t come across mention of young Robert and what he may have been up to in the years before his deep and growing interest in art and then photography took the family back to Europe.
The Australian National Maritime Museum at Darling Harbour in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, has two boats of types of that would have been familiar to Robert Krasker’s father Leon Krasker when he was working as a pearl and pearl shell trader based at Denham in Shark Bay, Western Australia, in the early years of the twentieth century.
I am publishing these photographs as full-size JPEG files as the text on the information stands for the boats as well as the actual look of their materials and construction may be useful.
It may be possible to get closer and photograph them from different angles in future so I will add further photographs here when I can.
The Robert Krasker Project 