I lost a bet to Tom with the Springboks’ loss to the All Blacks this weekend.
Paying up was painless compared to sitting with him watching the match!
Then Sunday I went to Pietermaritzburg where I got a blow-by-blow “Hoor Weer” of the match from the Ole Man.
Both my deskundiges cannot BELIEVE how the Boks just don’t LISTEN to their simple, foolproof advice! One says they should just play like he played for Westville Boys last year and the other says they should just play like he played for Maritzburg College in 1937.
Fuckit I’m going to heaven I swear. Or at the very least I’ll get a diplomatic posting.
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Hoor Weer – Kyk Weer, but aural – a verbal re-run and re-hash
The first time: He found a bamboo with a line tied on the end at Kelso beach when visiting the Harveys, Margaret and Bryce. This rustic contraption immediately sparked his interest. A fascination started that has endured.
When Trish’s Dad Gompa Neil found out, he gave Tom two big surf rods as he had decided to give up fishing. We took them along to Cape Vidal and three year-old TomTom waved them around like fly rods in the surf. The fish were quite safe, there wasn’t time for them to grab hold of the hook!
Some of the other times:
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Tom fishing
Tom found a fishing rod – Uh Oh!!!
fishing at coffee bay
Look Ma! We both caught a fish!
One of these okes is a fisherman
Hurry up, gillie. I got fishin’ to do . . .
Can’t catch with my rod – let’s go after them with my hands!
fishing at coffee bay
Tom fishing
His first competition
Happy as a pig in dirt
Tom fish
Michael & Tom show off their catches
Tom catches his first sea fish!! A monster blacktail that put up a fierce fight
Jaynee J had a luxury courtesy suite at Centurion Park cricket ground and she invited us to watch a game. The Springboks / Proteas were playing someone in an international test match. 2001, so Sri Lanka, maybe.
Jayne didn’t call it a courtesy suite; she called it her ‘champagne suite’. Jayne Janetsky could POUR, and – as always – she had laid in enough stock for a siege. Or a rainy day. And that day Centurion Park was not like this:
– internet picture –
It was like this:
– me telling Jessie “See love, this is cricket: Not much happens” –
This led to puddle-jumping with Jess behind the stadium:
I had great fun watching the people. Especially a guy in the next-door Telkom box, scanning the crowd with powerful binoculars, looking for girls. Whenever he saw someone watching him he’d say “I’m looking for my sister.”
We had to take two year-old Jessica along and it wasn’t really her thing. It rained off and on, so we were indoors with Celebrity Guest Barman Johnno Green, who was intent on quality control, sampling and plying. Boobs and Booze. Aitch and I took turns amusing Jess and keeping her (mostly) out of the adults’ hair.
After a while (cricket matches carry on and on and when you think they MUST be finished, surely? – they stop for tea) I had to feed and change Jess and decided to take her back to Jayne’s home. Change of scenery for her and a break for the adults.
On the way back to the stadium, with freshly-fed and -wiped Jessie strapped in the car seat behind me, I missed the freeway off-ramp to the stadium. Didn’t have a clue how I’d get back to the stadium now, so I was kinda tense and focused and fuming. What if I missed Jayne’s famous lunch? Finally I figured it out and managed a tricky u-turn after the next off-ramp and got back on track. Finally I could relax.
Brauer was running Comrades. Successfully. I was definitely not – not even unsuccesfully yet. I had always thought running was easy – you just put one foot in front of the other, how hard can it be? I couldn’t understand how they wrote books about it. I mean c’mon!
So I joined him on a 32km run in Springs on the East Rand on his build-up to the big crazy ultra day when fools shuffle from Maritzburg to Durbs-by-the-Sea.
Oceans of people filled the park at the start – It was the Springs Striders club’s big race. I had never been in such a big field. The Harrismith Mountain Race was the biggest bunch I’d run with before – nothing like these thousands.
