Dad, I can’t think what to have for our third supper camping. Don’t wurrie Jess, I’ll do the first night, you just do two suppers. What’ll you do Dad? she asked, maybe regretting opening her mouth. Don’ wurrie Jess, I have a plan.
Her query had reminded me that our cottage came with three stainless steel braais, two built-in, and three braai grids, and two huge bags of charcoal – not your garage forecourt size – and eight plastic-wrapped bags of braaihout. I packed the grid, a bag of braaihout, fahlahter, safety matches, and two T-bones. I was going to become a brauer. How hard could it be?
At Bonamanzi there’s a built-in brick braaiplek, no grid. I go scouting the sixteen sites, only two occupied, and find one. Collecting twigs as I go. At dusk I set the well-packed pyramid-shaped pyre alight and stand back watching the blaze with satisfaction, marveling at how easy this is and how okes gaan aan about their secret and foolproof ‘methods,’ etc and blah blah. When I have glowing hardehout coals – and admittedly still a bit of flame, I’m hungry so I sandwich the Spar-marinaded vacuum-packed very thinly-sliced bargain T-bones into my nifty snap-shut stainless steel braai grid that came wif the cottage, and plop them on top of the camp grid over the red hot coals. With a bit of flame. I’m attending them noukeurig when the other camper drives in in the dark and I make the mistake of shouting across my coals, How was your drive?
Turns out he thinks he should tell me. He bustles over and tells me. I didn’t catch his name but if it isn’t Earnest it should be. Great detail about how their drive was not good, no elephant. Then where he’s from and what his 4X4 is and which one he actually wanted to buy (Nissan Pathfinder / Nissan Patrol) and how – exactly how – he built his own camper trailer on his parents farm and what he kitted it out with with his own hands and how although the trailer was old, the wheel bearings were still shiny silver when he took them apart. Also the pros and cons of a gazebo.
I’m shuffling and he’s getting into his stride and I’m polite. A fatal combination, which brings Jess with a torch to say, Dad you’ve burnt the meat!
After a five-night wilderness trail in Mfolosi Game Reserve, we went for a game drive in my kombi on the way out of the park. We being Doug, Andre co-pilot and me driving. Kingfisher Canoe Club canoeists all. Needing a leak after a few bitterly cold brews I left the wheel with the kombi trundling along amiably on the gravel road and walked to the side door of the kombi, ordering Hawarden to take over the driving.
Not good at taking orders, he looked at me, waited till I was in mid-stream out of the open sliding door and leant over with his hiking stick and pressed the accelerator.
The driverless kombi picked up speed and I watched it start to veer off-road, necessitating a fast shake, a squeezed premature end to my leak, and a dive for the wheel.
I agree not a completely successful trial, but it predated Musk. And I’d suggest better than his efforts, as no-one died.
Phoned Mom on my birthday. I’m 69, she’s 95. She joked that she would not be posting any pictures on the computer today. That’s selfies on social media to you. Reason being she had bitten down on a hard old chocolate biscuit and broken half a tooth. This leaves her with one and a half missing front teeth, hence no self-taken photos of her this year.
‘There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.‘ Kenneth Grahame Wind in the Willows
Random thoughts on various boats I’ve enjoyed in my largely landlubber life.
Motorboating
The first thing I knew about boats was they took up the whole lounge and nothing else could happen in there. The old man built a wooden-hull motorboat in our lounge on the plot outside Harrismith ca.1959. There was a lot more room to move about in that lounge when we visited it about half a century later, ca.2007:
As far as I recall Dad used the boat just a few times on the Wilge River (‘The Mighty Vulgar’) at Sunnymede.
Then he sold it and bought a bigger boat. It had a 50hp Mercury outboard. He soon sold that one to local farmer Harry Mandy for delivery to Richards Bay, where the Mandys were going to use it for fishing. I went with Dad towing it behind our 1956 Morris Isis to Richards Bay, my first visit to ‘Zululand’ ca.1965. Someone else – Jimmy Horsley? – went along for the ride. The two adults sat in front, smoked cigarettes and talked, ignoring me. I could happily daydream and stare out the window. Maybe I “looked out the window and dreamed I was a cowboy” – ala John Denver?
