BIO
Charles Sabine was a St Peter’s College sportsman who played a season with Norwood and later suffered a debilitating illness while serving in the Boer War.
Charles was born at Glenelg on 15 March 1875, the third youngest of ten surviving children – five boys and five girls. His father, Clement, the manager of pastoral properties, a promoter of the Glenelg Railway and a director of the Glenelg Bathing Company, married Anne Glenn Clark in 1862. Clement’s mother, Adelaide Isham Sabine, née Eppes, was a sister of Elizabeth Stow, the wife of the celebrated Reverend Thomas Quinton Stow.
At St Peter’s, Charles played in two losing intercollegiate football matches. In 1891, Prince Alfred won 8.10 to 5.2. Charles was a follower in 1892 when St Peter’s succumbed to Clem Hill and the mud, going down 4.12 to 2.10. Cricket was his forté. A crack batsman with powerful cutting skills, he made a solid 20 of his team’s 157 in 1891 but PAC won the intercoll by three wickets. As captain in 1892 he played almost a lone hand, scoring 72 out of 127 and 64 out of 228, as St Peter’s lost by nine wickets.
Charles appears to be the Sabine who played for Norwood in 1895, coming into the senior team for matches against weaker opponents. He and another junior, John Forrestal, did well at Kensington Oval in the 6 July thumping of North Adelaide, 15.8 to 2.4, with ‘Bos’ Daly kicking eight goals. Charles played in the next match against North, before a poor crowd at Adelaide Oval on 10 August, when Norwood won 14.14 to 4.7. He kicked a goal as Norwood defeated the Natives, 8.13 to 2.5, in gusty conditions at Adelaide Oval on 24 August. He played senior cricket for Adelaide later in the year.
A prospector, Charles enlisted as a Trooper 4th Imperial Bushmen in the 1899-1902 Boer War and chased the enemy across the veldt before being laid low by a severe illness. He was recuperating in Adelaide in 1903.
He died at 56 in the Home for Incurables, Ryde, NSW, on 6 September 1931. An older brother, Ernest, was a respected police magistrate in Adelaide. His younger brother, Robert, made his name as a wine merchant in WA and Victoria
P Robins Oct 2019