The early history of

The Anderson/Davel Clan of Rhodesia.

 

As I remembered it.

Michael Anderson

Forward.

The purpose of this memoir is to provide a record of the early lives of the Ralph and Helen Anderson clan because, with the spread of our families worldwide, it is easy to forget our roots.

Much of what I know of the time before, say, 1947 is hearsay and should not be considered to be a true record of history but I’m relating it as I was told or learned it and it is to the best of my memory. The rest is my own recollections which may have blurred over the intervening 75 or so years but I have tried to be as true and factual as possible. (Thanks go to cousin Joy Davel who filled in some of the blanks and also had some different stories. Oh well it was a long time ago. Also had input from cousin in law Dot Peall and sister Helena and hope for more from all).

I am putting out this first part in draft which covers our lives up to the end of our school years hoping that I will get to the rest later, covid willing.

Please don’t feel aggrieved if I missed some important detail, just remind me in electronic format and I will add delete as appropriate.

The young family circa 1949

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Earliest Days (1890 - 1939)

My maternal grandparents first arrived in the country that became Rhodesia somewhere around the turn of the 19^th century. Apparently, Cecil John Rhodes, a giant figure in the history of Africa in that era, encouraged the immigration of South African families, particularly Afrikaans families, to the territory because they came as whole families and were a stable influence. I assume both families followed this route. At that time the country was a protectorate administered by the British South Africa Company. There were no roads and the railway line had not yet arrived.

My maternal grandfather, whom I never knew, was Willem Marthinus Davel. The Davel line originated in Bautzen Saxony, now Germany, (not as I had believed further North in Schleswig Holstein.) I believe the German surname was actually Tafel, but somehow the first Davel found in the Cape of Good Hope married in Stellenbosch in 1748 and had already accepted the Davel name. My maternal grandmother, Helena Elizabeth Pretorius, was a member of the great Pretorius family of the Transvaal which included the president of that nation state after whom the city of Pretoria is named. (The relationship is somewhat tenuous but I used to enjoy claiming to be a great grandson of that great man whenever I needed help in achieving some governmentally controlled activity while I was living in South Africa. And it worked!)

The Pretorius family originated in Holland and the first member of the family to arrive in South Africa, Johannes Pretorius, died there in 1694. (We don’t know exactly when he arrived.) We do know that the Pretorius family spread far and wide in South Africa and my Grandmother’s branch were farmers in the Louis Trichardt region of Northern Transvaal. We do know there were several organized “Treks” originating in the Northern Transvaal aimed at bringing settlers to the Fort Victoria area, and the Pretorius family could very well have joined one of these, as, it is most likely, did the Davel family who settled on the Zishumba Farm just outside Fort Victoria.

 

Anecdotally my grandmother’s family crossed the Limpopo River sometime in the early 1890s but were driven back to the Transvaal when their cattle died from the rinderpest epidemic around 1895 that devastated not only domestic animals but many wild animals as well. This may or may not be true, but it is a fact that many of the early settlers who moved up from the Transvaal were driven back by this event and by the uncertainties created by the two rebellions that took place in that decade. In any event my grandmother was born in 1896 in Nylstroom, Northern Transvaal and certainly had returned to Rhodesia by the first decade of the 20^th century.

 

Those of you who know the country in the south of Rhodesia will recall that apart from the Limpopo there are several major rivers such as the Lundi and the Tokwe which would need to be forded to make it from the South African border up to the Fort Victoria area. (Even in the early years of my families travels to South Africa, these rivers were crossed by old low level bridges and more than once we were stopped by floodwaters and had to wait hours or even a few days before we could cross.) In those days south of Fort Victoria was not very habitable because of the presence of tsetse fly and the fact that it was extremely hot and dry. Because of the conditions, the journey could only be achieved in the dry season and would have taken several months, the only modes of transport being ox-wagon and horseback.

 

Willem Marthinus Davel was born in 1886 in Middleburg, Northern Transvaal. I have no information as to when he or his family arrived in Rhodesia except to know that he married my grandmother in 1914 in Gwelo. On his marriage certificate it was stated that he was a transport rider and probably worked a wagon train between Salisbury and Pietersburg.  As the railway had already been constructed to reach across the country connecting Beira to Mafeking, the profession was certainly in decline.

 

The Transport Rider Profession

The transport rider and his trek ox is the real pioneer of the southern African sub-continent. They dragged the wagons across the whole of South Africa and crossed the Limpopo and Shashe Rivers and then across the Lundi (Runde) to Victoria and finally Salisbury.

Before the coming of the railways it was the trek ox that provided all the transport leading to the development of the diamond fields at Kimberley and the goldfields of the Witwatersrand and finally the occupation of Mashonaland and conquest of Matabeleland.

The trek ox brought from the coast into the interior all the food, furniture, clothing, household utensils, corrugated sheeting, timber, heavy machinery required for mining, the portable steam engines that provided power and permitted the development of the towns at Victoria (Masvingo) Salisbury (Harare) Gwelo (Gweru) and Bulawayo.   

So quickly did land transport develop – the railway reaching Bulawayo in 1897 and Salisbury from Beira in 1899 and from Bulawayo in 1902, that the era of the ox wagon and the transport –rider was a short one and their significant part in the opening up of the country is largely forgotten. This extract is from the site below and is well worth a visit

http://zimfieldguide.com/masvingo/how-ox-wagon-and-transport-rider-opened-country

Granny Helena (she usually signed her name as E E Pretorius using the name Elena) married Willem on the 27^th of October 1914. Although the marriage certificate says she was 18 years old, she was still 17 at the time and she was only 18 years when first child was born, Michiel Karel (known for most of his life as Michael Carl) in 1915.

In any event, and in quick succession, the Davel family grew after the birth of Michiel in Que Que (Aug 12, 1915), with my mother Helena (Sept 26, 1916) on the Zishumba Farm outside of Fort Victoria, (on the road to Birchenough Bridge) and young sister, Martha (Nov 30, 1920) in Fort Victoria (maybe on the farm as well but her birth certificate simply records the town).

The young family was struck by disaster in 1922 when Willem was taken ill with the great flu (probably the second wave of that world-wide disaster). He took ill at Fort Victoria, was hospitalised and after 4 days died. His death certificate now lists him as a farmer, and states that he died of influenza/Broncho (possibly bronchial) pneumonia and was buried at Zishumba Farm.

 

My grandmother was married for only 8 years before her husband Willem died leaving her with 3 small children. There are no records of why the large Davel family in the Fort Victoria area didn’t assist her when Willem died in the hospital in Fort Victoria and all we know is that she worked as a waitress in a café somewhere to make ends meet. We do know that Helena and children became Wards of the Government and the next time we know where she is is in Gwelo.

 

Michael Carl was placed in the Daisyfield Orphanage. We don’t know how long he was at the orphanage but based on the fact we know that Helena married again some three years after Willem’s death, it was probably some time longer than that.

 

Daisyfield Orphanage School was established 1914 when a Dutch Reformed Church orphanage called the Bulawayo Orphanage was moved to a large farm in Somabhula near Gwelo with the intention of establishing a farm to produce food for the orphans. The school was renamed Daisyfield. (It was later moved to Salisbury  by Rev. A.J. Botha and was called Bothashof School in his honour)

 

The orphanage was not a happy place as told to Joy by her Dad, Michael, and the Rabe brothers. (Jan and brother, Tuis Rabe, were also at the same orphanage. These boys would go on to be life-long friends and were wonderful adopted uncles to the younger Davel kids.) Indeed Luitha Rabe lived with her grandmother as a child on a small holding at Umsweswe River Block near Gatooma which must have been close to the Van Heerden’s residence as Luitha was a play mate of Michael’s.

 

According to Joy and information she gathered from Central Records Harare, it indicates our grandmother, as a ward of the state, was advised to marry an individual whose name Joy cannot remember, but she refused. However Granny did remarry a man by the name of Marthinus Christoffel Van Heerden, who I would know growing up as Pop. Marthinus was said to be cruel and abusive towards Michael when he was removed from orphanage and came to live with his mother and husband. This attitude apparently continued into Uncle Mikes adulthood because Joy recalls “he didn’t like the younger Davel kids.  We would disappear when he came onto the scene.” An example of this, apparently Marthinus would go into rages and one day smashed Michael’s precious bicycle into smithereens!? Some of his antagonism could be due to the fact that Marthinus fathered a son with my Grandmother, a man who I knew as Uncle Herbert. Whatever, Martha told Dot her Stepfather was a terrible and unkind man and she perhaps believed her own mother wouldn’t stop his abuse of Michael, Helena and herself. Maybe  that is why she never forgave her Mother for certain things that happened to her or her siblings, and was effectively estranged from her until her death.

 

Michael, known to me as Uncle Mike, would become a Fitter and Turner by trade and work on mines as they opened and closed in those early days.  The Rose Chrome Mine or the Fred Mine both in the Filabusi area must have been where he was working when he met and later married Olive McCabe Vosloo who resided with her parents at Pioneer Rest Farm near Mbalabala.  The pair were married in Gwelo in 1941.

 

Helena Elizabeth (my mother) and Martha Maria Magdalena were placed in St. Gabriel’s Anglican orphanage in Bulawayo. Martha told Dot Peall that she and Helena left the Orphanage at the same time and Helena went straight out to work as she was 15 years old. Martha was age 13 when she left so she spent a couple of years with her Mother and Stepfather on a mine, which I think would have been near Gwelo, as at 15 years old she ended up finding a job at Gwelo Meikles as a sales lady in the ladies clothing side. She soon climbed the ladder and was given the responsibility of ordering of clothing and haberdashery. That is perhaps why she was always so particular in her dress code and appreciation and knowledge of different kinds of dress materials. It was through this employment that Martha met Guy Peall, who was an air force pilot trainer probably based at the very airfield that backed onto the old stone house where I first met Pop. Martha married Guy in 1941. After the war Guy became a farmer in the Umvukwes area  north west of Salisbury (His dad, was a prominent doctor in Salisbury and apparently lent Guy $10,000 to establish the farm). Martha and Guy had four sons, and the Anderson boys spent many school holiday weeks at that farm. (More about this later.)

 

We don’t know much about my mother’s life between leaving the orphanage in Bulawayo in about 1933 and 1939 when she showed up in Shabani, other than she went straight out to work. I suspect that life at home with her step father was sufficiently unpleasant that she refused to tolerate it. I also suspect that the fact that Michael had left home and was working in the Filibusi area drew her in that direction (Filibusi is only 60 miles from Shabani). What we do know is that she turned up working as a clerk at the sole petrol station/convenience store in Shabani in 1939.

 

My own memories of Pop have no negative feelings. My earliest must be when I was about five years old. We (and I don’t recall who else is included in the “we”) were visiting Granny and Pop at their then home in Gwelo. The old stone house was on what must have been a four to five acre lot and it backed onto the Gwelo airbase. (This base would become infamous many years later when the South African airforce would attack it and destroy the very recently delivered  jet aircraft soon after Zimbabwean independence.) In that large back yard were several domestic animals including a bovine (I don’t recall whether it was bull or cow) who chose to fully frontally butt me in the chest. Luckily I was not trampled and truthfully have born no ill will to the species apart from being a life long lover of beef.

 

Pop died  the day before his 63^rd birthday on Sep 3, 1955 on the beryl mine in the Mtoko district known as Grey Cap. (Actually neither I nor any of the other family can remember the actual name, and it was never officially recorded because it was really just a alluvial claim and not a “mine”). Our whole family were visiting at the time, and it was a very traumatic experience for us all. Granny later again remarried to Pop’s younger brother who, according to Joy, was “a lovely man”. There is a story here which I will fill in later.

 

For the early history of the Anderson line I quote freely from a note written by my Dad in his nineties.

“My mother was born in Beaufort West and grew up in this little town which boasted mostly a large railway workshop where locomotives were maintained and repaired, and which provided employment for most of the local population. The main water supply for the town came from a nearby dam and water was run into narrow furrows on the one side of the streets of the town, as well as being piped into the domestic systems of the adjacent small houses. Each resident was given a time when they were allowed to block the furrow and run the water off it into their gardens. This was unwittingly a hazard for children, and my parents recount that on one occasion my baby sister Sheila was trapped in one of them trying to crawl under the slab that bridged it.  Fortunately this happened at the time when the next door neighbour was drawing water upstream, and the furrow was empty! I well remember the little house on 39 Baird St backing also onto the grounds of the local Dutch Reformed Church.

“In 1856 A certain Mr. David Henderson Blyth emigrated from Dundee, Scotland, and went first to Worcester in the Cape. He must have moved thereafter to Beaufort West for he married Sophia there in 1861, and their first son, John Alexander Blyth was born that same year. John served the municipal Council of Beaufort West for 15 years on and off from 1866. He was my maternal grandfather, and he trained as an Accountant. He married Cornelia Weeber, daughter of the first Chief Justice of Beaufort and also a Deacon of the local Dutch Reformed Church. They had 3 girls, namely, my mother Sheila the eldest, followed by May and Gladys, who became teachers at the local schools but neither of them married. Then in 1915. during the first world war, my mother married my father William Wardlaw Anderson, son of Edward Thomas Anderson who had been the Magistrate in Beaufort for 6 years from 1904, and the bridal couple left Beaufort for the then young country of Southern Rhodesia to be missionaries to the Amandebele people commonly known as the Matabele.