The gun went off and – nothing happened. Eventually we started shuffling forwards, then walking, then eventually we reached the start line under the ‘Start’ banner and after a while we could trot a bit. Then it opened up and we got into my stride (mine, as Brauer thoughtfully stuck with me and didn’t go roaring off like a Fordyce). After a while we passed a tiny little ancient man barely shuffling along with his shoulders hunched and his eyes firmly fixed on the tarmac a metre in front of his feet. He must have started way ahead of us in the pack, but now we had caught him due to our superior pace, skill and youth. I looked at Brauer and crowed quietly: “That’s one good thing about these mass runs: At least there’s always someone who you know you’ll be beating”. I had never been in a mass run, of course, but I was drawing on my extensive experience as a spectator, where I would always be near the front, striding out with knees flashing past my ears.
And so it went for 16km, me matching my Comrade Brauer stride-for-stride. Inexplicably then, I felt the urge to tap off a bit and at around the 20km marker Brauer mumbled something and disappeared effortlessly off into the distance. It sounded like “Fuckit, we’ll fall asleep if we continue at this snail’s pace” but it wasn’t that.
He’s fart oo polite.
At 25km I heard a quiet little shuffling and a tiny little ancient man barely shuffling along with his shoulders hunched and his eyes firmly fixed on the tarmac a metre in front of his feet came past me as if I was going backwards. His pace was exactly the same as it had been when we passed him on km 3 or 4. Mine was not. So I started walking, joining up with some other porky-looking fellows. The spring had left my stride on the Springs Striders.
“Look at him!” one of my fellow strollers said, “That’s Liege Boulle. In 1983 he won his 39th Comrades medal, fifty years after his first”.
I learnt a big ‘respect-your-elders’ lesson that day which I try to thump into my kids’ skulls now. Unsuccessfully.
Years later I got back to that park in Springs where Brauer was waiting. Patiently. He knew better than to call out a search party. It must have been within some sort of time limit though, as they gave me this cloth badge with the appropriate animal on it.
Talking about ‘fuck’ – I read a wonderful book ‘Duzi Fever’ by an entertaining old bugger Rob Gouldie who did the 1955 Dusi. I once heard him give a hilarious talk at Kingfisher. He told a lo-ong story of hardship, paddling, dragging canoes, breaking boats, chopping one up and stuffing it into the other, lunch breaks and – eventually – settling down for the night in the darkness on their own after a long and stressful day – ‘we were at sewerage farm!’ That brought the house down, as usually one passes sewerage farm within an hour of the start!
Rob Gouldie has since shuffled off down his final rapid.
– straight-talking book –
Excerpts:
On portaging on the Duzi – “Negotiating barbed wire fences was a ball ache second to none . . . you had to pry open the strands so your partner could squeeze himself and the the canoe through without hooking his nuts“.
Winning the Dusi one year his partner “blew” and said “Rob, I’m fucked, can I just trail my paddle behind me and pretend I’m steering?”
He asked for leave from his job at a bank to do the Dusi and his manager refused. He writes: “I never knew how important I was as a junior clerk and felt quite proud that the bank would grind to a halt without my services”. Anyway he went AWOL, wrote a letter of resignation “should the shit hit the fan”. It did. He expressed great relief at no longer working for them.
On the race his partner “developed a severe chafe due to sand in his underpants” so he threw away his pants and underpants and “went Beau Brummel”. When they got to Umfula Trading Store the owner kicked him out. His wife was serving in the shop and Rob thinks the owner “was upset that she might be able to compare notes”. After Rob explained and his partner demonstrated, the owner took pity on his partner and gave him a roll of plaster “to wrap around the emaciated-looking Percy”.
In shooting a rapid: ” . . where we nearly saw our rings . . “
They were lying second one Dusi, 44mins behind the leaders who were “obviously cocksure of their lead, not knowing we had caught up to them and could almost smell their farts”.
On a trip down the Umkomaas he bought and drank way too many raspberry-flavoured milk drinks at a remote valley trading store, got bilious . . . and “hurled the most spectacular pink cat”. His mate caught the moment on film:
And on in that vein. I thoroughly enjoyed it! My kind of book! I was delighted to read his full and free use of ‘English as she is spoken on riverbanks’ and determined not to censor Customary Paddling Language in the Umko 50 book. Someone proofreading suggested I use f___ or f__k instead of fuck. Not.
