Vrystaat Confessions

Tag: Kak Spruit

  • I was Born to be a Kayaker . .

    I was Born to be a Kayaker . .

    . . just not a very good one. *

    Actually ‘born to be’ . . ? Yep. Check it out here.

    I love rivers and river valleys; water, especially water rushing downhill in the direction I wish to go; big water, we call it; hairy rapids; fun and scary and I enjoy the . . let’s call it excited, tense anticipation. Yeah, fear. My approach to scary rapids is logical / statistical: I know that big water is high perceived danger, but low real danger and that driving to the river is low perceived danger, but high real danger. So I’d reassure myself with that, have a pee, then fasten my splashy and push off into the current. Of course once you’re there on the riverbank, ‘scouting your line’ through the rapid, peer pressure does have a bit to do with it! You going? Yeah? So’m I.

    I love little rapids too. As long as the water is flowing I’m happy. If I can do much of the trip with my arms folded and the current schlepping me downstream, I’m in paradise. Still water may run deep, but it’s hard work – no progress unless you’re paddling. And the wind is always agin ya!

    Perspiration? Not so much. On many a trip my crazy paddle mates would paddle back upstream to where I was drifting in awesome wonder and ask, ‘What’s Wrong Swanie?’ Nothing was wrong, the day was long. My thought was, What’s the hurry?

    In big water my mate ace paddler Chris Greeff would say, ‘If you ain’t scared, you ain’t havin’ fun!’ a quote he got from Cully Erdman. ** Now Chris – he was a very good one. And also a FreeStater who was ‘born to be’ a kayaker. Like me, he grew up on the banks of a Vrystaat river – the lesser Vile (Vaal) as opposed to my mighty Vulgar (Wilge). I used to give him good advice but he’d ignore it and win races. He has no handbrake; He won just about every race you can win except the one South African laymen ask about. And he nearly won that one, despite short and sensibly reluctant legs. These things are hard to verify, but if there was a combination trophy for the highest beer consumption the night before, coupled on the tote with winning the race the next day, I reckon the only other paddler who would maybe come close was Jimmy Potgieter, a decade earlier.

    Chris should write a book.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    * I saw this lovely basketball quote –

    ‘I was born to be a point guard, but not a very good one,’ by Pat Conroy (interesting man)

    seen on Dr Mardy’s Quotes

    ** fear quotes:

    Closest I can find are –

    ‘It ain’t brave if you ain’t scared,’ by Victor J. Banis in Deadly Nightshade.

    ‘If you ain’t scared you ain’t human,’ by James Dashner in The Maze Runner.

    ~~oo0oo~~
  • Up the Creek

    Up the Creek

    I was Born up Shit Creek without a Paddle. Quite literally. OK, my actual birth, per se, was in Duggie Dugmore’s maternity home, less than half a kilometer away on Kings Hill. See pic above – the old British officers mess (or the doctor’s residence?) became the maternity home. But mere days after I was born – as soon as I could be wrapped in swaddling clothes – I was taken home to my manger on a plot on the banks of Shit Creek (more accurately Kakspruit) in the shadow of Platberg mountain. And it was twelve years or so before I owned my first paddle. So this is a true story.

    – ruins of our house on the plot – trees in in the middle ground are on the banks of Shit Creek –
    – inset: me on the lawn thinking, ‘where’s me paddle?’ –

    I paddled my own canoe about twelve years later after we lost the plot. OK, sold the plot, moved into town and bought a red and blue canoe with paddle. The first place we paddled it was in a little inlet off the Wilge river above the Sunnymede weir, some distance upstream of town. Right here:

    – younger sis Sheila operates the paddle I was born without –
    Sunnymede on the Wilge River upstream from Harrismith FS ca1965
    – same little inlet – Mother Mary and Sheila on land, me airborne, Barbara sitting on water –

    Before this, I had paddled a home-made canoe made of a folded corrugated zinc roofing sheet, the ends nailed onto a four-by-four and sealed with pitch. Made by good school friend Gerie Hansen and his younger boet Nikolai – or maybe his older boet Hein; or by their carpenter father Jes? We paddled it, wobbling unsteadily, on their tiny little pond in the deep shade of wattle trees above their house up against the northern cliff of Kings Hill, halfway between the plot on the banks of the Kakspruit and our new house in town.

    Then Charlie Ryder came to town, and one thing led to another . . . also, eventually I got myself a Lekker Canadian Paddle.

    ~~oo0oo~~

    School friend Piet Steyl wrote of the wonderful days he also spent in the company of Gerie Hansen – who died tragically early, adding to the feeling that the good die young. Piet told of fun days spent paddling that zinc canoe, gooi’ing kleilat, shooting the windbuks and smoking tea leaves next to that same little pond. We both remembered Gerie winning a caption contest in Scope magazine and getting reprimanded for humourously suggesting Japanese quality was perhaps dodgy back then. Irony was, the Hansens actually owned one of the first Japanese bakkies seen in town – a little HINO.

    Gerie used to say ‘He No Go So Good!’ and Piet says when it finally gave up the ghost he said, ‘He No Go No More!’

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Shit Creek – actually the Kak Spruit; a tributary of the Wilge River which originates on Platberg mountain, flows down past our old plot and then westward through the golf course on the northern edge of town, then turns south and flows into the mighty Wilge below the old park weir on the right bank; Sensitive Harrismith people refer to it as ‘die spruit met die naam;’ Bah humbug.

    die spruit met die naam – ‘the creek with the name’ – that’s a kak description – too coy! It’s Kakspruit – one word; always will be; Shit Creek.

    gooi’ing kleilat – lethal weapon; a lump of clay on the end of a whippy stick or lath; spoken about way more than practiced, in my experience; and about 10% accuracy when you do get it going; Here’s a kid loading one:

    windbuks – air rifle; pellet gun.

    ~~oo0oo~~