“Thus my father William followed in the steps of his grandfather William Anderson of Griquatown thereby establishing a missionary tradition for the family so aptly recounted by his grandson, Peter Anderson, in his book, Weapons of Peace. William had been trained in London under the auspices of the London Missionary Society who commissioned him for service in Africa. He was provided with all the necessary skills for this auspicious calling, and he was sent to takeover the reins so to speak, from another early missionary, James Reid who had first set up the station and homestead at Dombodema about 15 miles west of Plumtree, a small settlement on the main north railway not far from the border with Bechuanaland.”

The country was still very primitive and my grandfather’s assignment appears to have covered most of the South stretching from Shangani all the way down to Dombodema mission near Plumtree  which is the place that I can remember having first met them. Through all this however William and his wife Sheila managed to give birth to and raise a total of eight children all but one of whom survived into old age. This in itself was a feat for this era. My dad was the oldest of the children having been born in 1916.

My Dad’s School Day Memories.

As little as we know of my Mom’s life before she met my Dad, not so in his case. He left a record of his recollections on a 10 page essay that I think I am the only person who has a copy. To ensure these memories are not lost, I am including them in my own work quite freely, not always verbatim because some of his stories got a bit screwed up. This is not surprising because he wrote the piece in his 90’s. Here is his recollection of his school days.

“It was in Dombodema that I first saw the light of day and I still remember with nostalgia, the scene of a house with broad verandahs nestling in among the granite kopjes characteristic of the area.

“Of course there were no hospital facilities and my mother had to be confined during her pregnancy to the town of Bulawayo some 70 or so miles to the north and both my brother Keith and I and probably Alec too were born there.

“My memories of Dombedema cover mostly those of boyish games we played like climbing what seemed to be a high and dangerous rock nearby that turned out in adult years to be a small granite protrusion of not more than a few feet high close to the house! One mishap that might have turned out more serious than it did was when wandering among the huge trees in the area I came across a stump that had obviously been burning, and out of pure curiosity I suppose, I stuck my leg into the ashes of the tree only to withdraw it with a resounding cry of pain for below the ash surface was a hidden furnace of red hot coal, and I scorched my leg severely. Fortunately it did heal up eventually without much superficial damage to my skin.

“The LMS provided their missionaries with much needed transport and my father acquired a so called “Tin Lizzie” Ford motorcar which must have been among the first of its kind to have been imported into the country. However, it nearly saw its last days when, in a hurry to keep an appointment, my father crashed it into a tree, fortunately without any serious physical harm to himself. Missionaries had to do a lot of travelling to reach their flock in far off places, and the roads, often only rough tracks through bush, were sometimes impassable, and it was quite amazing that my father had so few similar mishaps during his many years of service. Only once that I can remember was on a trip to take us boys to school from his Shangani Mission about 100 miles north of Bulawayo. The Chevrolet tourer that he now owned, had wooden spoked wheels, and when driving over a bad stretch of potholed road, it crashed down breaking the spokes on all four wheels! As it happened we had broken down on the farm owned by the LONRO corporation and fortunately, the farmer in charge kindly took us to our intended destination.

“To return to our story of Dombodema, my father and mother ministered to the local people for about 7 years, both in the little church and school built of mud clad walls and thatch at first, until  properly constructed buildings could be completed. Then he was called to start a new mission in the so-called Native Reserve of Shangani, named after a river with a story of its own situated nearly 100 miles northeast of Bulawayo. However LMS missionaries were required to take a one year leave to the UK about every 7 years and so my parents did this before starting this new assignment.

“For some reason they decided that I was to accompany them whilst their 4 children , including the youngest, then Noreen, were sent to Beaufort West to be cared for by the maiden Aunts and their Granny Blyth. The two weeks sea voyage on the Windsor Castle was, I recall, pleasant enough, and at one of the social functions held on board, I was decked out with a large paper hat modeled to the shape of our ship with it’s four red and black smoke funnels.

“My memories of that furlough are short and not all that pleasant. My parents were required to tour the country most of their time there extolling both the virtues and the stresses of their mission in order to raise much needed funds for the continued support of their work. During this period I was sent to a school for missionary children that was in Eltham, near London, but all that I remember of that time was being confined to the school sick room during the holidays with snow abounding outside, and some terrifying moments searching the grounds of the school under considerable stress but failing to find a toilet in time!

“My parents took the next compulsory furlough alone in 1929 but sadly it was marred by the untimely death of little Noreen at the tender age of only six whilst staying as was usual, with the family in Beaufort West. This news was devastating for all concerned and my aunts must have felt terrible that it had happened while the child was in their care. However I do not believe my parents harboured any thoughts of incrimination or blame over the event, and accepted it with the fortitude they gained from their unshakable faith in their Creator.

“Meantime my brother Keith and I had been sent by train to Port Elizabeth to stay in the care of my Uncle Bert, who ran a hardware store in the city. The journey took a few days and I recall that all that we had left to eat on the last day was a tin of sardines! This was really the first of many pleasant holidays for me and my family to Plettenberg Bay, including during my married years, and I will be returning to this later.

“Meantime it was the start of the move to establish a new mission in the Shangani Reserve. First of course my father made contact with the local headmen and one named Mabena was the stalwart who assisted him by rallying local support including builders and carpenters and supporting labourers and they together built first outhouses for temporary use and as stores for cement and other materials needing cover, and then the main mission house.                                                                                                          

 

“My father designed this house himself from scratch drawing on the good training that he had received in London for LMS missionaries. This included carpentry and he was able to design and construct the wood pole and thatched roof that was at first used and all other woodwork needed. I don’t remember how long it took to complete the building, but when it was done, I do recall seeing the piled up wagon that had been hired to take the household goods from Dombedema to the new Mission. It was like the Great Trek of the Afrikaners from the Cape to the hinterland, using huge tent covered wagons and a powerful train of oxen to haul them!

“Life on the new Mission station was exciting to say the least. For my parents it was a challenging time to set up the basics of a mission to serve the local population both spiritually and also to provide for the education of their children to fit them for a more productive life than merely providing their food by growing crops and keeping cattle. With the help of Mabena to start off with and especially when he was joined by the Rev.Kumalo, an ordained minister who had grown up in the community and who was instrumental in negotiating sites for new churches and for the building of schools in outlandish areas, and who could also do some of the travelling to more distant outposts. Our Shangani home was for us children a haven for interesting escapades, and during school holidays there was no lack of things to do. For example the Shangani River often flooded and was a raging torrent after the summer rains which, however, did not prevent us from attempting to swim in its currents however dangerous, and I admit now there were some anxious moments when my little brother Alec was only saved from being washed away by clinging to a tree branch protruding from the bank, until I could help him to climb out to safety. At other times the river flowed gently bye in divided streams and through deeper pools that however housed the resident crocodiles and large lizzards, in addition to the fish that sustained them and which we tried to share. The barbel, not normally sought after, could be eaten if their tough heads were removed and they were washed to minimize the muddy taste they acquire from their habitats when buried in the stuff.

“We knew it was dangerous to try to swim in these pools and a sad reminder of this came when the carcass of a crocodile was netted out of the pool near Mabena’s village, and an assortment of beads and bangles were found in its decomposing stomach. My own recollections of these beasts were on two occasions when I lay in wait on the banks of pools to shoot them.

“The first was when sitting on the bank of a river in a remote area my Dad had to visit, I shot into the wide open mouth of a croc as it swam towards me with obvious ill intent. The croc vanished under water but we heard from the villagers later, that it had surfaced and was dead in the pool where it was killed. The second croc I wanted to find was the one that had taken the little girl near Mabena’s kraal, so one day I decided to wait quietly at the side of the local pool giving me the best view for a shot to any position where the croc was likely to emerge.                                                                                                                                                                                   

“I was rewarded some time later when the croc emerged in the shallow water at the outlet from the pool and presented a clear target that gave me the chance to aim at its head in particular to be sure of killing it. The croc reared up, presumably in agony and fell backwards into the water but of course it disappeared from view. It was weeks later that the villagers found its dead body with the results reported above.

“The mission house at Shangani was situated about a mile or so away from a natural forest, a rare event in that area as most of the land had been cleared by the inhabitants to build villages and to grow the crops to sustain them. The forest was indeed an attraction for us kids, not only for its dense growth of large trees and bush but also that it was a natural haven for wild animals and birds, and we frequently went hunting in it for game for the pot. We had both a 12 bore shotgun for birds and a 303 sports rifle for any game we would hope to find in that dense undergrowth. We did occasionally shoot a small duiker or stem buck and had to carry them home draped across our shoulders and on one scary occasion quite near the homestead I was confronted by a whole troop of wild dogs not more than 50 paces away, and who I guess were hoping to rob me of the kill I was carrying on my shoulders. The scent of blood  must have been so stringent as to freeze them in their tracks, but as I was not more than a half mile from home I decided to ignore them and walk away as if unconcerned, and I think I was fortunate that my intended attackers finally gave up and disappeared into the bush.

“Other encounters in the forest were thankfully not so dramatic, when for example I nearly tripped over a little stem buck that was lying asleep in short brushwood. Or again when reaching an open clearing among the trees, there across the far side of the clearing were 3 magnificent kudu antelopes standing and gleaming in the sun, and all this young hunter could do was to smile, as he had only got a shotgun with him that time which would not be effective against such a large animal.

“But that forest was later the scene for another near catastrophe. I and my  brother Keith, were already at school but sometime during school holidays my third brother Alec and the younger children went walking in the wilds not very far from the house and lost their sense of direction. This had also happened to me when in the wilds and it is most disturbing when suddenly one does not know where one is! We were told afterwards that they had tried desperately to find their way but actually they had trekked further from the house into the forest and darkness was soon upon them. My parents were of course extremely worried and the local population immediately organised search parties but not knowing in which direction the children went they were not successful before darkness, and all they could do was to display lighted lanterns at all vantage point that could be found.

“Brother Alec continues the story that they did their best to find shelter and keep warm during the night and at first light he climbed a tree and could see the sun rise and then knew which direction to take for home. Imagine their delight in meeting up with the first search party but my parents were perhaps even more relieved still that they had been found.

“As usual, it was back to school every term for me. Living so far from the city, I was sent as a boarder to Milton Senior School in Bulawayo. The school was situated on high ground on the eastern boundary of the city and every week boarders were required to walk the mile or so down to the Municipal swimming pool. This was a welcome break from the school routine and we enjoyed the experience immensely. However there were a few incidents that occurred that were a bit scary. I needed to learn how to swim and when one day I was pushed into the pool in deep water, I believe I learned my first lesson very quickly! On another occasion, I suppose just for a bit of daredevil show off, I dived into the deep end from the highest diving board, but I was really shaken when I reached the bottom sooner than I had expected and narrowly avoided hitting it head first. However, my swimming lessons did not end there. Boarders often cycled out to Kabot’s Dam for a day of boating and swimming, and once with only two of us in a boat I decided to swim to a small island but soon realized it was further than I had thought and shouted to my companion to come to my assistance. I very soon realised after leaving the boat, that I had not taken into account that my companion could not maneuver it to reach me, and I was forced to make a supreme effort to reach the island. My brother Alec also had a similar experience when swimming from boat to the bank, but he managed to get there as I tried in vain to reach him.

 “The school grounds bordered on open veld on its eastern side and a small airstrip was built to accommodate the rare flights from Europe and elsewhere and boarders often had grandstand views watching planes landing and taking off. One special event was the arrival of a monoplane piloted by Van Leer Black, probably the very first to use the facility. Somehow we were allowed to get close to the plane and to this day I still have its image in my mind.

“Scholastically, I did well, maintaining either first or second place in class throughout until matriculation. I recall that my constant rival over those school years was a lad named Sydney Loewenson whose parents ran a local country store at Inyati which was about 60 km from Bulawayo on our road to Shangani, and we used to deal there occasionally when we visited the local school also run by the LMS at Inyati. At Milton I played rugby, and eventually wing three quarter in the first team, and I was also official scorer for the cricket team. Keith played rugby too as a fullback both at school and in a Bulawayo club team when he left school, whilst Alec who was a good runner and tennis player, attained the prestigious Junior Victor Ludorum for Athletics .

“By the end of 1933 I finally finished with a B matric which was a great disappointment both for me and my parents and also the school, as I was expected to do much better considering the high standard I had achieved during my senior school years. Fortunately I was awarded a Beit Engineering Scholarship for a four year degree at the University of Cape Town. (U.C.T.). I think that my father was disappointed that I was not destined to follow him in the Ministry, but I daresay he came to terms with it for practical reasons. In the end my brother Keith filled that role by reaching the rank of Brigadier in the Salvation Army.

“I did marginally well at my studies at U.C.T. but fortuitously there was to be an event there which affected the direction I would follow in my studies thereafter. This was a visit by Professor Goodlet, renowned for his studies on the effects of lightning on the performance of electric power lines, and his lectures enthralled me to the extent that the study of lightning became the centre pin for my own studies and occupations in future years. Thus having completed my course at U.C.T. I was awarded the degree of B.Sc.(Eng) and I returned to my home country.”

My Dad does not say where his parents were living when he returned to Rhodesia, but they must have returned to Dombodema at some stage because that is where I first met them. I do remember the house which was located on one side of a sizable kopje with most of the mission buildings including the church and school being on the other. I remember the giant (to me) bell on the top of the kopje which we were sent up to ring to summon the flock to service, I remember the enormous paper trees whose bark stripped off in fine filaments that we would pretend was papyrus, and I remember particularly the a’ cappella singing of the congregation during services. The general African population seems to have rhythm and harmony in their singing unmatched by any others anywhere.