“Dad why are these people playing in the snow?” shouted my daughter Jessie.
This happened in 2014 but to tell the story I have to take you back to 1973:
On my way back home to South Africa from the ‘States, I flew from New York to London where I had arranged to meet a Harrismith friend Don Inglis, who was working in London for a year, so he knew the place. Turned out he had a rugby match (playing for some Saffer team against the London Irish**) so we scurried around Buck House circle and somewhere else where someone lived or died or married someone, and headed off to Wimbledon for the game in his little Austin something – with five rugby okes squeezed into it.
At the ground the players huddled in a cold shed to change and noticed they were a couple of boerkies short could I play? Sure, I said, but only half the first half, then I had to catch a tube to Heathrow. Thank goodness (it was sleeting outside) Don said ‘Rather don’t risk missing your flight’. So they ran out onto the mud with one blade of grass every ten yards without me and start puffing out steam and shoving some fat Irish blokes around.
Between scrums Don shouted out which tubes and buses I should catch and I left before the halftime whistle to head back to South Africa and home.
——-ooo000000——-
So forty years later (2014) daughter Jessie called out: “Dad why are these people playing in the snow?” Playing what, Jess? “I dunno, running around in the snow”. So I go and look: Rugby. London Wasps playing Northampton Saints. The pinkish poms don’t seem to notice there’s a blizzard swirling around their short-pants knees, but I see there’s a Wentzel playing and he’s probably feeling it.
So I explained to her the madness of Poms, and I explained how I hadn’t played rugby in the snow in London long ago. In Harrismith the u/11B’s played first thing Saturday mornings, so I had played on frosty white fields – kaalvoet nogal – but not in an actual blizzard.
My Jess looked at me as if I was stark staring mad. I think she was sorry she asked.
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** London Irish? Old Wimbledonians (below)? I dunno. All Poms look the same to us Africans . . .
Have you HEARD?! Michaelhouse are going co-ed! It’s true: From next year they’ll be accepting boys.
They ran up against my Tom in the mighty U/15D’s in that game you play with oval leather balls. He personally ran in three tries before half-time.
Final score Westville 52 – : : : : – Girls High Zip. Zero. 0. Nought, ek sê.
– flanker Tom (extreme left) already has two tries at this stage – the inset pic shows flanker Tom in primary school kit, kneeling in his shiny new lime-green boots.
Of course, Tom was merely following in the footsteps of his ancestors who have made a habit of whipping Michaelhouse. Also he’d probly absorbed his Dad’s sage rugby tips and advice. OK nah, probly not.
I was an Umkomaas Canoe Marathon Official once. Kakhuis Field Marshall for the start of one Umko. Appointed by the uber-command of KCC, it was my job to reduce the toilet-paper-in-the-bush syndrome around the start near the Hella Hella bridge. I had relayed farmer Barry Porter’s unhappiness at the phenomenon to the heavies, they were of course aware of the issue, so they roped me in to help solve it!
Lines of green mobile flush toilets were stationed at the start, and for kilometres before the bridge, starting up at the bend that drops you down into the valley proper, I lined the road with large neat signs exhorting paddlers to “Go Now”, “Use the toilets as soon as you get to the start,” “Avoid the rush,” “Don’t do it in the bush,” and other thoughtful and helpful suggestions.
Mindful of Umko Master Charlie Mason’s wise and thoughtful maxim, “There’s no better laxative than a full Umkomaas” my signs got more urgent the nearer you got to the bridge.
But I was handicapped. – Firstly, my request for a suitable uniform and hat befitting my high station had been turned down. – Secondly, my request to have full access to the public address system was denied. Would Billie-Boy Barron hand me the microphone? No.
I was going to thoughtfully say: “Attention please! Aandag asseblief! Especially you Vaalies and Dabulamanzi ous: KAK NOU!!” I know for a fact that Meyer Steyn – most Umko finishes of anyone ever, while based inland – would have appreciated the reminder . .
– Hella Hella toilet –
– just something modest –
Barry said to me later, he thought that year was the least mess he had seen in recent times! Making the local farmers happy is a big part of the success of river races, so I was very chuffed! Of course, if they’d given me free reign to wear the right uniform and exercise my full powers it would have been even better . .