At a re-fuelling stop, I stood on the forecourt after we had refuelled the Isis. Always in a hurry, the old man said impatiently, ‘Come on! Hop in!’ and I said, ‘But the boat isn’t hitched up,’ It had been unhitched so the numberplate could be dropped to get at the filler cap under it. They had to quickly hook up the trailer before we could go! I felt very important. Like, needed, almost.
I remember crossing an impressive high-arched bridge – probably this one across the Umhlatuze.
– pic: Hugh Bland kznpr.co.za –
In the village of Richards Bay we stayed in a motel-type hotel; rustic, but still luxury – or at least novelty – to me.
~~oo0oo~~
Sunnymede on the Wilge River, waterskiing behind Richard Scott’s boat.
Tabs’ Balmoral dam. Tabs Fyvie’s first boat we fetched in Howick – On the way home a wheel came past us and we chuckled at the misfortune of ‘whoever’s it was!’ It was ours!
When Tabs finally got the little boat to Sarclet a week or two later, we battled to start the old Johnson outboard motor. We all took turns pulling and plukking the cord. EVENTUALLY it started, so we all jumped aboard the tiny boat – and promptly sank it! Drowned the motor! Three hours of schlep and zero minutes of skiing!
Later Tabs got a bigger boat, ‘The Pheasant Plucker’ with a V6 inboard motor and a Hamilton jet. I once embarrassingly beached it when the motor cut at speed as I slammed it into reverse, aiming for a windgat sudden stop; I landed up high and dry next to the cars parked on the bank;
Back in 1958, Drove an old V8 . . .
Canoeing
The old weir on the Wilge river – shooting the old sandstone weir on tubes and our mostly-open red-and-blue canoe. We didn’t realise then how dangerous weirs are!
– Once with Fluffy Crawley – very low level in that same open red-and-blue canoe.
– Once with Claudio Bellato – river at a high level – we both lost our spectacles – in an Accord K2 owned by the Voortrekkers, white fibreglass with green vinyl deck. We proceeded to wreck it in Island Rapid on Mrs Girly and the Misses – Bessie and Marie – Jacobs’ farm Walton. Had to pay for it. R50!
ca.1969, Charles Ryder arrived in Harrismith in a lime-green Volvo 122S. On his roofrack he had a fibreglass Limfjorden 17’6″, glass cockpit, white vinyl deck, clear hull, wooden struts, crossbars and gunwales, brass handles.
I wrapped (‘wrecked’) it on the Wilge – also on the Jacobs’ farm Walton. There’s an island and the river descends in rapids on both sides of it.
I then completely rebuilt that boat. Learnt a lot about kayak construction. Also that I don’t like fiberglass. Not at all.
Trained for the ’72 Dusi on the mighty Wilge River. Then the boat disappeared! So I hitchhiked to PMB to follow the Dusi. Later I found the boat submerged in the Kakspruit and reclaimed it.
One day I saw the late zoo warthog Justin floating downstream, bloated and feet-in-the-air after the zoo closed down and he’d been turned loose.
Before I knew the danger of creeks in flood, I took a short trip under the bridge on HS-Swinburne road N3, on the Swartspruit to test the Limfy (and me!) as it was running high – Mom took me in her car, trusting soul.
USA
1973 – Lake of the Woods near Quetico National Park, Ontario Canada in open ‘Canadian’ canoes. With Oklahomans Sherry Higgs, Dottie Moffett, Dale Moffett and Jonathan Kneebone from Aussie. The no-see-ems (black flies) and mozzies drove us out after just one night!
