Vrystaat Confessions

Tag: KZN

  • A Third Beach Holiday

    A Third Beach Holiday

    I remembered two beach holidays in my schooldays: A stay in a cottage in Chaka’s Rock and in a high-rise of ‘holiday flats’ in Durban.

    But then Sheila revealed her 1971 diary: Our winter trip to Pennington, where Dad had bought a plot of land and was having a cottage built. Or as South African men often say, ‘building a cottage.’

    I remember trees and dirt roads and that we were near a boundary. On the other side of that was ‘Umdoni Park’ said Dad. The cottage was on a corner plot at a crossroad. The road that ran towards Umdoni ended just half a block past the corner. A halfway down that short dead-end road, a big tree stood on the right with a branch stretching out over the dirt road. On that branch sat a Nerina Trogon. My firstvsighting ofcthat striking bird. And that’s all I remember from that trip to Pennington.

    But Sheila kept a diary. It was a nine-day holiday. We camped in the half-built house; We met six young guys on three 50cc buzzbikes and had a great time buzzing around the empty dirt roads on the sparsely-built sub-tropical coastal village of Pennington, three-up per bike!

    We walked to the beach, we swam in the rock pool, we walked on the beach; we drove further south to Margate and (fill in here from Sheila’s diary in my whatsapp) – to be continued . .

    ~~oo0oo~~

    The Narina trogon of Africa utilises a wider range of habitats than any other of the world’s fifty-odd trogon species. It can live in habitats ranging from dense forest to fairly open savannah, and from the Equator to southern South Africa. It is the most widespread and successful of all the trogons.

  • A Rolling Selfie

    A Rolling Selfie

    I saw the above pic on the internets and it reminded me of an incident after a river outing. It’s apparently of an old fella who rolled his car onto its side. His wife is still inside, but they’re getting a picture of the disaster already, after which they’ll rescue the vrou. I can believe taking a pic like that these days, as everyone has a camera in their pocket, but my story was back in the early eighties BCE, Before the Cellphone Era.

    We’d paddled from Hella Hella to Josephine’s bridge and me and Bernie were on our way out of the valley when we rounded Dead Man’s Corner and saw a car on its roof with the wheels still spinning. We skidded to a halt, hopped out and ran over, ready to rescue and get the car back on its wheels before all the oil ran out (or that’s what I was thinking) or before another car zoomed up and bashed into it.

    We shouted “You OK?” and a young guy said “Fine!” and started crawling out on his tummy out of the drivers seat window. As we grabbed the car and started to heave he said “WAIT!” grabbed his camera and took a picture of the upside down car. “One for the album!” he said, grinning.

    I’d never seen that before.

    We righted him and off he went. Driving off we decided it was probably a case of Daddy having bought the car for Sonnyboy.

    –oo0oo–

  • Bain of Harrismith

    Bain of Harrismith

    My granny Annie had an older brother Ginger. He was the oldest of the seven ‘Royal Bains’ and a great sportsman. They owned the Royal Hotel and they were ‘Royal’ so as not to be confused with the ‘Central Bains’, who owned the Central Hotel! As fishermen from the tiny hamlet of Wick on the more freezing end of Scotland, they couldn’t really claim the traditional ‘Balmoral Castle’ kind of royalty.

    Playing rugby for Hilton, ‘Bain of Harrismith’ became the bane of Michaelhouse in the first rugby game between these two toffee-nosed schools, where vaguely bored and lazy shouts of ‘a bit more pressure in the rear, chaps!’ are heard through the gin fumes surrounding the rugby fields.

    Here’s the report on the 1904 derby – the first game between the two schools:

    Hilton Ginger Bain_2
    – reprinted in the 1997 Hilton vs Michaelhouse sports day brochure –  

    Drop goals were four points and tries were three in those distant days. I like that the one side was “smarter with their feet” . . and that being smarter with your feet was better than “pretty passing.”

    A century later these rugby genes would shine again as Bain’s great-great-grandson – grandnephew actually – also whipped Michaelhouse.

    I’ve included a lovely picture of the Michaelhouse scrum on top.

    ~~oo0o~~

    Rugby in Harrismith was full of Bains and Blands, seven in this team:

    1921 Rugby Team Bains Blands
    – Ginger also captained the Harrismith A Polo team –

    ~~oo0oo~~

    ~~oo0oo~~

    Handwritten on the edge of one of these is “He wasn’t ill at all. (illegible) just found him (illegible) “

    ~~oo0oo~~