We hired a Lincoln Continental Town Car in Atlanta and put roofracks on. Dave the dentist and US paddler put us up for the night before we headed North. Chris Greeff, kayaking legend & trip organiser; Herve de Rauville, kayaking legend; two non-paddlers, Jurie the cameraman, Steve Fourie and me.
And off we went to the Ocoee River in Tennessee. Which was completely empty. Not low. Empty.
Then they turned on the tap at noon and we could paddle (most of the time, the full flow gets diverted to generate power! How criminal is that!!)
– I’m in orange –
Here’s a description of the short stretch of river we paddled:
The Middle Ocoee The Middle Ocoee is the portion of whitewater, on this stretch of water, paddlers and rafting enthusiasts, have been paddling for decades. Beginning at Rogers Branch and just over 5 miles long, this class 3-4 section of whitewater is an adrenaline junkies dream, crammed with waves and holes.
Entrance rapid gives you whitewater from the get-go. As soon as you launch onto the middle Ocoee you are in a class 4 rapid, paddling through waves and dropping ledges. It’s a fun and exciting way to begin your trip. Broken Nose begins with a large S-shaped wave. Swirling water behind it will send you to a series of ledges. This is a great place for pictures, so smile. Next, Slice and Dice: two widely spaced ledges, fun to drop, especially the second ledge. If done correctly, you can get a great surf here “on the fly”. An interesting and humorous set of rock formations highlights the rapid, Moon Chute. After making your way behind the elephant shaped rock, do some 360’s in front of “sweet-cheeks,” then drop through the chute and over the ledge at the bottom. Double Suck, an appropriately named rapid, where a good-sized ledge drops you into two hydraulics. Paddle hard or you might catch another surf here. Double Trouble, which is more ominous in name than in structure, is a set of three large waves, which will have everybody yelling. This is another great photo spot. You won’t find an easier, more fun rapid. Next is Flipper (No, it’s not named after the dolphin). Here, a great ledge drop puts you into a diagonal wave. Hit this wave with a right hand angle and enjoy the ride, or angle left to eddy out. Then enjoy one of the best surfs on the river. Table saw was originally named for a giant saw-blade shaped wave in the middle of it. The rock forming the wave was moved during a flood several years ago, making this one of the most exciting rapids on the Middle Ocoee. The big waves in this one will make the boat buck like a bronco. At Diamond Splitter, point your boat upstream and ferry it between two rocks. Once there get a couple of 360’s in before dropping through the chute and into the hydraulic.
Slingshot is where most of the water in the river is pushed through a narrow space, making a deep channel with a very swift current. To make this one a little more interesting, see how many 360’s you can complete from top to bottom. Cat’s Pajamas start with a couple of good ledges, with nice hydraulics. After those, it will look as though you are paddling toward a big dry rock, but keep going. At the last second, there will be a big splash and you will be pushed clear. Hell’s Hole is the biggest wave on the river. Start this one in the middle of the river, drifting right. Just above the wave, start paddling! When you crest this 7-8 ft. wave, you will drop into a large hydraulic. Stay focused because just downstream are the last two ledges known as . .
Powerhouse. Drop these ledges just right of center for a great ride. Once through Powerhouse, collect yourself and take out at Caney Creek.
(early draft needs work – and being worked on as I find stuff)
1984 was one of the very few years since 1960 that Colorado river water from the Grand Canyon actually reached the sea. High snow melt had pushed it past the point where golf courses and old-age homes are draining it of all its water and it reached the beautiful estuary at Baja California into the Sea of Cortez ! Unknown to many, this also made it the first-ever time Mexico would have been able to taste Mainstay and river water. Well, recycled Mainstay and river water. Passed through the kidneys of a mad bunch of South Africans that Chris Greeff had assembled to paddle through the famous American Canyon.
That’s because we were on the river sponsored by Mainstay Cane Spirits and South African Airways. The “Mainstay” we drank was actually an SAA Boeing 747’s supply of tot bottles of whisky, brandy, gin, vodka – and some Mainstay cane spirits – which we decanted into 2litre plastic bottles to help the stewardesses on board with their end-of-Atlantic-crossing stock-take. We had resolved to drink the plane dry, but man, they carry a lot of hooch on those big babies (I spose in case they end up with all 350 passengers happening to be as thirsty as paddlers are?).
