Rust in Vrede means Rest in Peace. Rust in Warden was anything but peaceful on account of an invasion of hooligans from the Last Outpost of the British Empire – a flock of unruly wimmin studying to be teachers back in March 1976. It took us gentlemen from behind the boerewors curtain in the salubrious Johannesburg suburb of Doornfontein to bring some decorum to this rustic spot.
Rust, meaning ‘rest’ was Tabs Fyvie’s farm in the Warden district with a lovely empty farmhouse which we colonised, spreading sleeping bags on the wooden floors. Overflow slept on the lawn. Beers, ribaldry and laughter. Tall tale telling . .
– Liz believes me; Brenda thinks ‘Ja, right . . ‘ –– Hill entertains – the lasses believe him; I think ‘Ja, right . .’ –
. . can’t remember eating . .
And thanks to sister Sheila we have 1976 pictures!
A gathering of a flock of du Plessis is always a very special occasion. Not an orderly occasion. Not a quiet occasion. Just very special. Mignon, Jean-Prieur and Jacques-Herman celebrated their Mom Mona’s wonderful ninety years of Mom, Music and Magic at a wonderful venue outside Harrismith – where I forgot to take any pictures! If anyone has any, please share a few – especially one of that magnificent pub of Rob and Cindy’s! – but also of the people, of course!
– J-H Mignon and J-P at Lala Nathi –
People poured out of the woodwork from far and wide. Austin, Texas; Vancouver, Canada – even Marquard, Free State!
We almost didn’t get there:
– this could have been unforgettable in a bad way – but we had Zelda to sing to us –
. . but get there we did.
– our hosts –– mense – a formidable clan –
Later we found out we – me, sister Sheila and old Harrismith friend Zelda Grobbelaar – were stuck there – the Ford needed big repairs – so Bess put us up in her lovely home:
– I had teddy bears in my bedroom –
When we didn’t show up at the du Plessis gathering that evening, I texted them:
My car got locked up in a ballet studio among the tutus.
– that part was true, check it out:
. . and I got plied with strong liquor by three gorgeous chicks and clean forgot about any other friends I might have.
Oh, that part was partly true as well.
~~oo0oo~~
Thank goodness the Ford went vrot. It was diagnosed with terminal head gasket, whatever that means. I thought it was premature after only 300 000kms, but the upside was this meant we got an extra twenty four hours in the dorp the metropolis. We visited all and sundry, had supper with Bess; had breakfast and bought rusks at Something Lekker owned by a local lass; and then we lunched with the du Plessis clan while they ran around organising that Mona be laid to rest next to her husband and their Dad Pollie, who has been waiting patiently in the Harrismith cemetery for Mona to join him for decades. Patiently? Maybe.
I can just hear Oom Pollie. After he’d got over his joy he would comment on the very smart coffin, worried about the price. He’d relax when he heard it was made by Oom Jan, gratis and for niet. Then he’d harumph that it took Mona joining him for the grass to be mowed round his grave. Then he’d sing Hello Dolly!
To get back to KwaZulu Natal, we hired a brand new Toyota Corolla at Harrismith Avis – of course our dorp has an Avis! Not only that, look at this: They’re the reigning champions!
We visited Georgie Russell; and Mariette Mandy at The Harrismith Chronicle where she had already written about the gathering for her wonderful hundred-and-plenty-year-old local newspaper. I’ll post that when I get it. I’ll also link to any other reports of the day I can find. And add pictures.
~~oo0oo~~
. . . after a suitably polite interval I think Oom Pollie would also murmur hopefully, ‘Did you bring any cigarettes?’
~~oo0oo~~
Late Monday afternoon, after we’d left, the family carried out Mona’s wishes
– Jean-Prieur, Mona & Pollie in the mowed grass – Platberg behind –
~~oo0oo~~
Driving home in a brand new car where all the knobs work was a novel experience – and hey! it had six forward gears! That brought back memories of another Toyota thirty two years earlier . .
~~oo0oo~~
Two weeks later I was joined by good friend Allister Peter to drive back to the dorp in the rental to go and fetch my Ford Ranger from Riaan who had fixed it up like new! We bumped into John Venning at the coffee shop – and it turns out these two old bullets are fishing n drinking chinas from way back – apparently there’s a thing called The Grunter Hunt down in the Eastern Cape and they have indulged. And frolicked.