Canoe Marathons
Dusi 1972 – My Limfy stolen in Harrismith, so no boat! Hitched to PMB with Jean Roux. Hitched a ride with someone’s second to 1st overnight stop at Dusi bridge; Hitched on to Diptank 2nd overnight stop; Slept in the open under the stars; On to Blue lagoon; Slept on the beach near Addington, then at Point Road police station (an eye- and ear-opener!).
Dusi 1976 – Drove down with Louis van Reenen in his blue VW Beetle. I had a white Limfy with a vinyl deck, he had a red all-glass Hai whitewater boat (small cockpit, rudderless) from Jerome Truran’s Dad in JHB! We tossed a coin and he won, so I seconded him driving his VW. We stayed in my orange puptent. It was a very high river – he swam and swam! But he finished, tough character that he was!
Dusi 1983 – at last I paddled the Dusi! New white hulled Limfy with a red fibreglass deck. At the start I spied Louis, starting his second Dusi.
Umko 1983 – Hella Hella to Goodenough’s weir in my Limfy.
Berg 1983 in a Sabre – after (luckily!) training in ‘Toti with Chris Logan. Cold as hell! Freezing! Gail-force winds! Horizontal rain! Madness.
Fish 1983 – ( from the Fish website): In those days, the race was held on a much lower river (roughly half of the current level!) and it started with a very long first day (over 50km). The paddlers left the Grassridge Dam wall and paddled back around the island on the dam (the WORST part of the race for my hangover!!) before hitting the river, eventually finishing at the Baroda weir, 2,5 km below the current overnight stop. The paddlers all camped at Baroda overnight, before racing the shorter (33km) second stage into Cradock. “In those days the paddlers had to lift the fences, and the river mats (fences weighed down by reeds and flotsam and jetsam) took out quite a few paddlers”, said Stanford Slabbert (winner of the first Fish in 1982). “Getting under (or over) them was quite an art. I recall one double crew, the front paddler bent forward to get under the fence and flicked the fence hoping to get it over his partners head as well. It didn’t. The fence caught his hair and pulled him right out of the boat and they swam!”
Legends were already being born. Herve de Rauville stunned the spectators by pioneering a way to shoot Marlow weir. He managed to reverse his boat into the chute on the extreme left, and took the massive slide back into the river going forward, and made it!
The field doubled in 1983, as the word of this great race spread. 145 paddlers in 110 boats. It was won on debut by Joburg paddler Niels Verkerk, who recalls, “It was a very long first day, especially as the river was not as full as it is now (it was running at 17 cumecs in 1983). Less than half the guys shot Keiths Flyover, which was not that bad as the hole at the bottom wasn’t that big. Very few people shot Cradock weir in those days. I won the race without shooting Cradock”, he added.
At a medium level, the lines at Soutpansdrift were also different. The weir above Soutpans was always a problem, as there was no chute, and even the pipes that created a slide down the weir face were not there yet. At the bottom of the rapid, the only line was extreme left, underneath the willow tree, and then a sharp turn at the bottom to avoid hitting the rocks, where the spectators gathered in numbers hoping to see you come short.
Crocodile 1984 (lowveld croc) marathon to Nelspruit. Back in the days when the race finished in Nelspruit and you had to portage the Montrose Falls. Scouts would check ahead on the second day to see where the hippos were. Sometimes you had to portage round their pool. Other times it was deemed OK to paddle past them. Our year they were in Nelspruit, so the race was ended just above their pool in the river. I loved that river and was disappointed to dip out on those last couple of kays. Short-changed by the river horses!
Tripping
Umko, Tugela, Umzimkulu, Orange, Vaal, Ocoee River in Tennessee 1984, Colorado river in Arizona 1984
—————————————————–
Other boats – I got a Sella – white deck, clear hull new from Rick Whitton at Kayak Centre.
Later I bought a second hand Jaguar (I think) at the KCC club auction. Red deck.
Now I have plastics – my old Perception Quest Greg Bennett imported for his Paddlers Paradise venture, and sold to us at a generous discount; a Fluid Flirt, an Epic something – a bit bigger – and a Fluid Detox bought from Owen Hemingway. Gathering dust.