Dad went on to take his first job with the Southern Rhodesia Electricity Supply Commission (ESC) as a junior engineer from January 1938. either refurbishing older or constructing new power stations throughout the country. One of these was at Shabani where asbestos was mined on a very large scale and where he had also worked during university breaks to get some experience. This part of his life was to have considerable impact on the future course of events.

As an aside, as Dad grew older he became besotted with genealogy developing a family tree with over 3000 names and stretching back to the 16^th century. This work is well recorded in the website http://griquatownandersons.com  but I have extracted some points of interest in the appendices.

As I conclude this section of my reminiscences, I want to recount an incident many years later. In the era of sanctions and the Rhodesian war most of us residents were concerned about international travel. Those with Irish ancestry were the best off as it seemed that they could get passports very easily. As you note from our heritage we could claim only Rhodesian or South African ancestry. Still one had to try. I prepared and submitted an application for a passport to the British embassy in Johannesburg on the basis that my father was born in Southern Rhodesia while it was still administered by the British South Africa Company as a British protectorate. A couple of weeks later I received the application back with a pinned note saying, “This is a bit of a stretch!” So our long African pioneer ancestry was certainly no advantage when considering movement in the rest of the world.

Early Memories (1939 – 1951)

September 1939 was a transformative month for the world, no less for the Ralph Anderson clan of Rhodesia. In the words of my Dad, “It was early on a Sunday morning when we heard over the radio the momentous announcement by Chamberlain, Prime Minister of Great Britain, that England was at war with Germany. Accordingly, in realizing that this was a very serious situation, I and two of the site engineers, together with our girlfriends, boarded one of the commission vehicles and headed for Salisbury. In my case the lady I had befriended was Helena Davel who was working at Walkers Garage in Shabani, and we got married the next day as did so many others expecting to join the armed services to prepare for war. However with conscription already in place, I was refused permission to join up, and thus remained with the ESC to assist in keeping electric power services going.”

My Dad’s memory of a tragic day

 

It was to be a fateful day which commenced with an intended visit by both senior engineers to the Shabani mine to discuss plans for increasing power supply to the mine. As they intended flying there I volunteered to drive there first to provide transport for them and that was agreed and I duly did so and on the appointed day I was waiting at the small airstrip near the mine for their arrival.

That airplane never arrived and in desperation I took off by car en route for home via Gwelo and on arriving at the ESC depot there, I was told by the District Engineer, Jack Spurr, of the tragic crash and that there were no survivors. Both Metlerkamp and Badger died together with Thomas, head of the Reinforcing Steel Co. and Danby Grey the pilot. It transpired that they had encountered intense fog and failed to find their way over the hills around Selukwe not very far from their destination. Deglon representing Metrovickers had himself piloted their company plane with the intention of joining the group at Shabani but bad weather prevented him from landing and he had returned to Salisbury.

Following this tragedy, A.B. Cowen was appointed Chairman and Chief Engineer of the ESC and John Magowan became Chief Electrical Engineer with Moore, Chief Mechanical Engineer. Initially I continued to supervise the construction of a generating plant at Shabani and at one stage I was required to act as the project manager on site.

Probably 1938 or early ’39.

 

After my parents’ marriage they rented a semi-detached apartment on (I think) Baines Ave., Salisbury, between seventh and eighth streets I believe. I do not remember any incidents during this period but I recall being shown the location sometime later. During that time, Salisbury did not have installed sewage systems, and there was an outhouse at the back of each property which backed up onto a track called “the sanitary lane.” Each outhouse was fitted with a seat under which was a bucket about the size of a ten gallon drum. The bucket could be accessed from a trapdoor opening onto the lane and each morning a tanker contraption would come down the lane manned by two men who removed the used buckets of waste and replaced a new clean bucket.

Although I have no memories of this time, it was particularly important in Bills life as he started school at the nearby David Livingstone Junior School. This was significant because it was there where he met and befriended a local boy called for all the world just E.B. (More about this lifelong friendship later) The first memories I do have are from their second home in Greendale at, I think it was, number 44 Trinity Ave.

I believe my parents bought the property in about 1946 just at the end of the war when Bill was just six and I just four. The stimulus for the move was the arrival of our third brother Edward which obviously made the small Baines Ave apartment impractical.

The house on this lot was certainly not what today’s young professionals would expect but the property was probably a couple of acres and stretched back from the road a good 2 to 300 feet and in the back corner there was a small but significant kopje with good-sized granite rocks and substantial trees to make it a wonderful play area for young exuberant boys.

There also was a much smaller granite outcrop between the entrance on Trinity Avenue and the house which was probably 15 feet high but this little outcrop is significant in my memories of the activities of the young Mafia that were us boys and our friends. There were several stacked granite rocks topped by one of those pieces which sort of flake off the mother stone. Not content to leave it lie, Bill and EB levered the piece loose. This would not have been surprising for teenagers, but remember they were probably six or seven. This is probably a good thing as, were it to have been in our teenage years, the rock would probably have been blown to pieces with home made gunpowder.

As I said earlier, Bill had already begun school at David Livingstone Junior school which was very convenient from Baines Avenue but not convenient from Greendale. However I remember he was driven to school by my Dad who had to go into the city for his job at the electricity supply commission.

Bill’s continued attendance at David Livingstone cemented his friendship with Everett Boniface or, as he became known to all and sundry, EB. This friendship continued throughout Bill’s life in Rhodesia and with interruptions has continued up to this very day.

A standout memory of Trinity Avenue were the neighbours across the road. (Their property spanned between Trinity Avenue and Coronation Avenue which was sort of the main drag in the area.) The Rooney family were pretty famous in Salisbury mainly because they owned and ran the largest rental house in the city. If you wanted tents or party chairs they were the one stop shop. As I recall there were four or five sons and at least one daughter, Bridget who was my age and I know we played together regularly. I can’t remember the son’s names. I am sure one was Rory, but I do know we used to bump into each other over the years, even once on a flight to Europe when one of the brothers was the coach of a traveling (field) hockey team on their way to Holland for a tournament. I heard that Bridget died at a fairly young age but I am sure several of the sons are still around, even one in Toronto, Canada.

By about 1947 I was in school and was a part of the postwar constrictions on all things. My first school was only kindergarten with two portables in a large open lot just under the shadow of the radio transmission antennas in Eastlea. Clearly development of schooling facilities had not kept pace with the growth of population even for the privileged white community.

One incident of note I should recall took place in 1947 during the royal visit. To have the royal family in this country was an amazing thing for such an isolated colony and of course our family was not going to miss out on the excitement. We all went down to fourth Street opposite the Roman Catholic Cathedral to watch the procession as it moved towards North Avenue and up to government house. During the excitement we lost Ronald who was then only a toddler it took several hours for the crowd to disperse and for us to finally locate out errant Royal observer who was happily in the hands of local first aid post volunteers and not the least upset.

1947 also began a disturbing time of our family life. My father and mother were both very keen tennis players with my dad being very athletic but my mother being a more strategic ballplayer. They were very active in organized tennis competition and as a result of this activity, apparently. my dad met a woman who lived in Aberdeen Road and they had a torrid affair. (Many years later I met and married a young lady who lived in Aberdeen Road but this has no relevance to this story). I have no specific memory of this situation except to know that it precipitated a crisis in our family when my mother elected to take the two younger boys and leave us to live with her sister Martha for a period.

 

 

The earliest grab I could find of the four boys together, Ed and Ron in a small tub, Bill and I looking on.

Exactly what the timeline on all this is a bit murky but I understand that my dad purchased a premium motor vehicle for that time, a Hudson super six, reputedly to impress his lady. This apparently put substantial financial pressure on the family and in any event it resulted in a “keep the car or sell the house” scenario. I guess the choice was “sell the house”. So now the remnant family i.e. Dad, Bill and myself were homeless but have a great car. We ended up living in a campsite at the end of Coronation Avenue where it meets Manica Road. I remember quite clearly that we had a small caravan and a large tarpaulin stretched between that and a big wild fig tree. The campsite was between Manica Road and the railway line from Salisbury to Umtali and there was no restriction on access to the rails as was the case all over the city. One of the things that used to amuse us kids was to place coins particularly those unique Rhodesian pennies “with a hole in it” on the rail lines waiting for the next train. I wish I had kept some of the resulting flattened coins but it was fun and fun we needed at that time. I suppose this was the first time in my life that my family was homeless, although I don’t think we looked at it like that at the time. It was just another adventure.

We lived in the campsite probably for no more than 4 to 6 months but after the reconciliation between our parents the problem was to find a new home. The postwar period was still creating stress in the economy and immigration from Europe added to that stress but eventually the family moved into a housing estate called a pisé or more explicitly by its French spelling pisé de terre. These homes constructed very quickly and efficiently were basically mud jammed into shutters and allowed to dry to create the walls and the asbestos sheeting roof put on, but they worked very well for the very great number of people looking for a place to live in those times.

I guess it was 1948 or early ‘49 when we moved into the pisé so I was six or seven. Because we were obviously in some financial stress during this period my mother had begun working as a bookkeeper and my dad was still with electricity supply commission. But this kept them occupied and allowed the four boys plus EB to run rampant and wild. We thought we were the good gang the others in the area were not

The three bedroom pisé on Shaftsbury Avenue had been built immediately adjacent to the Cranborne Airport and the little village of Cranborne was on the city side of that airport. Now I call it an airport but it actually was an Air Force training base and the planes that flew there were mainly training models such as harvards and spitfires. There were no fences or restrictions, so for us to go to the shops, we had to ride our bikes down to the end of Shaftsbury Avenue, pick up some makeshift paths which circuited the runways cutting back on the other side to whatever shops were available, which I have to tell you, wasn’t much. Getting home the reverse was true the total distance being probably no more than 2 miles round trip. We became very well accustomed to seeing the planes coming in and the doing their aerobatics and landing in whatever conditions, and for it to be a military base with no security whatsoever was evidence of the way of life that we lived.

Also was the fact that our group of homes was stuck in the middle of bushland and in the dry season the dry grass was a source of amusement for a bunch of out-of-control kids when one match would set ablaze and consume a few hundred acres of grassland in a couple of hours and then watch the fire department from the airbase which consisted of a couple of beaten up old trucks coming out to prevent the fire from causing any damage on the airbase. It should be noted that in Rhodesia fires in the grassland are a regular and ongoing issue and virtually every open grassland area burns every year so encouraging this process was no more than a child hood fantasy. Days after the fire the new green grass would break through the blackened wasteland and the new season of growth would be immediately evident.

Another incident from this era which should not go without comment occurred around Christmas 1948.  The family was on its way to visit Granny Van Heerden for Christmas.  My recollection is that she and Pop were on a small worker mine near Hartley.  We were traveling in the Hudson and were nearing Hartley on the Umfuli Bridge about 10 miles from the town.  Dad was driving with Mom in the front seat, Bill in the middle in the front with me and Edward and Ronald on the back seat.  Suddenly the rear near side door opened and Ronald tumbled out on to the side of the road.  Edward was hanging desperately to the open window of the door.  We probably weren’t going more than 40 miles an hour and a Dad stopped the car quickly.  We all joked that it was lucky that Ronald had fallen on his head, but in reality he really suffered a pretty bad knock.  It transpired that one of the two boys had somehow actuated the door handle resulting in the door swinging open. I don’t believe Ron went to a doctor, and the injury to his scalp took a while to heal. I have often wondered if that fall in any way contributed to the learning disabilities Ron struggled with, but it is more likely that his problem was as a result of dyslexia. His later success in life suggests that he overcame whatever problem he had had, and that would not be the case if the fall had resulted in a serious brain injury.

During this period Bill continued to be at David Livingstone school and the two younger boys were not yet of school-age. I however was put into a school just off Manica Road called John McCleary School. It was a small school which only went up to standard (grade) 2 and was the nearest available place for me to go, but to get there I had to get across the Makabusi river. The Makabuzi area was just a woodland between Cranborne Avenue and Manica Road which at times was the local mud speed race track area but the Makabuzi itself was a little stream that ran from the Cleveland dams down towards the Hunyani river.

The Glenara Avenue thruway was not even a dream at that time, and I had to ride my bike through the Macabusi woodland alone every day. There were no roads, I used basic woodland paths and waded across the stream in whatever stage it was, dry or flood. This is probably where I contracted bilharzia which was to feature later in my life. The distance was probably no more than two miles, and I actually enjoyed the freedom of riding through the bush to school every day.

As I said , the school itself had classes only up to standard two (that is two kindergarten grades plus the equivalent of grade one and two).  I certainly don’t have many memories of this time except that for some incredibly unknown reason I was selected to sing the King in Good King Wenceslas at the Christmas concert. Perhaps my teacher was tone deaf, or maybe back then I could hold a tune.