Mom went to this school, as did all three of us kids. Annie, Mom’s Mom, would not have, as it seems it was established in 1915, see below, and Annie was 22yrs old by then.
Before us, Etienne Joubert went, and he remembers:
Playing ‘Hasie’ under the Bluegums near the old Golf club house; Eating ‘Manna’ under the Bluegums; Playing ‘Bok-bok’ behind the bottom class rooms; Playing marbles in the main playground.
Also he remembers the woodwork teacher Giel du Toit – his mother Joyce had a hilarious ‘holy’ nickname for Onse Giel – Heilige Giel, I think it was; and he remembers the smell of the old fashioned wood glue; And the wood vice where ‘we tied a guy’s tie in & walloped his behind. I’ve forgotten his name, but not his face … I can see it now!
He then confesses – I do not remember much about plays & music . . .’ – No worries, sister Barbara does:
– the separate woodwork classroom was to the right, just out of picture – – some of these windows were Ou Eier Meyer and Ou Vis Alberts classrooms –
Sister Barbara was a year or two later – she finished Std 5 in 1965. She definitely remembers about plays and music, you Philistine, Etienne! She remembers that year was the school’s Golden Jubilee year – so established 1915, I guess? – and an exciting concert was planned and held on the 28th and 29th of October 1965, with all the classes in the Kleinspan School and Primary School – Volkskool – participating.
How could she remember in such detail? Well, she had her program carefully stored away in a shoe-box! She remembers the play her class put on: ‘TO BE OR NOT TO BE’ – by B.J.J. (Bruce) Humphries with Pierre du Plessis and Llewellyn Mileham – or was it Kevin Crawley? – as the smart guys, and Timothy Brockett as Mr. van Snoggery-Boggery, the drunk guy – Pierre remembered this name – and herself – Barbara Swanepoel – as the unnamed lady on the railway station platform.
Interludes between plays were filled by music by the ‘Harrismith Volkskool Orkes / Primary School Band.’ Band members were Rina Minny en Estelle Meyer on trekklaviere – pull pianos – piano accordions; Sylvia Doman on piano; Barbara Swanepoel on melodica; Pierre du Plessis on drums; Willie du Plessis on electric guitar; So much of du Plessis!; Theuns Bam en Bertus Hattingh on acoustic guitars; They were called Die Dorps Mense. Years later The Village People modelled a band on this lot. Um, so I believe.
Then came the Primary School Boys Choir – Die Seunskoor. Under the charming direction of Miss L. Fourie and that delectable redhead Miss Ethel Cronje. I was a soprano in this lot, warbling away merrily before my balls dropped. We sang (according to that program which won’t lie) Wiegeliedjie van Mozart; Drummer Boy; and Dominique; I still remember – and can still sing majestically – the second and third of these liedjies. My kids dispute this fact, unreasonably.
– Ethel Cronje looking strict or smug, her boys looking glum – it was her seunskoor, no doubt about that –
Barbara asks: ‘Now wasn’t there a record produced for this choir? I think so – our own famous ‘Platberg Boys Choir.’ Indeed there were two records cut. Vinyl. The Vienna Boys Sausages were nervous. Especially when we launched a smash hit successful sold-out tour of Zululand. If it wasn’t for rugby and puberty, we’d have usurped those Austrian suckers. We’d have parum pu pum pum’d them out of business . .
A large gathering of the Goor Koor – that assembly of happy inebriates led and accompanied by virtual-teetotaller Mary Methodist, our Mom, gathered together – assembled, amassed – on the occasion of Mom’s 45th birthday. Usually there were far fewer of them gathered at any one time, an occasional Lubricated Quartet perhaps, but this was a special occasion in the big loungexat 95 Stuart Street!
And Sheila – thanks goodness! – took pictures. She was in matric at the time, I was in Oklahoma, Barbara in Pietermaritzburg.