Fifteen paddlers from South Africa joined our guides Cully and JoJo Erdman on a trip down the Grand Canyon from Lee’s Ferry to the take-out on Lake Mead 270 or so miles downstream. We were accompanied by one other paddler, an Argentine José who was ticking off his bucket list, having climbed Everest. Five rubber inflatable rafts carried the food (and the Mainstay and a few hundred beers) and a motley assortment of rapid riders from America and SA. Talking of motley: Us paddlers ranged from capable rough water paddlers to flatwater sprinters to happy trippers to complete novices. Some had Springbok colours, others had a lot of cheek.
Some twists in the tale: My boyhood kayaking heroes had been the van Riet brothers, Willem and Roelof, who won the Dusi three times just as I was first learning about the race ca 1970. As I started to participate in the race Graeme Pope-Ellis was winning the first of his eventual fifteen Dusi wins. Both Willem and Graeme were with us on this trip. More: In the year I first saw the Colorado river (1973) by walking/running down the Bright Angel trail from the South Rim to the Colorado’s swiftly-flowing green water, Willem had launched a boat at Lee’s Ferry, done an eskimo roll and come up with ice in his hair, causing him to postpone his trip to this one, eleven years later – in the summer!
The trip was put together by yet another iconic paddler Chris Greeff, winner of more kayak races than I’d had breakfasts. One of the craziest races he won was the Arctic Canoe Race on the border between Finland and Sweden. About 500km of good pool and drop rapids in cold water. When he arrived at the start with his sleek flatwater racing kayak (the others had wider, slower, more stable canoes) the local organisers thought Ha! he intends portaging around all the rapids! (they’d heard of the Dusi and how mad South Africans run with kayaks on their heads) so they amended the rules: Every rapid avoided would incur a time penalty. Chris just smiled and agreed enthusiastically with their ruling: He had no intention of getting out of his boat!
Later: On the trip our American kayak and raft guides kept asking us about our sponsors stickers we had attached to kayaks and rafts. SAA they understood, but what was this “Mainstay” stuff? Ooh. you’ll see! Was all we’d say. At ___ rapid on Day __ around the camp fire we hauled out three or four 2litre bottles filled with a suspect-looking amber liquid. THIS we said, was that famous stuff!
The little Colorado was flooding and massively silt-laden. At the confluence we stopped and had mud fights and mud rolls. I fell out just downstream and got some of that ‘water’ up my snout. A month later I had to have an emergency sinus washout!
Lunch on a small sandbank, Colorado River, Grand Canyon – Five rafts, seventeen kayaks
Jannie Claassen stands. Clockwise from front Left: Swys du Plessis (red shorts), Me just visible, Dave Walker back left, Willem van Riet, Herve de Rauville kneeling, Alli Peter lying down in back, Chris Greeff ponders, Bernie Garcin stands behind Chris, Wendy Walwyn, Cully Erdman (our guide) is front right. All poring over the map, plotting the next day! The Mainstay SAA Team from SA; At the usual take-out before Lake Mead; Paddling is almost over (for most of us!)
Bernie Garcin – great mate; – – and WHAT a campsite!!
Happy daze drifting in the current, lying back gazing up at the cliffs and watching the waterline as century after millenium of geological lines rose up out of the water and each day rose higher and higher above us.
Then you’d sit up and listen intently. Then peer ahead with a stretched neck and drift in a quickening current as the roar of the next rapid grew in the canyon air. The river was running at an estimated high 50 000cfs (about 1650 cumecs). Once you could see where it was, you pulled over and got out to scout it. Plot your way through it.
Lava Falls – *click on pic* spot the blue helmet
Dave Walker led the singing:
The canyon burro is a mournful bloke He very seldom gets a poke But when he DOES . . He LETS it soak As he revels in the joys of forni- CATION!
and (to the tune of He Ain’t Heavy)
Hy’s nie Swaar nie
Hy’s my Swaer . a . a . aer
.