One of my clearest memories of that time was an activity which us out-of-control kids used to enjoy. All the way along Cranborne Avenue was a plantation of gum trees most not yet fully grown. But this was just what we wanted. The idea is that you to climb to the top of the tree maybe 20 feet up grab with both hands and swing out. if you got it just right the tree would gently bend and green stick fracture at its base allowing you to parachute down to earth quite safely. We did this many times without incident. One time when I was on my own on my way home from school, I found the perfect tree. I climbed to the usual height, perhaps a little higher and swung out. Unfortunately, my tree did not gently bend at the base but snapped two thirds of the way up and I fell the 20 feet to the ground holding the six or so feet of the top end of the now defunct gum tree. This would not have been so bad if I had landed as I should have in the soft earth of a plantation but unfortunately there was also a broken bottle upon which I landed, cut through my shoe and to the bone of my right foot. I rode from the site of the event to our house which was probably 400 to 500 yards and luckily our next-door neighbor was at home and she helped me stem the bleeding and put some bandages on the wound. Clearly that kind of event was not what would be reported to my parents because who knows what the reaction would be, but two or three days later the neighbor apparently spoke with my mother and told her that she’d helped with the injury and she suggested to my mother that some stitches would certainly be needed. As a result, the next day, I was dragged off to the doctor who happened to be in the same building as my dad’s office on second Street, to do the stitches which were certainly required. They gave me chloroform and tied me up telling my mother that the fact that it was several days after the injury it would not be a good outcome. All I remember is that as we exited from the building I puked my heart out into the gutter at the entrance of the building in which my dad was an important employee.

I still have a scar on my foot as testimony for this misadventure, and the wound broke open several times in the years ahead.

Whenever I see the advertisements for zip lines in various places it reminds me of the fact that back in 1950,  it was EB and the gang of us the four boys ranging in age from 10 through three used to have a zip line attached from the roof timber in the back of our house to some stake in the back garden and we had a pipe on the line which you would grab and slide down. When I see all the safeguards that they put into the zip lines that one does these days, I think that we were real innovators and developers.

 

I’m not sure when our kitchen cook became part of our lives but I know it was during this period in the pisé  because two instances involved Morris. The first of these was an unlucky (for me) interaction with a member of another “gang”.  As I said earlier our gang was just the family and EB. We were the good guys and the others, whoever they were, were not. What caused the antagonism I don’t know, perhaps that Bill and EB were from a city school, and not the local Cranborne school, but whatever, the wars went on. Luckily we didn’t have guns, we just had sticks and stones. One day I was out in the backyard minding my business as I recall but a gang member from the other street saw me and realized I was pretty vulnerable on my own. (The older boys, EB and Bill, were of course the muscle behind our gang.) Anyway this guy started to shout at me and as I turned to walk away he threw a stone at me. It must’ve been fairly sizable because it hit the side of my head and knocked me clean out. The next thing I remember is Morris carrying me inside with the perpetrator scurrying away in the opposite direction, probably very satisfied with himself. No severe repercussions arose that I can recall, and I dared not report the incident to anyone, not the least Bill or EB for fear of precipitating a more serious war.

The second incident was of nobody’s making but my own. In the back garden there was a pit filled with grass but which had been set alight  days before. It all looked so enticing, the white creamy snow like surface of the pit and I jumped in. It was hot and burnt like hell and again it was Morris who grabbed me and washed me down with the hosepipe. My burns were not so bad as to require any medical attention but I certainly remember the pain.

Morris and his family would certainly play a large part in our lives over the next 15 years including a dramatic incident in Plettenburg Bay which I will recount in a later chapter. Even after the core family left Rhodesia, Morris continued to be a factor in Ronald’s family.

Of course having sold the house in Greendale to pay off the car once everything settled down, we still had the car and this opened up a new phase in the family’s life which was to get around and do stuff.

Much of the “stuff” we did involved camping and fishing. It happened that with dad’s involvement in the electricity supply commission he was aware of early explorations into the Kariba Gorge area, so in about 1948 we began a yearly trip to the Kariba area almost always on the Rhodes and Founders weekend in early July. The gorge which you will remember was some 50 miles upstream from Chirundu, but the shortest route to get there was from a point on the Chirundu road just north of Makuti. Back then the road was pretty basic with several sand drifts to be crossed which I’m sure this didn’t do much good to our new classy vehicle and increased the travel time for that last few miles immensely. But we got there and got back.

On the first visit we used the campsite that the original Kariba Dam surveyors had created, a typical pole and daga rondavel. That first visit went off relatively well with the only memorable incident being my dad being chased by a Hippo who had seemingly been trapped away from the safety of the water. I do remember that the fishing was quite good and Mom actually caught the largest fish, a twenty pounds-ish Bottlenose or Cornish Jack. Most of our fishing was from the bank of the river but my Dad always seemed to find a local guy with a dugout canoe. These “boats” were literally a tree trunk about two feet in diameter and about 15 feet long. They were hollowed out to a shell about two to three inches thick. How they remained upright is anybody’s guess but seemingly they did because Dad managed to catch some fish including, on one trip a fifty-ish pound Vundu (probably similar to the large freshwater catfish of North America.)

The next year we made the trip I seem to recall the road issue was not as serious (probably because we didn’t go all the way to the entrance of gorge itself) but the campsite was invaded nightly by trumpeting elephants and although we had the whole area surrounded by piles of thorn tree branches it was unsettling particularly for Mom. I believe we lasted one night and picked up sticks to move down to near Chirundu for the rest of our stay.

As I said, these expeditions took place every year over what was then called the Rhodes and Founders weekend. The choice being defined by the cooler weather at that time of the year. I can’t remember exactly how many times we made this trip but it was certainly three or four. One of the classic incidents on one trip in perhaps 1950, would be the time of the hundred pound bag of mealie meal slid off its supposedly secure spot on the front mudguard of the Hudson and crashed and broke on the side of the road as we crossed the Makabuzi River (on Cranborne Drive at the old low level bridge) only two or 3 miles from home. We do have video recording of the incident with us four kids scraping up the meal off the road (and I’m sure we ate it later.) I say video but of course that didn’t yet exist. In reality it was Dad’s 8mm cine camera with the footage digitized by Bill many years later.

This may or not it may not have been the same time that the mealie meal became contaminated by gasoline. All I remember is that sadza which was a prime part of our menu during those times resulted in us all having petrol burp indigestion after every meal. More about this later.

By 1951 things started to look up for a family the long awaited daughter was due as was the house which my dad had designed and contracted himself on Maiden Drive in Highlands. If you want upward mobile, this was it. Cranborne was and still is definitely the wrong side of the tracks (quite literally) whereas Highlands, even the low-end that we were in, was a major step in the upward direction.

Plettenburg Bay (1949 – 1975)

It was around 1949 that the family began it’s two-year cycle of visits to Plettenburg Bay. Rhodesia at the time was still very colonial and most of the government or semi governmental personnel were expatriates. This meant that conditions of service allowed for personnel to take an extended three months’ vacation every two years to allow them to return ‘home’. While Dad did not fit that mold, our family took advantage of the system to go to the coast for an extended period each cycle. Our place of choice was Plettenberg Bay.

Back in that era Plettenberg Bay was a very sleepy village set on the steep slopes down to the sea just off the main coastal highway known as “the garden route”. There was no electricity and very little else of the civilized world. There was one grocery store on the main street a liquor store nearby, the post office around the corner and for just about everything else you had to go the 21 miles to the adjacent city of Knysna.

For that first trip. as I recall, sister Helena was not yet born but we added Granny Van Heerden to our entourage. You can imagine what a trial the four day trip became. Three adults and four unruly kids in the Hudson was  unimaginable. I don’t remember the exact routing for that first trip but generally leaving Salisbury in the early morning we would drive south towards Beit Bridge. Depending on the speed of the travel our first night stop would be either Messina or some 60 miles further to Louis Trichardt. We never stayed in hotels and would throw up a simple campsite consisting of a tarpaulin (the same tarpaulin which encompassed the rooftop baggage). The second night was usually some way soon after the Johannesburg/ Pretoria urban area and was frequently Parys.

The third night stop was often in the middle of the Karoo at places like Colesburg but occasionally at Beaufort West where I remember getting into big trouble because I messed with the irrigation canals that lined every street. Beaufort West was of course the hometown for the Blythe sisters. These two grand ladies were my father’s Blythe maiden aunts (his mother’s sisters) and indeed were responsible for his middle name. From there depending on our route we would either go via Prince Edward pass directly down to Knysna, via Outshourn down to George or via Grahamstown to Port Elizabeth and then down the garden route to Plettenburg Bay. Of course we didn’t do all of these routes each time but it is a composite of the various trips that the incredibly reliable Hudson succeeded in transporting the unruly Anderson family on this regular routine which was very much an integral part of our growing up.

That first visit in 1949 we stayed in Ms. Marden’s cottages which were about 200 yards up the hill and across the road from the Lookout Hotel. Most of the time we were there we would spend our days on the Lookout Beach and fish Lookout rocks or walk down the beach the approximately 3 mile distance to the Keurbooms river mouth. (In recent times the river has broken a new mouth much closer to the village reducing the beach the time to about a third of it’s previous length.) The cottages themselves were very rustic but the location was perfect being just a few minutes from a pristine beach and in the opposite direction some of the greatest fishing that you could imagine.

That is the Hudson packed for our first trip to Plett, note it was leaving from the Pise’ in Cranbourne we lived in 1949.

Actually that first trip was quite amazing. Granny had never seen the sea before so this experience was quite incredible for her. (This was to be repeated later for Morris our long time kitchen servant who also had never seen the sea before he came with us)

However we got there, during the period that we were in Plettenburg Bay, we all became immersed in the coastal living experience fishing and eating fish, swimming in the ocean, body surfing and getting sunburned. As I recall it we would all arrive white, go to the beach to get sunburned for two or three days. Then we would wear covering clothes long enough to peel and maybe get sunburned again but after two or three weeks we were burned brown to almost black and our hair was as blonde as a peroxide starlet. I’m sure this is when I became a candidate for the melanoma that I suffered some 40 years later.

The time after Ms. Marden’s probably 1950/51 we rented apartments 2 miles above the Piesang river mouth that exited immediately adjacent to the Beacon island hotel. This was probably the least successful of our residences because it was a forced drive from the beach or fishing and because the nearby grocery store was of dubious quality and resulted in many rancid butter/milk/everything else situations

in 1952/53 we rented a house immediately adjacent to Ms. Marden’s cottages called Mrs. Ribbon’s house, it was during this holiday that we brought our faithful kitchen servant Morris  to be with us for the first time. he traveled by rail all the way down and was supposed to arrive at the Knysna train station but after his successfully managing the first 1500 miles all the way to George, he saw the ocean and immediately decided he had arrived and got off the train. Thanks to some helpful Railway police he was put onto the next train and we eventually picked him up at the station in Knysna, considerably wiser.

I think it was during this vacation that us boys first got to know the younger brother and sisters of my Dad’s family. Jean and Ian (and perhaps Marge) dropped in on a trip from Grahamstown University where they were both students. We had a really good time with them and Bill particularly attached to Ian who was only a few years older than him.

The next vacation, probably 1954/55, we rented the downstairs or walkout basement apartment directly opposite Mrs Ribbons’s house but also directly overlooking the Lookout Beach. From here we would simply almost roll down the hill onto the beach and it was an extremely successful vacation. (I particularly remember that this house had it’s very own wind generator, something quite unique at the time. Regrettably it did not help us as it was only wired to the upper floor of the house.)

Two things made this vacation stand out, the first being that it saw the end of my treatment for bilharzia which had required me to refrain from serious physical activity. Now I was finally again allowed to run and swim without restriction. Also, the end of the vacation marked the beginning of my first year of high school in late January. The younger family remained in Plettenburg Bay but Bill and I were sent back to Salisbury by train to go to school, me into my first year at Churchill High school. 

The specifics of the vacations during my high school years are not as well defined in my memory as the earlier ones, perhaps because of familiarity. I do remember that we stayed one year in a rather small green cottage one street (if you can call those unpaved passages streets) away from Beacon Isle beach. The significance of this was firstly that the more populous beach, Beacon Isle beach, became our home beach and  that we were now close to where the fisher folk kept their boats which led to me befriending a local lad who had access to a small dingy (I guess around 15’) with a motor. I had the pleasure and pain of going with him and his friends a number of times, pleasure because fishing from the boat was must more rewarding than our usual rock fishing, and pain because I most often got seasick. On the plus side , though, on one such fishing outing, we became aware of bird activity which indicated the possibility of the presence of game fish. We abandoned our position on the reef and headed towards the birds which took us out past Robberg Point, Here we hooked into and boated a 150 lb.  blue tunney. This being the first such catch of the season we raised a white flag to announce our success and were suitably lauded on our return to the beach. (I use the word “our” even though I was merely a spectator as were two of the other kids on the boat, but we all claimed a piece of the credit.)

 

Helena with baby David 1960

Of course, the 1959/60 cycle was particularly significant for us as a family. I don’t remember exactly where we were staying but I think it was in that little green cottage. It was December 1959 that brother Bill left from Cape Town by ship to attend college  in England and nine months to the day later another son was born, baby brother David.  Whether it was in grief or celebration for my parents we will never know, but coincidence? Bill never returned to live in Africa making only a few short visits thereafter. And just a year later I too left home for university and with vacation commitments that came with my engineering degree I never again joined my family for the full period of their stays but did make short visits between jobs.

Before leaving this subject I must refer to two activities which were common to all Plett vacations. The first, fishing. As I am sure you have all deduced by now, fishing was a primary pastime for Dad, whether at Kariba, some hideaway dam in Rhodesia or a river while visiting relatives. But the highlight was Plettenberg Bay. Preparations would start months in advance with a visit to the sports store where we would select a cane suitable for our stature at the time. With eyes and twine and reel attachments and varnish each of us had to craft our own unique rod, after which a suitable reel for each growing kid was selected. Once ensconced in our various holiday abodes, we all would fish virtually every day, with varying success.