– Joyce Joubert; Marie Roux peeping out; Isobel Kemp; Stella Fyvie; Mary the birthday girl, wearing specs, grog in hand; Mary Wessels; Martie Dreyer; Baby Mandy; Annemarie van Wyk –
. . and here – precious picture! – Mary at the keyboard and Hugo Wessels right there, ready to belt out a number! Two very talented people, 45 years old, who were in matric together in 1945. And this fun gathering happened 45 years ago, as Mom is now 90! I think all my stats are right . . .
– in earlier years my ear would be near the floor right outside that door behind Hugo – listening in fascination –– Dina de Kock; Hester Schreiber; Koekie de Bruyn; Hugo Wessels; Hannes van Wyk; Jack Kemp; Pierre Roux; Hector Fyvie; Steve Schreiber; Dad; Bennie Dreyer; Joyce Joubert Isobel Kemp; Stella Fyvie: Anna-Marie van Wyk –
Wonderful memories of crawling down the long passage to get nearer to the sound of Mom playing the piano; Also of sundry ‘choir members’ over the years, belting out popular songs with high enthusiasm and various degrees of talent. If spotted by any of the choir it would be ‘Hello Kosie!’ – if spotted by Mom or Dad it would be ‘Get back to bed!’
Also memories of the smell of ash trays! Always plenty of ash trays. Ours were from tyre companies, so they were glass inside miniature Dunlop or Goodyear tyres!
– I couldnt find one overflowing with butts and ash! –
~~~~oo0oo~~~~
Goor Koor – Dire Choir
~~~~oo0oo~~~~
– 45yrs later here’s Mary, still beautifully at it –
Dad: “Victor Simmonds was a lovely chap and a very good artist. He was a little man, grey, a lot older than me. What? How old? Well, I was probably 35 then and he was grey. He was probably 50. He lodged with Ruth Wright (Ruth Dominy by then) on the plot next door to ours, Glen Khyber. I doubt if he paid them any rent, they were probably just helping him out. He moved to the hotel in Royal Natal National Park where they allowed him to sell his art to the guests and that probably paid his rent.
“He was a hopeless alcoholic, unfortunately. He used to come to me begging for a bottle of brandy late at night, his clothes torn from coming straight across to Birdhaven from Glen Khyber, through the barbed wire fences. (Mom and Dad owned a bottle store, liquor store, in town) I said ‘Fuck off, Victor, I won’t do that to you,’ and sent him away. I wish I had bought one of his paintings. Sheila found these four paintings he gave me for nothing. He said he did these as a young student. As I took them he said, ‘Wait, let me sign them for you.’”
– maybe a self portrait? – – nude with amphora? – – semi-nude with two amphorae? – – maybe the Kak Spruit at or near Glen Khyber? – possibly –
So I went looking and found a lot of his work available on the internet. Once again Dad’s memory proved sound. Victor was born in 1909, thus thirteen years older than Dad:
Victor Simmonds’ work has been offered at auction multiple times, with realized prices ranging from $126 to $256, depending on the size and medium of the artwork. Since 2012 the record price for this artist at auction is $256 for South African landscape with two women carrying wood, sold at Bonhams Oxford in 2012. Also see here and here and here
– South African Landscape With Two Women Carrying Wood –– shrubs beside a cascading stream –
I knew this scene! I recognised it immediately! To me this looks like the stream above the Mahai campsite in Royal Natal National Park – So I went looking and at lovecamping.co.za I found this:
– spot on!! – an image locked in my brain for maybe fifty years! –– sunset, poplar trees, a river – the Wilge near Walton farm? – (or – see below . . )
A number of his paintings are available for sale. I’d love to see his ‘The Gorge, Royal Natal National Park, Showing the Inner Buttress and Devils Tooth’ but I’d have to subscribe for one day at 30 euros! That one was apparently painted in 1980, so he kept going for at least 23 years after he stayed in our neck of the woods. That would have made Victor around 70 and his liver a resilient organ.
– more Victor Simmonds Drakensberg scenes – ca.1946 – click to enlarge –
~~oo0oo~~
Now its 2024 and look who has popped up onto my vrystaat confessions: All my life I’d heard Mom speak of Corry Cronje and Len Cronje, and Corry’s daughter Liz found my scribblings. Or rather, Liz wrote a delightful nostalgic personal memoir about the Cronjes of Witsieshoek, (post it online Liz and I’ll link to it!). Anthony Maeder sent it to me and put me in touch with her. We got talking and got onto the topic of this talented artist who spent time on a neighbouring plot to the one we grew up on, and on a neighbouring farm to the one Liz grew up on.