In 2020 I gave the Flirt and the Epic to Rob Hill, who does great work teaching kids to handle swift water, and vital sweeping, and plus river rescue.
Later: Also donated the Fluid Detox plus paddling kit to Rob.
Wilge Swinburne – Harrismith
Wilge Harrismith to Swiss Valley (Near Nieuwejaarspruit confluence)
Vaal near Parys
Orange above Augrabies falls
In 1983 or 84 I bought a Perception Quest plastic from Greg Bennett at Paddlers Paradise – in the first batch he imported – for R525.
Tugela – Colenso to Tugela Ferry;
Tugela – Ngubevu to Jamieson’s – with Doug Retief, Dave Walker, Bernie Garcin
Umko – Mpendle – Lundys Hill
Umko – Lundys Hill – Deepdale
Umko – Deepdale – Hella Hella
Umko – Hella Hella – No. 8
Umko marathon – Hella Hella to Goodenoughs Weir
Umzimkulu Hatchery to Coleford bridge
Lake St Lucia – Dukandlovu – Robbie Stewart, Bernie Garcin, and –?
Ocoee river in Tennessee – rented Perception Mirage
Grand Canyon Colorado – rented Quest-like plastic
Colorado river in Arizona (480km through the Grand Canyon). Got two wonderful wooden paddles made in Canada: Hollow oval shaft at right angles, laminated blade kevlar-clad and teflon-tipped. Left feather, of course. Beaut! Still got one, gave Greg Bennett the other.
Vaal near Parys
Orange above Augrabies with Aitch with some local outfitter recommended by Dave Walker.
Trip: We paddled in the Umfula’s store area for the last time before the Inanda dam flooded the Umgeni valley. I borrowed extra boats for non-paddling friends, but we ended up walking it was so low!
Botswana – in borrowed plastic expedition sit-in kayaks, we paddled the Thamalekane river – outside Maun, Botswana; and the Nhabe river in flood – Aitch, Janet, Duncan and I paddled the last 5 to 8 km into Lake Ngami and then back upstream to our vehicle.
Never kayak’d the Zambesi. Rafted a one-day trip below the Falls.
Listen, if you want to make it to supper you must come quickly but you’ll have to bring lots of money.
His nephew Jack who’s ‘a helluva clever bugger, Jack, he’s on a lot of boards and chairman of this, chairman of that. Wonderful bugger, Jack. He still weighs 78kg same as he weighed when he was a fighter jet pilot’ (Jack must be 78yrs old in the shade, so 1kg per annum).
He brought me some smoked snoek and chips, KILOGRAMS OF IT!
..
He’s on to food – a favourite subject.
..
Oupa worked on the railways.
Working men took a scoff box to work
Guys would take sarmies, meat, tea, etc.
Oupa had a billy can. A blue billy can, the lid was your cup. You know what he used to take in to work for his lunch?
No. What, Dad?
Sugar water
At night he’d drink a big mug of milk and eat bread.
..
Ouma would cook in the kitchen and dish up in the kitchen.
Six plates. Her and Oupa and four big kids.
You got your plate of food. Don’t ask for more, there was no more. But we didn’t need more, it was a great big plate; we never went hungry. We had to do without some stuff, like new clothes or shoes, but we never went hungry. There was always a big sack of peanuts in their shells on the floor of the pantry and you could go in and grab a handful.
..
Oupa and Ouma in PMB
Chickens and muscovy ducks in the backyard.
Ouma made a little pond in the ‘sump,’ the lowest point in the yard in the far corner. She would fill it up with water, about one brick deep, then throw mielies in the water. The ducks like feeding underwater. They bred prolifically and there were always plenty. A big fat roast duck was a huge treat. Only trouble is there was duck shit all over the yard.
Chickens they had to slag. The kids. One would hold the beak and feet, stretch it and one would chop off the head with an axe.
A big game was to then stand it up and let it go and watch it run around, headless.