A singular part of the rituals was Robberg. This was a spit of land that protruded some three miles out into the ocean, and thanks to a deep gully a half a mile or so in, was completely unavailable to motorized vehicles. Considered a prime fishing spot it was often a target for Dad. While Bill and I were still young, Dad would go on his own with a “Gilly” as the local “fishing guides” were called. These guides were usually “cape colourdes” as they were known then. (Remuneration always included a surreptitious bottle of cheap wine which was restricted for non whites at that time) However, the older boys began to be included even in the ritual of the overnight jaunt to the Point. There was a simple stone building that could be reserved and rented for overnight stays, and we took advantage of this at least once every cycle. I have to comment that my recollection is that we had very little success on these jaunts except the once when Uncle Herbert (Van Heerden) happened to be with us and he literally lassoed  a sizable yellowtale.(The line circled the fish around his fins and hooked onto itself, drawing tight the more the fish struggled. How you do it is not the point, all that matters is the fish is caught.) 

Robberg was also the scene of an event that I don’t think has been remembered by most in the family. It happened around February ’55. I wasn’t there, probably because I had returned for school, so this is hearsay but true. The family including Helena, still just four, were on Robberg, as  I was told, studying the rock pools on a flat rock spit leading to the Island. (see the picture below) This area was only accessible at low tide , and seemingly the time got away from them because a large wave came and flooded the area. Helena had been left in a “safe” spot near the picnic, but not safe enough. As the wave covered the rocks, Morris who luckily was included in the excursion, scooped up Helena and some of the picnic and carried her to safety. Other member of the family were a little beaten and battered but survived, but certainly, had Morris not been there, the same result for Helena would be in doubt.

Recent pictures of that area show the rocks covered in sand, either by the passage of time, or as I suspect by deliberate act to remove this hazard from the area which has become a popular tourist hiking location.

Before leaving the subject of fishing I must relate a story which perhaps encapsulates my mother’s character. I’ve mentioned that, overall, the families fishing exploits were, while all consuming, not greatly successful. One specific vacation was particularly so, with the paucity of catches overwhelming. Not to be outdone, on the second last day of our stay, Dad went off to the Beacon Isle rocks, which was not his normal spot, and, unbelievably caught a sizable yellowtail. Clearly we could not eat this monster on that day but, undaunted, Mom went out and acquired all the requirements for pickling and, this on her last day amid packing and preparing for departure, preserved that entire fish and it came home with us all the way to Salisbury.

The other activity which dominated our vacations was snorkeling. I was never a strong swimmer but put on a snorkel and fins I became as fearless as a seal. Bill too engaged in the pastime and together we used to dive around the common fishing spots and collect broken tackle. Usually the hooks and line were useless, but the sinkers and spinners largely were unaffected by the ocean. We used to re-melt the sinkers and polished up the spinners so they looked as good as new, and made good money peddling them perhaps to the very same fishermen who had lost them in the first place.

It seems I have spent a lot more time on this part of our growing up, but I cannot over emphasize the importance this aspect of our young lives was to all of us, at least to me.

Another esoteric factor only became apparent years later. Above, on the hill, were two A frame type houses which the locals called “the Dolls Houses”. When I had met and married my wife, Penny, we found out that she and her family had stayed in one of those houses at what could have been the same time as we were there. Perhaps we even unknowingly were on the beach at the same time. Who knows.

One final note on Plett. Fast forward to my final year at UCT. Penny and I had been an item for a couple of years and had befriended an odd couple, Dave Blackburn and Mary Jane ?. Dave and MJ were to marry in Port Elizabeth and I was to be Best Man. Both Penny and I were still in classes so could not travel till the Friday evening. Also as we were always broke, MJ had lent us her little box car for the trip. We set out in the evening dusk, but this soon turned to night, and the car head lights would not work. Luckily it was a moonlight night so we continued on. By midnight, the moon was setting, so we gave up and decided to sleep over till daylight. It happened we were at Plett so we drove down to the Beacon Isle Hotel where they were good enough to give us accommodation in rooms on the roof usually reserved for staff. (We could not have afforded any other.) That was the last time I saw Plett, and perhaps that is a good thing. So much has changed, it would be inconsistent with my memories, and that would be sad.

The Peall Farm (1947 – 1960)

My first recollection of the Peall farm is probably when I was six or seven.  They still lived in the old farmhouse which was rustic to say the least.  The farmhouse was situated just in front of the gum tree plantation and faced out towards a small dam in the valley below. There was a large growth of bottle brush trees lining down to one edge of the front lawn where on celebration days like Christmas, a table was laid out because there was no room big enough inside the house to accommodate the crowd that collected.

Rustic it was. The ceilings were painted hessian, and on a quiet night you could watch the footprints of what were clearly large rats who resided in the roof space. What a difference when the new grand abode was built (must have been about ’58.) Beautiful large rooms around a central courtyard. A big step up.

During our growing up years the Anderson boys, particularly me, would spend at least a week or two in each school holiday at the farm, Bill less than me.  I guess this is because Guy Jim and I were nearly the same age (indeed only three months apart) while Billy was that little bit older.  Over the years we became completely understanding of all the business of the farm (or so we thought) and became sort of accepted as part of the community. Apart from farm activities, we also enjoyed outings to the Umvukwes club.  As in most farming areas, the club was the centre of  all recreation in the farming community in that area and held sporting facilities, New Year’s Eve parties and the like.

As much as we enjoyed the club, we were never as much at home there as on the farm itself because all the Peall boys were much better sportsmen and so we were somewhat excluded from that exclusive camaraderie. Still we attended gymkhanas, multiple cricket matches, and too many to mention social occasions.

The farm was largely a tobacco farm with the attendant barns and boilers all necessary to produce the fine flue cured Virginia tobacco that Rhodesia was famous for. But, particularly in the early years, as is common with many farms, a little dairy produced milk for the household as well as the full cream that all of us lathered onto our breakfast porridge. (We were frequently roped in to turn the handle of the manual cream separator which process could not be hurried). There was also maize plantings mainly to feed the staff, and this involved the husking and grinding of the maize to produce the raw maize meal that was a staple. A few sheep, goats and chickens completed the menagerie and added to the variety of home produced food. I noted that this description was in the early years because my recollection seems to suggest that later, many of these activities were dropped presumably because they either proved uneconomic or too much trouble. It was sad.

I mentioned the cream copiously lathered onto porridge at breakfast, but I must also relate the story about boiled eggs which were served frequently. Inevitably with a bunch of boys those egg shells had to be repurposed before being discarded, so the grand eggshell challenge was born. The idea was to upturn your shell in the eggcup and engage with someone else’s. Whoever crushed first was the loser and the supreme winner was the last egg uncrushed. After a while we all became suspicious that Buster seemed to win too frequently. An investigation revealed that said felon had swapped his eggcup for a serviet ring and would approach each contest with his thumb inserted through the ring to provide support to the fragile eggshell. The game lost it’s luster after that discovery.

I guess as a necessity, farms in those days had to be very self sufficient, with workshops and repair facilities. As I recall, Billy tended to gravitate to this side of the activity. He particularly enjoyed the tractors, and became quite friendly with one of the drivers, Iodine who by hearsay allowed him to drive on occasions. Apparently when Bill visited Rhodesia many years later he reconnected with Iodine (This also is hearsay because I wasn’t there.)  While talking tractors, a particular memory was the arrival of a new tractor, a Ferguson. Compared to the older Fordson’s it was half the size. Caused many a derogatory comment.

As in my own family, there was a separation between the two older Peall boys, Guy Jim and Buster, and the two younger kids, Michael John and  Titch (Richard for the record). I guess when you are twelve hanging out with kids of six and eight just doesn’t cut it. I don’t know exactly why we always used the compound name Michael John, but it may have been to differentiate him from me as I was such a fixture in the family. With Guy Jim it was clearly to avoid confusion with his Dad – Guy Harcourt James Peall.

An important part of farm life that I have not yet touched on was horses. Guy Jim was an excellent rider as were the other Peall boys. I did OK but far less competent than them. Still that did not prevent us from venturing pretty far, very often to M’sonnedi store, less often even further to visit the Dore’s, the local vet whose daughter Roynan was a romantic interest for Guy Jim. (Just as evidence of how small and connected this world is, Roynan featured in two unrelated events in my later life. It turned out that she attended a college in Cape Town while I was there, and I visited her several times. Also much later after Penny and I were married living in our rental apartment in Johannesburg an encyclopedia salesman came by. Now it turned out that Penny had been at school with Roynan, and recognized that this young fellow had been her boyfriend at some time. When we came out with that recognition, it totally threw the fellow off his presentation but we ended up in having a short reminiscence before he left empty handed.)

Towards the end of my schooldays I took some formal riding instruction and became quite an accomplished rider, but I had to first forget the freestyle methods I had picked up on the farm.

Guy Jim went off to England to study agriculture and I went off to Cape Town to university and had the pleasure of meeting Guy and his bride to be, Jean, as they returned by sea for a visit to Rhodesia (I think). I was probably the first member of her future family that she met but be that as it may. This slim English lass fitted in to the rambunctious Zim farming community as Mrs. Guy Peall and she was with him when he died some 50 years later.

The overarching impression of Rhodesian Farm life was community. If our visits were over a festive day inevitably there would be a luncheon feast, after which all that could walk would head out to climb Macemberri, a sizable granite outcrop which lined the south eastern boundary of the farm. Even on non feast days there was frequently a get-together either at the farm or the club or some other person’s farm. Everyone was a friend, and you knew you could count on them in bad times. So much was this needed in the war years which was to come.

 

David at the beacon atop Macumberrie circa 1970

 

It is one of the big regrets of my life that in adulthood my relationship with the Pealls and particularly Guy Jim was allowed to become distant. As a business man I used to occasionally bump into Guy senior at his post farming career at Rhodesia Fertilizer corporation, and now and again we used to make arrangements to meet all the Peall family who happened to be in town for a sale at the tobacco floors for a breakfast and brief chat. I know Penny and I visited Ruia Ranch at least once but neither of us ever went to Guys farm in Centenary. A paltry relationship for two guys who as preteens were as close as brothers. Sad.

Other Family Interactions

Of course, while the Peall family was our most frequent contact with other family, particularly in the early years, we did spend time with several other cousins.

Davel/Van Heerden families.

I guess because Gwelo was nearer than Bulawayo, we naturally saw more of Mom’s family than the larger Anderson clan. I am a bit hazy about timeframes as to early meetings but as I have previously recorded, I do remember the house near the airport in Gwelo, and I do remember the mine near Hartley, but neither of these visits included other cousins. My clearer recollections are after Granny had started a boarding house some 10 miles out of Gwelo on the Que Que road. We visited there quite often and frequently met Uncle Herbert’s family.

This was not surprising as “Pop” Van Heerden and Herbert were in business together doing contracts involving transportation. One particular contract that both Bill and I were involved in was collecting wood mine props. We, that is Bill and I, accompanied Herbert and Pop in their trucks into the bush near Que Que. It seems that, rather than cut new trees, Herbert and Pop had hit on the idea to dismantle the abandoned pole and dagga huts of previous African occupants. (I did not think to ask why the huts were abandoned although a sneaking memory was that it was due to “land apportionment act” relocation) A particular memory of that trip was watching Pop shoot a guinea fowl from the top of a tree maybe 70-100 yards away. Using a .22 rifle I watched as his aging hands waved and wobbled, with the barrel of the gun wobbling as well. But, pop, the shot went off and the bird dropped like a stone. He must have been a deadly shot when younger!

Herbert’s wife was Irene, and they had three girls all much younger than us. The oldest was Deanna with her two younger sisters Lynnette and Marikie. Herbert died quite young leaving Irene to look after the family. I seem to recollect that Deanna moved to Pretoria and used to see my Mom and Dad occasionally, but I don’t think I saw any one of them after leaving school.

Mom’s brother, Michael, and his first wife Olive had two older sons, Ollie and Michael, who were much the same age as Bill and I, and two daughters Meryl and Joy, and finally another son Philip. We saw this family the least of Mom’s siblings so we never really formed a relationship even though Uncle Mike actually lived with us at Maiden Drive for several months in the late 50’s. (Brother Ed would be interested to know that he was working a scheelite claim just north of Borrowdale.) A singular memory of this time was Uncle Mike’s Hawaiian guitar which was the centre of many a sing along, sometimes with Dad and his Banjo (which he tuned as a ukulele probably because he didn’t play banjo.) Olive died quite young, and Michael remarried twice and had several more kids whom we never had an opportunity to get to know.

Although I said we did not have a real relationship with the Davel kids, as it happens, Joy Davel many years later worked at Anglo American and got to know Allan Wishart, Moira’s husband, and even lived in Borrowdale near them. To cap the coincidence, Joy played ladies tennis at Moira’s home and although I cannot confirm this, in all likelihood played with Penny.

Although Granny van Heerden was the second youngest of seven siblings, I don’t believe we knew or even ever met any of them.

As a family we had never spent much time with my Dad’s siblings until much later when Sheila and Alf came to Epworth Mission and later to Goromonzi School, and Keith and Gwen came to the Howard Institute north of Salisbury. I was told that there  was tension between my parents and Dad’s family arising out of two issues, both of which seem ridiculous from this viewpoint seventy years later, but at the time were apparently serious. The first problem was that Mom and Dad were married in the registry office not in a church. Apparently it took many years for the rev. W.W. (Dad’s Dad) to accept that they were even married. The second reason was that Mom was considered to be Afrikaans, even though the orphanage/school she attended was English and she spoke English. The language issue was divisive in the whole of Southern Africa even before the Boer war and more so after it, and it really has not totally disappeared even to this day. I guess the family finally got over the problem because Dad looked after W.W. in his old age and even handled the estate (for what it was worth) of both Granny Anderson and W.W. and even the estate of the Blythe sisters in Beaufort West.