We went down the Canyon twice
I always say we did the Canyon twice. Once we would bomb down in our kayaks, crashing through the big water; The second time was much hairier, with bigger rapids, higher water and far more danger: That was when Willem would regale us with tales of his day on the water around the campfire at night. ‘Raconteur’ is too mild a word! The word MOERSE featured prominently in his stories.
~~~oo0oo~~~
I recently had a letter returned to me that I wrote to my folks in August ’84, the month after this trip. So now I know the extra section of river we paddled was 21 miles. This after the Diamond Creek planned take-out point was washed away in a localised flood; I now also know that the trip across Lake Mead sitting back drinking beer and staring at the sky while a motorboat towed out the four rafts (one of which had 14 kayaks lashed onto it) was ‘about 50 miles’ – according to my letter).
BUT NOWADAYS we check such statements. I’m going to check how far it actually was. Aha! The total distance from Diamond Creek to Pierce Ferry is 54 miles. So no exaggeration happened in the telling by our boatmen and trip guides, who would’ve known. The planned trip was 225 American miles, Lee’s Ferry to Diamond Creek. This extra leg made it about 275 miles, or 440km over the 12 days in the end.
A snapshot of the level in 1984 from google earth.
– the unplanned extra leg – bottom right to top left – where the river pours into Lake Mead and tragically! – stops flowing! –
Three kayaks weren’t on board this makeshift, motorboat-towed floating raft train: Crazy Chris Greeff, Wild Wendy Walwyn, and someone else paddled the flat water too! Nutters.
~~oo0oo~~
google earth will fly you through the canyon here.
I only paddled the actual race once (1983 Hella Hella to Goodenough’s) but I was lazy and slow, and the long days with cut-off times didn’t suit! Getting-a-move-on is not my forte.
So I used my tripping excuse to volunteer for sweep duties. We would paddle ahead of the start at Hella Hella bridge in our ‘tupperware’ craft and wait below No.1 rapid. Soon the river would be filled with flotsam, jetsam and bobbing heads. We would pull boats, paddles and paddlers to the side separately or altogether. It had not yet dawned on SA canoeing that maybe helmets and lifejackets would be a good idea for river ksyaking not even in the Umko! That came later (a bit like the story that ballboxes came to cricket 100yrs before helmets).
Once the last paddler had passed us (or pulled out) we would drift on slowly to No.8 rapid about 17km downstream of No.1, leaning back looking up at the magnificent scenery. Now that’s more my style. On the way we would do more salvage and rescue.
These pics were in the 1988 program, taken during the 1987 race. So I didn’t see them: I was in the USA on honeymoon.
~~oo0oo~~
After the big 1987 floods there were rescue operations on the Umgeni and we went to help, ferrying people cut off from their homes or work across the swollen Umgeni. They hung onto us and we ferry-glided across. My big old Perception Quest was like a freighter, so one trip I ferried a person and a sack of mealie meal across!
Here’s Corran Addison having fun while helping out:
The Umfolosi Wilderness is a special place. Far too small, of course, but its what we have. I’m reading Ian Player’s account of how Magqubu Ntombela taught him about wilderness and Africa and nature. The idea of a wild place where modern man could go to escape the city and re-discover what Africa was like
My first trail was ca 1985, when I went with Dusi canoeing buddies Doug Retief, Martin & Marlene Loewenstein and Andre Hawarden. We were joined by a 19yr-old lass on her own, sent by her father, who added greatly to the scenery:
A good sport – took our gentle teasing well
We went in my kombi and some highlights I recall were:
Doug offering “bah-ronies” after lunch one day. We were lying in the shade of a tree after a delicious lunch made by our guides: Thick slices of white bread, buttered and stuffed with generous slices of tomato and onion, washed down with tea freshly brewed over a fire of Thomboti wood. Doug fished around in his rucksack and gave us each a mini Bar One (“bah-ronie”, geddit?). Best tasting chocolate I ever ate, spiced as it was with hunger and exertion.