‘One day Oupa caught us doing it and beat the shit out of us.’
18 September 1928 plus ninety three years gets you to today. So if you were born then you’ve had around 33 968 sleeps.
Quite something, Mom! Happy birthday, we feel very lucky to have you with us and be able to listen to your stories, and hear your memories and enjoy your piano playing. Love you lots!
I listen to the Chopin and Mozart etc you used to play and I say to the expert pianists playing: Huh! You shoulda heard my Mom!
She recently said she thinks the best piece she played was the duet with Una Elphick in the town hall of Beethoven’s 5th symphony. ‘You know the one,’ Mom says to me: ‘Da Da Da DUM . . Da Da Da DUM . .’
They practiced separately and when they got together they couldn’t ‘gel,’ it wasn’t working. They tried using a metronome, tick tick you know. No good. Then Una said I’ll count, one two etc. That worked, they clicked and . . ‘best piece we ever played! ‘
This post was over at bewilderbeast.org, but it belongs here, in the Olden Daze blog.
I read Jock of the Bushveld again for the how-manieth time. I enjoy it every time. Percy Fitzpatrick wrote his classic tales of his days with trek oxen and wagons on the lowveld on the highveld: On his farm Buckland Downs in the Harrismith district.
– famous Jock – almost as handsome as my Jock –
Always gets me thinking of my wonderful dog Jock in high school:
– 95 Stuart Street back yard with my room left and Jock’s luxury carpeted kennel right – – Jock with the Voortrekkers’ canoe wreck after the ill-fated Swanie/Bellato Vulgar River Expedition – – my favourite of all – Mom Mary knew –
We got Jock from Reg and Jo Jelliman. They farmed very near Buckland Downs out on the Meul river side of town, out Verkykerskop way. He was apparently a registered Staffordshire Bull Terrier, with the formal name Copperdog-Something on his papers. They wanted to get rid of him. Something about eating eggs.
He sullied the Copperdog family name ever so slightly again one night by wandering over to Charles Shadford’s place and slaughtering a number of his rabbits. Carnage! Staffies are wonderful and soppy with people, but can be wild with other animals! Eish!
I spent hours with ole Jock in lieu of doing homework. He was my mate. Learnt his sit stay come etc well, but would probly rather just have lolled about grinning.
I say, as many do, I’m a dog person, I lurved my dog. But when the time came to go overseas as an exchange student I left for a year without a backward glance. Yeah, we love our dogs. Some people do go thru hoops and over obstacles at great expense to take their dogs with them when they emigrate. Some.
When I was away one time as a student in Joburg the ole man had Jock ‘put down.’ He was a nuisance? The prior rabbit thing maybe? And anyway, it was his dog, not mine.
~~~oo0oo~~
. . and then in Westville many years later our first dog in our first home was TC – to me she was a mini-Jock:
TC
She lived to a ripe old thirteen years. I buried her at the bottom of that beautiful garden in River Drive, alongside Matt (above) and Bogart who both came after her but died before her.
No idea where Jock was buried.
~~oo0oo~~
June 2025: Out of nowhere, Mom said on a phone call, “I’ve no idea why Dad had Jock put down. He never said.”
Mom tells the story of a sister in frail care who used to shout very loudly late at night. Mom kept wishing she wouldn’t, but it happened regularly. It seemed that was just her way.
One night she yelled at someone while standing right outside Mom’s open door and that was it. Mom plucked up the courage and called out to her to ask her to please speak less loudly. She didn’t hear, so Mom called out a bit louder, whereupon the sister stuck her head into Mom’s doorway and said firmly:
“Please speak quieter! I’ll have no shouting here in frail care!”
Mom Mary (93), ever seeing the bright side of life, chuckled with laughter telling me the story!
Jessie’s second pre-school was ‘Sinner Lizabeth.’ I think it’s Anglican, but I don’t know, cos I wasn’t interested. I was only interested in the fact that Aitch had chosen it, so I knew they’d look after my Jessie. And they did: Rose and two Pennys treated her good the two years she was there.