Uncle Alf with baby Margie, presumably at Margie’s christening circa 1951

As I said, the “Anderson” family we knew best as kids was Sheila and Alf Morris and their kids David, Margaret and Pat. Alf had met Sheila during the war when he was stationed at Heany Base outside of Bulawayo. His role was as a trainer in the RAF (Similar I suppose to Guy Peall senior,) I don’t recall knowing them before they came to the Salisbury area, but we visited with them often at both Epworth Mission and Goromonzi school, and I guess we were their in town stop. (Just as an aside and evidence of how close Mom and Sheila became was that late one night Sheila showed up at our house having had a tiff with Alf. She apparently walked/hitchhiked the 20 odd miles from Goromonzi.) In later years (after the war) Margie and her then husband Chris Dickinson moved to Salisbury and hooked up with us and we became very close. Chris had been a pilot first of fighter jets (famously reputed to have been the wingman to Green Leader in the infamous Lusaka raid) and subsequently of helicopters. (You have to ask what is this our families girls have with airmen?)

Dad’s younger brother Keith and his wife Gwen were life long Salvation Army folk and moved around a lot including several trips back to England. But around the late fifties they were moved to the Howard Institute near Salisbury and, as a result, we saw them occasionally. They had two kids, Allan and Carol who were both much younger than us. Apparently, while I was away at University, Carol and Alan were both borders at school in Salisbury and frequently spent Sundays at Maiden Dr. When I returned to Rhodesia in 1970 they all had moved away so I never crossed paths with them again till many years later. (That is the story of Hurricane George which will come up later)

Dad’s next brother was Alec had a bunch of sons, but as they were in Bulawayo and we didn’t visit there much we never got to know them well. Our most frequent connection was an annual school/church retreat to Inyanga that they went on, with Alec being a key leader. I am not sure how many were in the group but they would come up to Salisbury by train arriving latish afternoon, and Dad would ferry them to our home, Mom would feed them scrambled eggs and toast, all to rush them back to catch the 9pm train to Umtali. I don’t recall us ever doing the same on the return trip. For the rest our contact would be family weddings, anniversaries or passing through visits, no real quality time.

As for Dad’s three younger siblings our contacts were even less, but notable among the family weddings category was Jean’s wedding to Bob at which sister Helena, then about 7, was a flower girl and Mom did the cake. (Later, in the late seventies, when my family moved back to Salisbury after 12 years away, Bob was pastor at All Souls church in Mount Pleasant and Penny attended that church quite frequently.) By then all their older boys had left home but Noreen and Kerry became quite good friends. The other two families, Marge and Ian moved away to Canada and South Africa respectively, and I have to admit that I cannot recall having met those cousins all these years on.

Other important activities.

No description of my growing up could be complete without talking about some extra mural activities which were very central to my life and the life of my family.

 Scouting

Without question one of those was scouting. Bill joined 20^th David Livingstone troop as a cub when he was about 8. Seems either I or Mom pestered them to let me join also at age 7. This was below the normal entrance age so I was held as a tenderfoot till my 8^th birthday. The troop was run by a brother and sister team Bert and Gladys Jackman who conveniently lived with their mother in a home kiddie corner from the school. For the purpose of the cubs, Bert was Akela, and Gladys was Bagheera. For most of my time in the pack Bagheera was actually running the cubs while Bert was running the scouts.

Thanks to my early start and the ease with which I learned stuff, I was soon promoted to “second”, then “sixer”, and finally, in the year before moving to scouts, pack leader. The only advantage of that last title was that I had the honour of chanting “Dyb, Dyb Dyb” in the opening howl each week. (Dyb was to signify “do your best” with the answer “Dob, Dob, Dob” or Do our best.)

One benefit of being “Pack Leader” was carrying the flag on formal occasions. One of those was during the royal visit in 1953 when then Queen Mother and Princess Margaret came to the country. I believe the prime purpose of the Queen Mother’s attendance was to be installed as the Chancellor of the University of Rhodesia just getting going. But of course, during these visits there were many other functions. One of these was a garden event in the city park and cubs and scouts across the region lined up in a sort of a one sided guard of honour. I was flag bearer as usual, in the back row, while right in front of me was a very young cub. As luck would have it the Queen Mother stopped directly in front of me to talk with this young fellow. Turned out he was totally awe struck and could not utter a word so I stepped in and answered a few questions before Her Majesty moved on. That incident found it’s way into the official film of the royal visit, and was shown all over the world, as were individual photographs in newspapers and magazines. We did get a copy of the photo and it may still be somewhere. As an aside, Mom who was active in fund raising and support for the university, attended the installation ceremony at the university.

Dad was active in supporting the troop and helped in the quest to acquire a permanent home. This began as the acquisition of a fair-sized plot in the subdivision just across the railway line from the school. It was large enough, perhaps 2 acres, and contained many rocky outcrops and valleys ideal for cubs and scout games and training. The task then became to build a meeting hall and equipment storage building. I can’t remember if this had begun before I moved up to scouts, but I do remember the process was “all hands on deck” and moved along very slowly as all volunteer projects seem to do.

When I was about 13, I was part of a workparty one Saturday helping to install the roof. As I recall there were no adults present, as was often the case, but we knew what had to be done. After a while the group decided to take a break and inadvisably did not dismount from the scaffold but sat on the planks and leaned against the wall. We didn’t realise that the horizontal members of the scaffold were dug into the brickwork and the pressure of our backs against the wall gently removed those members from the wall, and the platform collapsed tumbling the three or four of us to the ground four or so feet below. None of us were really hurt, or so it seemed at the time, so we reassembled the scaffold as best we could, left a note to tell others to check the scaffold before using it and went home.

I suffered a sore “sprained” wrist for several months after, and indeed, seemed to re-injure it regularly afterwards. It was not until university that a doctor told me I had broken a bone in the wrist which had not healed well causing my frequent pain events.

 The scout troop was quite small, I don’t think we ever numbered more than 12 – 15. But we were very keen and active, usually doing well on competitive camps. This was probably due to a concentration on this aspect of scouting by the troop. We frequented the Ruwa camping area but also did many weekend hikes. As, back in those days, Saturday morning was a working day for most including Dad, we would frequently ride our bikes to a prearranged culvert on the Umtali road and stash the bikes in the culvert under the road. The group, usually 2 or three scouts, would then hike across country, camp overnight and then meet Dad at some prearranged spot on Sunday afternoon. Dad in the meantime would have retrieved the bikes from the culvert.

I was never very “badge” conscious so never became a Queen Scout, but Ronald did several years later. In fact he also travelled to a world Jamboree, in Greece I believe it was.

When I was fourteen (about) Bill had already moved on to senior scouts. A group of them decided to bicycle to Beira, a port city 600 km to the east. I joined the group which was four, I think, which apart from Bill and I included a guy called Ricky Decker. (The fourth member, if there was one, I don’t remember.) I remember Ricky for two reasons, first he was a couple of years ahead of me at Churchill School, and second, sadly and much later, he was involved in a car crash which killed his wife.

In preparation for the ride we did a fair amount of training using the road to Mazoe as our track. The hills and dales made it ideal for the conditions we faced later. This would have been a ride of 20 some miles each way and we did it for fun.

The bike I had at home was basic without gearing of any kind, and were it not for the very kind loan of a superior derailleur equipped bike I believe I would have struggled even more than I did. We split the trip into four sections first day to Headlands, quite an easy ride, then second to Umtali which was fine till the climb up the eastern mountain range. We camped on the top of the pass and left early in the morning of the third day. All the pain of the previous days climb was rewarded with a down hill dash all the way to the first town in Mocambique. (Villa Machado I recall). Hear we stopped for breakfast at a tiny shop with Portuguese bread and sardines the main menu item washed down with the only liquid in the store, Portuguese wine. (It was probably the first time I had ever tasted wine and the combination of thirst and excitement made the cheap liquor very palatable. We pushed on to our third nights stop, Villa Pery, but arrived just after midday. A little foolishly a decision was made to press on another 120 km on what was now interminably flat road. It was quite dark when we arrived at the Estoril campsite where the rest of the family had already established base. I don’t know how I made it through the last few miles, but I am sure I know what a marathon runner feels like.

I think I slept the whole of the next day, and I know it took my chaffed groin several days to recover.

Just the final part if this epic story, several weeks after returning the bike I had loaned to its owner, it was stolen. The good news was that because we had had to record the bikes details for the border crossing, we were able to supply those details to the police who eventually recovered it somewhat the worse for wear.

Another incident which needs recording did not include me. The senior scouts had been without a leader for a while when a fellow called Dave Young stepped in. I was still in regular scouts, but somehow George Hutchison a kid my age was the star of this tale. Dave Young had an old Studebaker car and the group used to regularly head out on excursions. I’m not sure how it came about, but one Sunday, on such an excursion, George was driving on strip roads near Mazoe and presumably slipped off the strips and flipped the car. Although no one was seriously hurt, that was the end of that boondoggle.

The senior troop continued to have leader problems and most Fridays the three or four of us who showed up ran our own meetings, but I continued to attend regularly till my last year of high school when academic stress dictated more attention.

(I have failed to recall or find anyone else who can recall the name of the M’toko mine but will call it Grey Cap for now, which may actually be right as there was a hill nearby with that name.)

The Grey Cap Mine

I can’t fix exactly when the family first visited Granny Van Heerden and her second husband Pop on their smallholding about 30 miles past M’toko but it must have been 1954 or early ’55 when I was 12. One could not really call it a mine, rather an alluvial bed of stones obviously deposited over millenniums. The main product of the digging was beryl, a usually greenish tinged stone which while not extremely valuable was common enough to make a respectable living. We also discovered that there was also lesser quantities of a heavy black material which was either tantalite or columbite (the two frequently found together and difficult to tell apart).

When the family visited, we had to camp as there was only a single room bedroom for Granny and Pop. All other activities were outside. (No shower only a longdrop toilet aways away. Livestock of various kinds would wander around at will. One of those livestock was a goat kid called Bokkie who soon became a favourite of all the human kids particularly the younger ones. One weekend Bokkie disappeared mysteriously and without explanation, but the “lamb” roast served for Sunday lunch was delicious. There were also cattle around and once a month one would be slaughtered for meat for the family and workers. There was no power and hence no refrigeration so swift handling of the meat was the order of the day. So much so that some workers were cooking parts of the beast on an open fire while the butchering was still going on. One particularly memorable incident was one guy grabbed the stomach of the beast cut off a largish slice, wiped off the still warm contents on a nearby log and placed the piece inside down on the coals. One turn and when both sides were golden brown it was cooked and shared with the others nearby,

Granny Van Heerden with Pop and my Mom in the garden at Maiden Drive, circa 1955

One date that is fixed in the memory of all the family was Saturday 3^rd September 1955 when everything changed on the mine. It was the day of the third test between the South African Springboks and the British Lions in Johannesburg and we all crowded round the single battery powered radio to listen to the game. (The lions won and succeeded in drawing the series to the eternal shame of the Springboks.) Shortly after the game, Pop started to have severe chest pains and it was clear he was having a heart attack. As there were no phones or communication equipment of any kind, Dad was sent off a distance up the road to ask a fellow miner to head to M’toko to summon a doctor. The doctor arrived late in the night and of course could do nothing but to declare Pop dead. 

This development threw the proverbial spanner into the works of our lives as the decision had to be taken to either abandon the mine or run it. Dad chose the latter course and for the next few years the mine occupied much of the family’s free time, and regrettably over time consumed much of the family’s free money. (This part of the story is more speculative than others as neither Dad nor Mom spoke freely of the situation.)

It started off fairly well with Dad and occasionally one or other of the older boys making at least a monthly trip to the mine to resupply the workers, pay wages and pick up product to be sold to provide funds for the next run. Come school holidays at least Bill and I, and sometimes Bills friend EB would go and stay on the mine for a couple of weeks. Now, here are three teenage boys left on their own miles from civilization. A recipe for mayhem, and often it was.

To more understand the isolation of the mine I want to recount one trip I made on my own because I had a commitment requiring me to follow the main party a day or so later who had travelled with Dad in the mine truck. Somehow, and I don’t remember how, I was driven to the central bus station to get on the bus to M’toko. (That was unusual in itself because I was the only white face on the bus) The 70 mile trip took most of the day with several raucous stops along the way, and we arrived before nightfall. It had been arranged that I stay the night in the not salubrious M’toko hotel to be picked up the next morning by an owner/shopkeeper of a country store some 20 miles on. (You stayed on the main Nyasaland road for 5 or so miles then swung off onto an unpaved regional road till you reached the store which was located at a junction of an even less defined road) The stay in the hotel was notable as at the tender age of perhaps thirteen, this was the first time I had ever stayed in a hotel. I also remember the breakfast of kippers and eggs as I had never eaten kippers before (and not too often since either!)

On reaching the store I was met by one of the mine hands who had been dispatched to escort me during my walk the last 15 or so miles to the mine. On the way it was required to stop at each kraal and pay respects to the residents frequently accompanied by a swig of native beer. So I probably crawled most of the last few miles. That walk was along a pretty respectable track till we reached the Nuhunurri river which marked the boundary of the tribal trust lands. From there, after fording the shallow river, it was about a further 2 miles to the mine, overall a full days travel.