Brothers Corry and Len lived in Witsieshoek on neighbouring farms, Patricksdale and Mountainview respectively. Victor Simmonds stayed with Len and his wife Lettie on Mountainview for quite a while and painted on both farms and the surrounding area. Liz Finnie Cronje is Corry’s daughter and when I told Mom she immediately said, “Oh Corry’s wife Rosalie was a big friend of Annie’s (her mom). They would have long chats at Annie’s Caltex garage when the Cronje’s came to town.”
Len and Lettie’s daughter Josie Cronje Batchelor has a number of Victor Simmonds’ paintings and she has OK’d my posting them here. Wonderful! One more place where his talent can be appreciated.
– View from Mountainview across Patricksdale to the ‘Berg –
Click to enlarge – Left: Pier – Right: The poplars in Autumn –
This next one has to be on its own. Here’s why: Josie Bachelor, nee Cronje of Mountainview wrote: This is my favourite. The Gold Lamé in the background was my mom’s evening dress. The vase and porcelain horse also Mom’s. Mom did the arrangement. The table belonged to Vic.
Knowing a picture’s background and place and story makes it so much more interesting and valuable, doesn’t it?
~~oo0oo~~
Two more! With a note from Liz: I think I missed out on two more paintings. Both on Mountainview of the original Randall Bros. store in Witzieshoek taken over by Arthur Gray late 19th century I think. The chief (forget his name – ed. maybe Ntsane 1898 – 1918) asked if Arthur could open a shop in Witzieshoek as his people had difficulty getting to the shop during very rainy weather owing to the full Elands River. When my grandparents, Kerneels and Edie Cronje returned after the Boer War they renovated the shop and turned it into a cottage where all but the eldest Cronje (Andries) was born beginning about 1906 when my Dad, Corry was born.
Long, long ago Annie said to me I should get her beloved husband Frank’s oak desk. I hope I said something suitably appreciative. In the meantime, the desk would stay with her daughter Mary. Mom.
We never knew Frank. He died when Mom was just fifteen, still in school. ‘In JC,’ she says.
Annie had five grandkids and I suppose her reasoning was the only grandson should get the Oke Desk? A lot of mysterious value was attached to having a penis in ye olden days. OK, so not that much has changed, really, has it? Everyone knows you need a penis, say, to drive a train. Yet of the many train drivers whose eyes I tested the ladies were by far the most alert, interesting and interested. When next I go on Shosholoza I’m gonna ask for a lady driver.
I digress.
So now Mom was in Azalea Gardens, and soon the house in Ivy Road would be sold, so it was time to fetch the desk. My inheritance! So I dismantled it, loaded it on the back of and inside of my Ford bakkie double-cab and re-assembled it in my lovely & tidy home office.
It looks good.
Very importantly, the key is in the top drawer, attached by string to a faded cardboard label ticket. Written in Annie’s handwriting: “Key of Frank’s Desk.” Interesting, as there’s no lock or keyhole in the desk, nor any of its drawers!
One day I looked in a mirror and was shocked to realise that wragtig the old oak desk was once again in the possession of an old oke!
~~o0o~~
‘Fraid it wasnt in my care for long, Annie! Only a few years later it moved on. It’s in sister Sheila’s care now, as I’ve sold my home. Once again I took it apart – 14 separate pieces – and schlepped it in my same Ford bakkie to Sheila’s place. I took care to make sure she got the key, too.
First run in 1921 – or in 1926 ? – over 3200m for a stake of 2000 pounds sterling, the Gold Cup is Africa’s premier marathon for long-distance runners. It boasts a proud history and captures the public imagination. The race starts at the 400m mark in the short Greyville straight; there’s much jockeying for position as the runners pass the winning post for the first time before turning sharply right and heading towards the Drill Hall; normally many runners are under pressure before they turn into the home straight; the race is known to suffer no fools when it comes to fitness and stamina, and it takes a special type of horse and jockey to win the event.
And away they go!