But today I found out about Sinner Mary. This was news to me. I gasped.
Gasp!
Right through school Mary, now universally know as Mary Methodist after playing the organ in the Harrismith Methylated Spirits church for something like a hundred years, was churchless!
Her Mom Annie, my gran, was blissfully unimpressed and uninvolved and probably played golf on Sundays. I’m guessing she would use as an excuse, if pushed by the pious, that Harrismith didn’t have a Presbyterian church (it had folded).** I’m not going to say that proves God is Methodist, but you can see right here how the thought did flit across my mind. That would be if She existed, of course.
So Mary the scholar was churchless! I love it! She tells me her teacher Mr Moll – who taught singing, woodwork and religion – never gave her very good marks probly cos he knew she didn’t go to church! She’s joking of course, and her bad marks were probably 80%, but anyway, Tommy Moll was very involved in the Methodists.
So when Mary got married they had to ‘make a plan’ and the wedding made the newspapers. The headline blared: ‘Four denominations at one wedding’ or something. Not ‘and a funeral.’ (Sheila had the actual cutting so I now know my recollection was exaggerated).
The bride ‘was Presbyterian’ they said (but we now know she was actually – gasp -a ‘none’); the groom was Dutch Reformed (‘another faith’ they said, but he too was in reality a ‘none’); the Methodist minister was on leave, so the Apostolic Faith Mission man tied the knot.
Later, when Mary returned to Harrismith, having lived in Pietermaritzburg for a while, where she became Mom to Barbara, she decided to get church. She chose the Methodists as a lot of her friends were Methodists. She maybe forgets she told Sheila the Methodist boys were nicer than the Anglican boys, so she tells me something about not liking the Anglicans’ ‘high church’ aspect. So this twenty five year old mother leaves her baby Barbara with Annie and Dad at Granny Bland’s home in Stuart street, where they have the room with the big brass double bed, and goes off to confirmation classes with a group of schoolkids. She aces the class, gets confirmed in the Lord, sanctified, and starts her epic Methodistian journey, which continues today, sixty seven years later, her only sin on the way being an occasional single ginger brandy with ginger ale while everyone else was drinking bucket loads. When she plays the piano of a Sunday in the frail care dining room in Maritzburg these days, those are Methodist hymns she’s thumping out joyfully.
I sort of feel like I have an excuse for being churchless now if I need one. ‘I’m just taking my twenty five years off now, Ma,’ I’ll tell Mary when she asks.
(BTW: In the pic, Mary is the bridesmaid, back left. The bride is her dear friend and cousin Sylvia Bain who married John Taylor, another ‘none’ I’ll bet).
~~oo0oo~~
– Jess in Livingstone uniform with her Mad Hatter Tea Party hat – 2008 –
After ‘Sinner Lizabeth’ pre-school, Jess went to a remedial primary school whose school song, which they sang with gusto, went:
Live in Sin, Live in Sin, Progress Voorspoed, Live in Sin
Eat cake, Eat soap, Eat porridge too.
Believe in yourself Live in Sin
Can’t say we didn’t give our JessWess a good grounding.
~~oo0oo~~
“Have faith, have hope, have courage too. Livingstone Remedial.” Tom loved telling me the “Live in Sin” real words, Dad!’
~~oo0oo~~
I see anyone can apply to become an Apostolic Faith Mission Marriage Officer! Just download the application form online here. Maybe this is an out if we can find errors in that 1951 dominee-ring application!?
~~oo0oo~~
** Harrismith’s historian Leon Strachan tells a lovely story – I’ll find it – of how Hans Lötter met a Harrismith couple on the train ride from Durban to Harrismith. He was going there to settle, having bought a bookstore sight-unseen. He asked them ‘What church does Harrismith NOT have?’ They racked their brains, then said ‘There’s no Presbyterian Church.’
‘Ah, then I’ll be Presbyterian,’ Hans announced firmly.
Vrystaat Confessions 