Over perhaps two to three years Bill and I spent four or five periods of two to three weeks at a time on the mine during each school holidays, and EB joined us for at least two occasions. When we stayed at the mine we slept in the maybe 20’ by 20’ “pole and dagga” hut that had been Granny and Pop’s room. The elderly servant who had been with Granny stayed on to look after us. Remember, there is no power, hence no refrigeration, no running water, hence no shower, and only paraffin lamp lighting after dark. The first few days we would eat sort of normal but fresh food soon ran out. Bread became “vet cookies”, a simple flour and water dough leavened with baking powder and cooked fresh in boiling oil. Supper included the staple “sadza”, a corn meal heavy porridge set off with a light gravy made from local green leaf stuff, with dubious spiced sausage or “boerewors” supposedly because it didn’t spoil. We did sometimes spring to roast dove when we were successful in that hunt, but you needed quite a few birds to slake even a mild hunger. At least once we had fresh venison when Dad shot a small antelope called a Klipspringer (after he admonished me for accompanying him on the hunt in bare feet.)

To get any form of bathing required a walk some two miles to a river. We could not go back along the entrance road as the river there was very public, and the alternate site was quiet, lodged between two rocky “kopjes” with a nice sandy bottom. Not deep enough to swim but great for a splash and wash down. Back then I was an inveterate rock climber and had a great time on each of those kopjes except on one occasion Bill, obviously bored waiting while I climbed, started shooting in my direction the .22 rifle we always carried. He says he was aiming way away, but the sound of those slugs pinging rocks close by tells me otherwise. Not to mention the possibilities of a ricochet.

I have already mentioned the miner just up the road who helped fetch the doctor when Pop died. He was apparently not a smallworker himself but an employee of the large mining company Lonrho doing a survey of the area. He was a very private man and in all the time we were there I never saw anyone else go up to his place. There was another strange character called Max. Almost certainly he was an alcoholic who would show up periodically on his horse and head east over the hills where there were no roads. He was said to have a claim over there but whether he did or did not he would show up again in a couple of weeks with bags of ore on his horse and head back towards town. The word was that he would sell his ore at the local district commissioner’s office and go on a bender for a few days before heading back out. (I don’t remember this, but Bill tells the story that he went with Max to his claims and in the process fell off his horse. Explains a lot.)

 The situation chugged along for a couple of years seemingly OK till a man entered the picture who was to upend everything. That man was Major Hilton. “Major” Aubrey John Hilton (I use quotes on the title “major” because as I understand it, retired service persons lower than Colonel are not entitled to use the military rank in retirement) was a long time miner with a history going back many years including at least one bankruptcy which in Rhodesia at the time was a serious black mark. Interestingly one of the mines he owned and sold was the Gaika gold mine in Que Que where Penny and I lived for seven years from 1970. I think it was someone in that midlands mining circle that suggested to Granny that Hilton was someone who may be able to take over the M’toko mine and so relieve Dad and herself from the issue long term.

By the time Hilton came along, I think, Dad had got the bug. Far from exiting he and Hilton together proceeded to buy out the mine down the hill owned by a guy named Jordaan called Good Days. In my opinion all the good days were already gone. In less than two years Hilton’s attack on the underground portion of the mine resulted in it being declared unsafe. Work continued for some time on the alluvial pits in front of the shaft. Unfortunately confusion over some black ores discovered which were identified as tantalite/columbite were combined with the product from the still operating Grey Cap pits. This turned out to be a major Snafu as the ore was found to be a tin ore which made the combined material unsaleable. Dad, resourceful as ever, found an old James Table most frequently used in separating gold particles from alluvial deposits and the entire several ton mixture was crushed and run through. The small difference in densities made it necessary work very delicately and the result was the cost of the operation virtually eliminated any profit.

This debacle, and the ruinous mining practices on Good Days, forced Dad to pull the plug on Hilton and he returned to lick his wounds and his lightening research. I don’t know how much money was lost but Mom went out and got a bookkeeping job and dinner conversations were strained for a while. When all was said and done there remained a reminder of the debacle in the form of a large glass fronted display case which Hilton apparently left with Mom and Dad for safe keeping, and it was never returned to him. It remained in their living room through moves to and in Pretoria and indeed was with Dad when he finally sold up his place in that city.

Hilton, on the other hand, went on to discover the Bindura nickel claims which he sold to Anglo American for what must have been several million dollars. He later won the main prize in the lottery but this time, as the story goes, his wife absconded with the ticket. Just a final unrelated note on this silver tongued rogue, in my research I discovered that his daughter married into the British Aristocracy and her son is now the Earl of Wiltshire. Who Knew!

 Bad Boys and Bad Dogs

There really is no other way to say it, we, and that includes EB, were hellions as teenagers. Apart from the old tricks of pulling hosepipes across the road in the semi darkness and scaring the living daylights out of passers by, or the stringing of strings between trees also across the road to catch cyclists, there was that bit about bombs.

It started simply enough with a little swinging bang maker. It was simple enough, get an old 303 cartridge or doppie as it was called, and a decent steel 2’ nail. Melt some lead and fill the doppie with it, quickly, before it freezes, stick in the nail about half way. Wiggle the nail a bit as the lead freezes so you can get it out then, when everything has cooled down and you have run your burned fingers under the tap, you tie a 3’-4’ (depending on your height) piece of string one end to the head of the nail the other to the butt of the doppie. Now with the nail reinserted into the hole in the lead created by the nail you have a nice swingable toy. Take two matches, remove their heads which can be fed into the hole and gently worked down to the bottom by the nail. You are now ready to make mayhem. After practicing a bit in private, you get pretty proficient at swinging you weapon. Wait your time, creep up upon your unsuspecting sister or younger brother swing your weapon such that the nail head vertically strikes a solid surface, the resulting bang is as good as any gunshot. Scares the crap out of your victim, hence the reason to ensure your victim is younger and smaller.

I guess that led us into understanding gunpowder. Now gunpowder is really quite simple, sulphur,  saltpeter (potassium nitrate) and charcoal is all you need but the question is how much of each. Getting the sulphur and saltpeter was no problem, just go to your chemist (pharmacy here) and ask for some. (We took the precaution of not trying to get both from the same chemist, but no one ever asked what we wanted it for.) For charcoal we simply raided our servants cooking fire and selected what we needed and crushed it with the kitchen’s pestle and mortar. Then you have to make your mixture and test it. The secret is to get it so a 3” line of the powder with burn virtually instantaneously when lit one end. So now you can begin to make a bomb.

Our first bombs were small and simple with fuses made of short pieces of mining fuse, but we didn’t have  detonators so we had to put up with the occasional burn that did not give a bang. Not a good situation because you could never be sure if a bang was still to come. Anyway, Bill was designated to come up with a solution. He used an electric cord reduced to one or two filaments which when connected to a supply by plugging in to an outlet resulted in a quick fuse like flash and boom. This method was used in the last bomb fired at our home. A 2” pipe bomb was constructed and knowing how explosive it would be we buried it maybe 18” deep a few yards roadside from the servants quarters. Bill’s fuse worked great, the bomb exploded making a sizeable crater. We had no idea where the pipe ended up till our neighbour across the street, Bill Green, called Dad and reported that a piece of pipe had landed a few feet from his gardener. That put an end to those experiments, but EB did not give up and there were reports of bombs in the Mazoe dam area which coincided with absences from home of EB and Bill. I heard that they had graduated to cannons, a two inch pipe with lead at one end packed with gunpowder, a wad of paper, some projectiles such as ball bearings or nails, another wad of paper and kaboom. It’s amazing we all survived.

I subtitled this section “Bad Boys and Bad Dogs”. Well, not to make a great thing of it I must talk dogs. Our home on Maiden Drive never had a fence, (It is very different now.) But we always had dogs, outside dogs. Two dogs in particular, Brutus and Remus.  They were cross bull mastiffs and strong and wild. Brutus more so than Remus. We received the dogs as pups, I think from Granny and Pop when they moved to the mine. When we began to receive reports of a nightly scourge of the neighbourhood pets led by Brutus, with many fatalities among the attacked, it was clear Brutus had to be relocated. He was sent to the Mine, and there when I was present on a hunting expedition when Brutus put up a cheetah. The cat seemed to take off just ahead of the dog, then looked back, and as if to say, “See you Mutt” put on its speed and disappeared.

The neighbourhood issues did not end with Brutus’ departure, but became less of an issue. I guess the neighbours just said, “Those Andersons.” I don’t remember what happened to Brutus after Pop’s death, but there is a smidgen of a memory that maybe Max took him over. We will never know.

The couple of years we were looking after the mine were very formative in developing our independence, but I have a fear that spending most of our holidays on the mine instead of at the Peall farm contributed hugely to us growing apart. The fact that the Peall boys, particularly Guy, were very much into sports, and good at it, as we were not, was certainly also a factor.

School Days.

As I have already mentioned, Bill was placed in David Livingstone school while the family was still living in the Avenues. He remained there till senior school when Dad and Mom decided he should attend Allan Wilson School which was a “technical” education school. David Livingstone is where he met EB who, as you will have realised, was a major factor in Bill’s life. Bill did very well at Alan Wilson becoming deputy Head Boy, I believe, but I am sure he always wondered why the folks had plotted that course for him.

I have no recollection of any of Bill’s friends from school other than Melgeorge Stander. Melgeorge was a skinny 6 ft 6” guy who came to live with us while Bill was in lower sixth. (I believe his folks could not afford for him to continue school so Mom stepped in.) There was another guy who had a Lambretta scooter and had left school that used to visit around the same period, his name was Dave (I think).

My schooldays were a little more complicated as I had attended two schools before entering standard 3 at Admiral Tait. (The younger kids all went to the more prestigious Highlands School, apparently after the zoning was changed.) My stay at Admiral Tate was less than remarkable, marked only by being kicked off the school choir because I was flat and being sent to the principal because my writing was so bad. (Neither issues have changed much since.) Academically I was always in the top few in the class even though this was not measured at the time, and I was always there to be linesmen or scorer (depending on the season) always being enthusiastic but not good enough to be on the team. I did make my mark by headlining a “Young Farmers Club” which I know continued after I moved on. Perhaps the most significant memory of the school was a line drawn on a pillar of the veranda that ran in front of the classrooms with the notation 4950 ft above sea level. That’s how you make a memory.

It was during the final year at Admiral Tait that I had my bout of Bilharzia. I had to go to the hospital for the diagnostic test:

“A cystoscopy is a procedure to look inside the bladder using a thin camera called a cystoscope. A cystoscope is inserted into the urethra (the tube that carries pee out of the body) and passed into the bladder to allow a doctor or nurse to see inside.”

All I remember about it was trying to pee the next day was so painful that I held on for too long and eventually peed my pajamas on the way to the toilet. (That one night in the hospital was the only time I spent in any hospital till the time in Meaford with my first P.E.) The treatment I do remember. 3 injections of antimony a week for six weeks. (If you know your periodic table, antimony is just below arsenic and is just as poisonous. The idea is to build up your resistance to the poison till, just before you succumb, the little wormies inside you die.) During the treatment I was not supposed to run, do PT or any other strenuous activity, and I understand why. The poison gets at your heart, as evidenced by the violent coughing episode after the final injection that evidenced that the poison had almost done me in.

I recovered, and subsequent tests have determined that I am free of the “wormies”.

My beginnings at Churchill high was not an auspicious event  I arrived back in Salisbury a week after the beginning of the school year, which  meant I missed the entrance tests which defined the stream students were allocated to. As a result, I was placed in the C stream being as much as I had come out of Admiral Tate school which was considered by all to be a low level school. It wasn’t until the end of the first term that I was moved up into the A stream and of course the inevitable as the C stream did not study Latin and so I was thrust into this new circumstance well behind the rest of the class. This added to the fact that I was notoriously not good at languages meant that Latin was always a major hindrance to my academic career.

Added to this disaster was the fact that my mother had decided we could not afford to purchase the standard Churchill uniform so she had made my pants.  Instead of the denim like look of all purchased off the hook pants, mine were shiny darker gray.  Talk about standing out when you would rather not.  Luckily for me I was a bright student and so soon merged into the nerd group and lost that aura of visibility.

Senior school at Churchill was equally uneventful. After the somewhat inauspicious start I described previously I settled into a nerd’s existence maintaining top three status all the way through. I generally competed with Barry Martin for top spot in the sciences and math, and then Bruce May would excel at the arts. Once we moved on to sixth form Ron Cosser emerged as a new contender.

One significant incident occurred in the final term of my fourth form year. Back then all school kids wrote the external exam called Cambridge school certificate, and the event began just six weeks before we were to begin writing. Most if not all of us kids (I don’t remember if Bill was one of us) fell ill with what was described as a “Virus” We were all quarantined in the same bedroom and were visited almost daily by our doctor who was Dr Saunders. On returning to school having missed two weeks I remember meeting one of the teachers who remarked that she hoped I would not be missing any more time at this critical moment. (In the light of the current Covid thing, out of interest I checked back and found that in 1957/58 there was a pandemic of H2N2 virus, and I now wonder if that was it). Anyway it didn’t do me great harm because I succeeded in passing well enough to get my matriculation exemption.

That fact led me to discover a great “coverup” in our family. I had registered for the Cambridge exam as Michael D Anderson, the name I had always been told I had, and my certificate was issued as such. When I gathered together my papers I found that my birth certificate was simply Michael Anderson, the D for Davel, my mothers maiden name, was not there. Dad had registered me while Mom was still recovering and, I think, deliberately omitted the name because of it’s Afrikaans connotations. I was faced with having to officially change my name to include the D or accept that I would have to live without a middle initial for the rest of my life. I am pretty certain that Dad’s reservations were to not inflame his family’s attitudes, but I guess we will never know. 