Usually the final big race meeting of the South African racing season, the Gold Cup is often decisive in determining the Equus Award winners for the season. Initially a Grade 1 race, the Gold Cup was downgraded to Grade 2 in 2016 and to Grade 3 in 2017. Nevertheless, it is still the most important horse-racing marathon in the country.
– 1985 – Occult wins –
The distance and unforgiving conditions that prevail as the field go past the Greyville winning post twice, are great levelers and a look at the list of champions beaten in the Gold Cup is a long one, with less-fancied runners carrying less weight often winning.
Sun Lad won the first running in 1926. He raced in the silks of leading owner-breeder Sir Abe Bailey. The Gold Cup was one of just two wins for Sun Lad that season. He is frankly unlikely to be regarded as one of the race’s better winners.
The first horse to win the Gold Cup on two occasions was Humidor, who was victorious in 1933 and 1935.
And so to us:
Harrismith’s winner was the horse Rinmaher (pronounced ‘Rinmahar’) owned by the George Shannons of Kindrochart. What year? Probably 1932 or 1934?
Mom and Dad both tell the story of raucous parties on the Shannon farm where at a suitably ‘sensible’ stage the Gold Cup would be taken off the mantelpiece, filled with champagne or whatever hooch was going, and passed around to the ritual comments from the more sober of “Here we go! We’re drinking moths and mosquitoes again!” At least it had lovely handles to give an imbiber a good grip!
– Jack Shannon on his Shetland pony ‘Suzanne’ on Kindrochart – with Peter Bell –
~~~oo0oo~~~
Later: Sheila rousted Colleen Walker, granddaughter of George Shannon, who straightened me out on some Gold Cup details. She even had an earlier pic of Jack and Suzanne the Shetland. More questions: Is that Kindrochart? Is that George?
~~~oo0oo~~~
May 2020 – Mom sent a message that I must phone her! She wants to tell me the full story of the brothers Shannon. Phone Me Soon does not mean that her cellphone will be on, or charged, or answered; so it was a full two days later I got hold of her;
And away they go! She took a deep breath and set off:
Jim and George Shannon left Ireland on a ship bound for South Africa. Somewhere on the journey they had a fight and fell out; They never spoke to each other again!
They reached Harrismith where they both became ‘rough riders’ – breaking in horses for the British army – I guess also for anyone else who wanted horses broken in and/or trained? Somehow and sometime, they both ended up as farmers, George on Kindrochart and Jim on Glen Gariff.
George married Mrs Belle Stephens who came complete with two daughters Betty and Bobby. Then they had a son Jack – some called him Jock – who also featured in our lives as a friendly, lean, handsome, side-burned, smiling, pipe-smoking, pickup-driving, genial figure in khaki. We loved Uncle Jack! He married Joan from Joburg – Mom Mary and her older sister Pat went to the wedding. Later Bobby married a mine manager and some people thought that was very important. Betty never married, stayed on Kindrochart, worked in town and became a beloved young-in-spirit ‘auntie’ of ours, always a smile and always a tease and some fun. We called her Betty Brooks.
Meantime Jim on Glengariff married Amy, and they had three kids, one of whom they named George, despite the feud ongoing! Maybe there was a prior ancestor George? Other kids were Marshal (died young, not sure what of) and Sylvia. George married Betty McGore and they had sons Jim and Patrick who we knew in Harrismith in the sixties. Handsome lads, Patrick maybe too handsome for his own good!
– Jack and Joan years later –
When the second of the original Jim and George died (I think it was Jim), Jack contacted young George, son of Jim, and said ‘We’re having a party. You and Betty should be there.’ And so a reconciliation took place and they normalised family relations. Up until then, their mothers Belle and Amy had been forbidden to talk to each other! She remembers that after a good few drinks and a meal and another good few drinks, the Gold Cup was taken down off the Kindrochart mantelpiece, filled with wine and passed around! George offered his wife Betty first sip and after a gulp she exclaimed ‘George! It’s full of moths and mosquitoes!’
~~~oo0oo~~~
No doubt there’ll be other versions of this tale – and much more detail. But this is how 91yr-old Mother Mary fondly remembers the story of these good friends from days of yore.
