In the 1880s he lived and worked in the Transvaal Republic (one of his daughters was named "Krugerina" after Paul Kruger) and with the money he earned there, he bought farmland in the Elgin Valley in 1898, part of which was the Oak Valley farm.
He spent much of the next few years under house arrest on his farm (he had signed up as a medical officer with the Boer army, during the war, and was soon captured by the British.