 

The end of the Beginning.

As previously recorded, Bill went on to study Electrical Engineering at a “sandwich” course in Rugby, UK. He did visit the folks once on his own and once with his wife to be, a country lass from northern England, Mary Dent. I surmise she didn’t want to move to Africa and he didn’t want to stay in the UK so they emigrated to Canada where he lived for the rest of his life.

Baby brother David was born the year after Bill left and that year was my final year at Churchill School. I went to Cape Town University to study Chemical Engineering starting my first job in the yeast industry in Cape Town while I completed a business course there.

Dad, in the meantime, was facing turmoil in his work life. (Please note that what comes next is my interpretation of events not backed up by any real evidence.) Over many years Dad had progressed to head up the projects side of the ESC while another man, Wakefield, headed up the operations. A third man Doug Irvine was the financial head. The GM of the ESC was a guy called McGowan. Come about 1962, McGowan was to retire and his replacement was to be one of the three. When it came down to it, Wakefield got the job and Dad was devastated. I mean, Wakefield wasn’t even a university trained engineer. Although our family was very friendly with the Wakefield’s socially, Dad resigned and moved to the CSIR in Pretoria.

As big as a wrench as this was for the family, it was a dream job for Dad as he became the boffin he was always intended to be, allowing him to follow his lifelong interest in lightening to the extreme. (Over the years he actually chaired the premier lightening organization in the world and travelled extensively to conferences world wide.) Of course Bill and I were not affected at all, and Ed was in the process of taking up his studies in London, but the move did not sit well with the ladies of the house. Both Mom and Helena rebelled, Mom covertly and Helena overtly and she moved back to Rhodesia as soon as she left school. Little David knew nothing had happened but poor Ron was caught in a bind. He was beginning a printing apprenticeship at which he ultimately excelled but was now homeless and with little financial support. Apparently his girlfriend and future wife Sue Smith and her family helped him through that traumatic time, as did our longtime neighbour Bill Green who just happened to be a senior executive in the company that Ron worked for.

Dad began his job at the CSIR in about April 1965 and the rest of the family followed at the end of the year so as to allow Helena to finish her school year. Coincidently this timing happened to follow just weeks after UDI.

And so, only Ron was left of the Anderon/Davel family in Rhodesia. Helena did return a few years on, as did I in 1970 for a stay of 12 years, but that is another story.

Just a footnote to this saga, one of the Wakefield daughters, Margo, was in the same intake year as my future wife Penny at Fuller Hall at UCT, and she became good friends with us both. To boot, Margo went on to marry my university best friend, George Branch. Yep, life is a twisted web.

 

 

 

Postscript

This memoir was supposed to be the first half of a longer story, but fearing I would never get to write the second half I decided to circulate this as it is.

I had also hoped that the “grabs” I did from my parent’s 8mm films which had been put on CD’s by Bill would yield more contextual photos, but not so, and the quality is poor, but that is what I have got!

I do still see this as a work in progress, so please, anyone who would like to comment on or add information, please feel free to email me with your contribution in word or similar format, and I will add it as best as I can.

I would be particularly appreciative to receive any photos of our childhoods from Davel, Peall, or Andersons where Helen/Ralph family kids are also present.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix i.

Male Lineage of the Davel and Pretorius Families

 in South Africa

Johannes Pretorius

1642

1694

 

Johannes Pretorius

1680

1732

 

Johann Christian Tafel

Johannes Pretorius

1720

1768

1711

1778

 

 

Willem Marthinus Davel

Mathys Van As Pretorius

1762

1839

1749

 

 

 

Johannes Gerhardus Davel

Marthinus Gerhardus Pretorius

1788

1842

1790

 

 

 

Willem Marthinus Davel

Johannes Lodewikus Pretorius

1815

 

1820

1887

 

 

Michiel Karel Davel

Johannes Lodewikus Pretorius

1856

1924

1848

1917

 

 

Willem Marthinus Davel

 

 

Helena Elizabeth Pretorius

1886

1922

1896

1974

Much more information of the genealogy of the Davel Pretorius families is available at

www.griquatownandersons.com .  

 

Appendix ii

 

Allan Anderson, my cousin, wrote this in an email to Bill and I:

 

I’ve just received an fascinating mail from ancestry.uk about a person who appears to be our 8X great grandfather who is named as Evert van (from) Guinea, who arrived in the Cape in 1658 as a slave. He is 5X great grandfather to Johanna Anderson (neé Schonken) and his granddaughter was Appolonia Everts (6X great grandmother), who married Jan Esterhuizen. When I have time I will resubscribe to ancestry and do some more concentrated research. This is what it says:

 

• Evert van Guineeand Anna van Guinee came as slaves on the ship Hasselt in 1658 to the Cape. Evert was sold on 10 May 1658 to Casper Brinckman. A year later he was sold to Jan van Riebeeck. By 1669 they must have been set free since he received land for a garden. In 1677 he purchased the slave Claes van Bengale. In 1682 they live on a farm which is later known as Welgelegen, at this time he and his wife has one son and three daughters.

In July 1680 Evert van Guinee and Anthonie van Guinee were found guilty of chopping wood on prohibited property, they were found not guilty

Two of their daughters names are known:

Maria and Lijsbeth

In 1689 Lijsbeth Everts was accused of attacking her mother 'met vuistslagen en 't verscheuren van haer klederen'. It came to light later that the fight started between the two sisters.

Maria was also known as Swarte Everts Marij, X 5 November 1679 Gracias van Angola (known as Jackie Joy). This union dit not last and she had a relationship with Bastiaan Colijn

References:
GC de Wet, Vryliede en Vryswartes aan die Kaapse Nedersetting 1657 - 1707 
Karel Schoeman, Armosyn van die Kaap: Die Wêreld van 'n slavin 1652-1733
AM van Rensburg, "The Secret Modus Operandi in obtaining Slaves for the Cape: The Ship Hasselt - 1658", Familia Vol 38, No 2, 2001

Contribution:
AM van Rensburg

 

 

I was intrigued by this possibility, so I checked to see what Dad had said about this in GriquatownAndersons.com. What I found is copied in Appendix iii.

First some background. My Dad’s paternal Grandfather was Ebenezer Anderson and his paternal grandfather was William Anderson (that’s six generations) who became known as William of Griquatown. William married Johanna Maria Schonken in 1806. Johanna’s mother was Elizabeth Vanellenwee.

I followed the ancestry of Elizabeth Vanellewee back for six generations. The first breakthrough was to find that her Maternal Grandmother was none other than Appolonia Everts who is mentioned by name in the report above. Details further back than that became sketchy ending in a person described as “Everts Unknown”. So the stories match pretty wel!.

Perhaps we are all descended from slaves!

Appendix iii.

 

GriquatownAndersons.com

 

 

VAN ELLEWEE, Johannes Hendrik
(1756-)

DU PLESSIS, Maria
(1702-)

ESTERHUIZEN, Jan Andries
(1704-)

EVERTS, Apollonia
(1706-)

 

VAN ELLEWEE, Hendrik Rudolf
(1729-)

ESTERHUYSEN, Elizabeth Catharina
(1733-)

 

VAN ELLEWEE, Elizabeth Maria
(1750-1845)

 

Family Links

Parents:
1. VAN ELLEWEE, Hendrik Rudolf & ESTERHUYSEN, Elizabeth Catharina
2. VAN ELLEWEE, Hendrik Rudolf & ESTERHUYSEN, Elizabeth Catharina

Spouses/Children:
SCHONKEN, Bartholomeus

• SCHONKEN, Bartholomeus Hendrik (Hendricus)+
• SCHONKEN, Elizabeth Catharina
• SCHONKEN, Johannes Hendricus
• SCHONKEN, Elizabeth Catharina
• SCHONKEN, Maira
• SCHONKEN, Johanna Maria+
• SCHONKEN, Maria Elizabeth
• SCHONKEN, Catharina
• SCHONKEN, Petrus Johannes
• SCHONKEN, Catharina Hendrina
• SCHONKEN, Isabella Magdalena
• SCHONKEN, Johannes
• SCHONKEN, Willem Petrus

VAN ELLEWEE, Elizabeth Maria ¹

• Born: Sep 21, 1750, South Africa
• Christened: Sep 27, 1750
• Marriage: SCHONKEN, Bartholomeus on Nov 10, 1765 ¹
• Died: Jun 10, 1845, George South Africa aged 94 ²

   Another name for Elizabeth was VAN ELLENCE, Elizabeth Maria.

  Events:

1. Alt. Death, 1844. ³ Alternate Date of Death 10 Jun 1844

2. Alt Death. ² Pama I page 194 gives the date of death in George on 18 Jun 1845.
He also confirms her marriage to "B.Schonke" (Bartholomew)
Jan-Willem also

 

Elizabeth married Bartholomeus SCHONKEN, son of Bartholomeus SCHONKEN and Leonara CLAASZ, on Nov 10, 1765.¹ (Bartholomeus SCHONKEN was born on Nov 8, 1739 ^1 2, christened on Nov 8, 1739 ^2 4 5 and died in 1806 ^2 6.)

 

Sources

1 Dr. D. F. du Toit MALHERBE, Family Register of a South African Nation (Third Edition published by TEGNIEK STELLENBOSCH, 1966.
This is a wonderful source of clues on specific families, but all data in the publication needs to be verified with Original Sources.), SCHONKEN Extract - Page 905. Cit. Date: Oct 7, 2002.

2 PAMA I & II.

3 Herbert H. HELM and Charles W. HELM, THE HELM FAMILY HISTORY (jANUARY 1999, 91 pages, limited distribution.).

4 Peter S. Anderson, Weapons of Peace: The Story of William and Johanna Anderson. (Published by Logos Production House, Unit 1011-1012, Fo Tan Industrial Centre, 26-28 Au Pui Wan St., Fo Tan, Shatin, N.T. Hong Kong. Tel:2687-0331 Fax; (852) 2687-0281.
First English Edition May 1995 Copyright 1995 by Peter S. Anderson.
ISBN 962-457-091-4). Rec. Date: Aug 9, 2003.

5 T.A.Anderson, The Story of Pacaltsdorp and Some Reminiscences (Made and Printed by Long & Co. (Pty) Ltd.
297 Kempston Road, Port Elizabeth.
Authors Note April 1957). Rec. Date: Aug 9, 2003.

6 J.M.Marquard, MELVILL Family Register (Printed by The Citadel Press, Loop Street, Cape Town).

GriquatownAndersons.com

 

 

EVERTS, Unknown

DECKERS, Prijnen

LE FEBRE, Pierre
(Abt 1650-)

DE GRAVE, Marie
(Abt 1654-)

 

EVERTS, Abraham
(Abt 1680-Abt 1712)

LE FEBRE, Catharina
(1688-1760)

 

EVERTS, Apollonia
(1706-)

 

Family Links

Spouses/Children:
ESTERHUIZEN, Jan Andries

• ESTERHUIZEN, Jan Christoffel
• ESTERHUIZEN, Jan Christoffel
• ESTERHUYSEN, Elizabeth Catharina+
• ESTERHUIZEN, Jan Andries+

EVERTS, Apollonia ²

• Born: 1706, Stellenbosch ^2 3
• Christened: Apr 11, 1706, Stellenbosch ^2 3
• Marriage: ESTERHUIZEN, Jan Andries on Jul 27, 1727 in Drakenstein, (Now Known As Paarl) South Africa ^1 2

   Another name for Apollonia was EVERTSZ, Apollonia.⁴

  Events:

1. Birth Reference, Apr 11, 1706. ^2 3 5 Baptism Record from Stellenbosch states:-Aplonia, dogter van Abraham EVERTS, de moeder Katrina la FEBRE, getuiijgen Nikolaas CLEEFT en Katrina CLEEFT, gedoop 11e April 1706. This is confirmed in Palmkronieke baptismal record.
Subsequently Delia Robertson in an e-mail dated 5 May 2007, provides further evidence that the baptism of Apollonia Evertsz on 31 Apr 1706, was witnessed by Nicolaas son of Nocolaas Cleef and Barbe le Fevre.
Also Delia Robertson in her e-mail dated 8 May 2007 supplied evidence that Anna Catharina Cleef witnessed the baptism of Apollonia Evertsz on the 11 Apr 1706.

 

Apollonia married Jan Andries ESTERHUIZEN, son of Christoffel ESTERHUIZEN and Elizabeth (Elisabeth) BEYERS, on Jul 27, 1727 in Drakenstein, (Now Known As Paarl) South Africa.^1 2 (Jan Andries ESTERHUIZEN was born in 1704 and was christened on Nov 23, 1704 in Stellenbosch Western Cape, South Africa.)

  Marriage:

1. Alt Place Name. Richard Ball advised that Drakenstein is now known as Paarl

2. Alt Marriage. ⁵ Delia Robertson in an e-mail dated 5 May 2007 supplies evidence that the date of marriage ws 17 Jul 1726 in Drakenstein

 

Sources

1 Du Plessis, Nita 2002, Du Plessis, Nita 2002.

2 Richard Ball (Various E-mail Information).

3 Various, The SOUTH AFRICAN Genealogy Group to which I subscribe provides a large number of inputs not necessirilly with the sources..

4 Gert Esterhuizen, Descendents of Christoffel Esterhuizen.

5 System, E-mail Plus Data (A System Ploy for adding miscellaneous data from various non official sources).