~~~oo0oo~~~
Elizabeth de Kock spotted this post and wrote:
This was so interesting for me to read. My grandfather, William Stocks, was a neighbouring farmer. We spent many holidays on their farm called Lust. We visited Aunty Betty often and enjoyed sitting on the big swing overlooking the dam. She gave us the use of a little grey pony (very naughty) to ride during our holidays. As children we got our blankets from her shop in Harrismith. The shop was an experience in itself. I’m 69 years old now and still have very fond memories of Aunty Betty.
I replied: Hi Liz – Thanks so much for commenting! Lovely memories! Betty was a lovely lady.
I’ll ask my mother Mary Bland Swanepoel (93) what she remembers about the Stocks family. I know I have heard her talk about the Stocks but can’t remember any detail.
Kind regards – BTW, I’m 66, my sister Barbara will 69 in January – maybe you remember her?
I phoned my Mom Mary Bland. She was tickled pink to reminisce about her friend! Here’s her tale:
She nursed with Margaret Stocks at the Harrismith hospital and they were great friends. She says Margaret wasfive years older and much bolder and naughtier than she was!
She once visited her on their farm at Lust. Margaret’s brother was there. Later, that brother was killed in a plane accident in the airforce. His plane wing clipped a sand dune. When she heard about it, Mary phoned Margaret to say, If you like, you can join me to mourn your brother. Margaret said, No thanks, we may as well stay here on the farm and be miserable together.
Margaret married John Reed, a farmer. A few years later, Mary took her two year old daughter Barbara and visited Margaret on the Reed’s farm near Belfast in the Transvaal. (I wasn’t born yet, so this was probably early 1955). One day he was lying in the bath and Barbara wanted to go and see him. Margaret said ‘No my girl, you’ll have to wait another twenty years for that!’ Once in Harrismith, Margaret called out the houseman on duty for her patient. When he didn’t arrive, she sent her junior nurse (who she called ‘Ginger Biscuit’) to call him. The nurse found the houseman in bed with the matron. He had to leave town.
Those were Mary’s memories of Margaret Stocks!
Liz Kibblewhite wrote again:
I was brought up on a gold mine just outside Krugersdorp and went to Lust during school holidays. If I remember correctly, Jury Swart was a neighbouring farmer to my grandfather William Stocks.
The last time I saw Aunty Betty was in 1975 with my future husband, spending the night with her reminiscing. We were on our way to Durban and I wanted to show him the beautiful Orange Free State Drakensberg and particularly Kerkenberg and the old farm before we returned to the UK.
Margaret had a twin sister Edna. My mother Joan was their younger sister.
I have been living in England for 46 years now and am proud to have passed a bit of my South African even to my grand children who live in France – they love bobotie and say muti for medicine.
There was David, Margaret and Edna, Joan (my mother), and Neil. Margaret and John (Umpie) lived in Pretoria after he left farming. Margaret died about 8/9 years ago and John before that.
Mary isn’t getting mixed up: Neil flew in Italy during WW2 and was decorated. DFC. The squadron was called 13th Hellenic Squadron. He also flew in Korea and after that a test pilot in SA.
I always wondered how his crash happened.
He was buried on the farm.
~~oo0oo~~
Ah, that’s lovely that you visited Betty before leaving South Africa!
I said to Mary: Margaret had a twin. “Edna” she said immediately. And she had a younger sister. she thought a while . . “Joan” “Their brother was Neil” she said. “He was younger than the twins.” Mary says, “When I first started dating, Margaret – never slow with her opinions! – huffed: “These people that just say yes to the first person that comes along!” Well, this time Margaret was mistaken, as Mary married her date, and seventy years later they’re still married.
Greg Seibert arrived in Harrismith from Ohio in 1972 as a Rotary exchange student.
In 2014 he was sending sister Sheila some of his pictures from those wayback days. He wrote: Here is one I’m sure you will like. It is one of the very first pics that I took in Harrismith, probably the day after I got there. You or Koos took me down to the field hockey field. I remember people saying it was by the subway. Boy was I impressed! The only subways that I knew were the underground trains in London and New York! Imagine little Harrismith being so advanced as to having one of those!
The feature pic and this pic are not the Harrismth subway, but do give an idea of what it looks like. I’m looking for some actual pics of our illustrious subway.
Today Mother Mary took a break from playing the piano. She suddenly remembered a time Mona du Plessis came to her some time after a ‘do’ at the town hall. These fifty year old memories come and go, so she must tell them as she thinks of them.
Mona said to me – says Mary – “Jinne Mary, while we were at the town hall, Kosie took the kombi, loaded up the de Villiers kids and drove to Joan and Jannie’s where our kids were. Then they all got in – Mignon, Jean-Prieur, Sheila, everybody, and they drove up and down Hector Street!”
Of course, I remember doing stuff like this – I loved “borrowing” the kombi – but I don’t really recall that specific escapade. The expedition accomplices would have included these, so here’s a possible montage of what a ‘stolen’ kombi in Hector Street might have looked like:
Mona would actually have been quite pleased at the ‘naughtiness’ of the kinders, I bet. Mary would have been worried about our safety. Joan would have shaken her head. Bonner too.
We would all have said much the same: ‘Ag don’t worry, Ma!’
Back in 1963 we joined the du Plessis on a one-week beach and fishing holiday on the Natal north coast – Chaka’s Rock! They were beach regulars, this was one of our two beach holidays that I can remember. (flash: there were three!). Louis Brocket wrote in to remind us that, as Lynn’s boyfriend, he was also there for his first “vakansie-by-die-see“.
Sheila writes: “Found a postcard which Mary Methodist sent to her Mom Annie Bland (1½ cent stamp – remember the brown Afrikaner bull?). Mary wrote ‘We’re enjoying the swimming immensely. Coughs no worse in spite of it. We’re sleeping well and eating very well. The coast is beautiful. This is a picture of the pool where we swim.’ I think the three little Swanies all had whooping cough. Must have been fun for the du Plessis family who shared our holiday!”
It was amazing! The cottage on a hill above the beach, the rocks and seaside cliffs, narrow walkways along the cliffs that the waves would drench at high tide; magic swimming pools set in the rocks. The men were there to fish:
We baljaar’d on the beach and sometimes even ventured into the shallows – just up to safe vrystaat depth. A swimmer I was not, and I still vividly remember a near-death experience I had in the rock pool: a near-metre-high wave knocked me out of Mom’s arms and I was washed away out of her safe grasp! I must have been torn away by up to half a metre from her outstretched hands; little asthmatic me on my own in the vast Indian Ocean for what must have been a long one and a half seconds, four long metres away from dry land! Traumatised. To this day I am wary of the big-dam-that-you-can’t-see-the-other-side-of, and when I have to navigate across any stretches of salty water I use a minimum of a Boeing 707, but preferably a 747.
Well, after all! This was the most threatening Free State water I was used to braving before I met the Indian Ocean: Oh, and also the horse trough.
– and even then I’d lift my broek just in case –
The view from the cottage looking down the asthmatic flight of stairs:
In this next 8mm cine footage, you can see the violent waves inside the rock pools that threatened my frail existence:
vakansie by die see – beach or seaside holiday for naive inland creatures
baljaar – frolic
safe vrystaat depth – about ankle deep; not adult ankle. My ankle
postscript: I tried to keep up the luxury cottage theme but Barbara talked about the big spiders on the walls and yesterday even Dad, who was talking about Joe Geyser, mentioned ‘that ramshackle cottage we stayed in at Chaka’s Rock.’
Dad was saying Joe hardly ever caught a fish. He would be so busy with his pipe, relighting it, refilling it, winding the reel with one hand while fiddling with his pipe with the other. My theory is the fish could smell the tobacco and turned their nose up at his bait. Dad reckons tobacco was never a health hazard to old Joe. Although he was never without his pipe, it was mainly preparation and cleaning, and the amount of actual puffing he did was minimal.
Once he caught a wahoo and brought it back to Harrismith. Griet took one look at it as he walked into her kitchen and bade him sally forth. Some wives had agency. So Joe brought it to Dad and they cut it up and cooked it in our kitchen.
~~oo0oo~~
I went back in 2016 and the beach and rocks and the pools still look familiar.
But don’t look back! The green hillslopes have been concreted. When we humans see beautiful sub-tropical coastal forest we say, ‘Stunning! Let’s pour concrete on it!’
Vrystaat Confessions 