After the 5-night trail we went for a game drive. Needing a leak after a few bitterly cold brews I left the wheel with the kombi trundling along amiably and walked to the side door of the kombi, ordering Hawarden to take over the driving. Not good at taking orders, he looked at me, waited till I was in mid-stream out of the open sliding door and leant over with his hiking stick and pressed the accelerator. The driverless kombi picked up speed and I watched it start to veer off-road, necessitating a squeezed premature end to my leak and a dive for the wheel.
Thanks a lot, Hawarden! Pleasure, he murmured mildly. Hooligan!
————————
30yrs later Andre Hooligan Hawarden wrote:
“Hey, remember that cool walk we did in the game reserve when you had the tape recorder and we attracted the owl? Then next day we lay on the bank of the Umlofosi river and watched the vultures coming down for a lunch time drink and a snooze?
That was a wonderful experience. I’ve never forgotten it.”
Bernie Garcin (Bernie and the Jets), Doug Retief (Doug the Thief), Dave Walker (Lang Dawid) and me at Fig Tree Sandbank campsite, one of KwaZulu Natal’s most beautiful spots.
Three plastic (or ‘tupperware’) Perception Dancers and one Quest in 1984 and 1985 – we went both years. In those early days old-timers would still mock plastics – roto-moulded plastic kayaks – saying ‘tupperware keeps turkeys fresh’ but we knew their toughness, and the joy of not having to schlep fibreglass patch kits along, so we just smiled!
At the time Greg Bennett was sponsoring and competing in a motorised rubber duck race down the Tugela (sacrilege!). In ’84 he had Jerome Truran as crew, in ’85 Rip Kirby. We used Greg’s bakkie to get to Ngubevu. Who fetched us at Jamieson’s Bridge?
On one of the trips bare-breasted maidens flashed us. We saw a Landrover parked on a hill on the left bank, then saw some swimmers in the river, who ducked down as they saw us. As we passed two of the girls popped up their lily-white tits to huge approval. They were like this except the water was brown. And they had no cozzies on.
– she was like –
Four-man Hole was soon after that and I crowded into a Bernie-occupied eddy straight after the drop and punched the nose of my Quest into his ribs. Being Bernie he didn’t even wince, but I knew it had hurt.
The current swept us past them, but the mammaries lingered on.
Overnight at the duck race camp the sponsors Lion Lager thought we were competitors so their beautiful beer hostesses liberally plied us with ale. OK, lager. When they ran out I rummaged in the boats and found wine papsaks we used for flotation and squeezed out the dregs. Karen the gorgeous, voluptuous newspaper reporter (remember the days when they wrote stuff on paper?) covering the event for The Natal Mercury held out her glass and as I dispensed I gave her the patter: “A good wine. Not a great wine, but a good wine, with a delicate bouquet”. She shook her mug impatiently and said endearingly “I know fuckall about flowers, I’m in it for the alcohol,” and I fell deeply in love. My kinda dreamboat lady in shape and attitude. She was like . .
– she was like –
Dave too, was smitten as one of the comely lager hostesses joined him in his laager and treated him to sincere sleeping bag hospitality above and beyond the call of duty, ending the session with a farewell flash of delightful décolletage as she kissed him goodbye in the morning.
– she was like –
As we drifted downstream we sang:
The landlord had a daughter fair – parlez vous
The landlord had a daughter fair – parlez vous
The landlord had a daughter fair
Lily-white tits and golden hair
Inky Pinky parlez vous
We sang to the resident goats: I ain’t afraid of no goats
Two avid fishermen, Lungelo and me went down to the sea. Or to the Umtamvuna River at The Old Pont. Lungelo and I were not the avid ones. That was Tommy and Ryan, passionate, persevering pêcheurs.
Fishermen in blue.
Luxury accommodation on the banks of the Umtamvuna.
Besides the river fishing I also took them to the rocks near the Port Edward lighthouse.
Lovely sunsets and one rain squall – with the boys’ tent left wide open, so the second night they had a bit of a damp night. The fishermen latched on to many, many fish, most of them BIG and desirable (yeah, right!). But they landed far fewer – and smaller – ones. Crabs plundering their bait gave them hours of amusement. All but one fish (used for bait) survived their endeavours I’m pleased to say (pathetic bunny-hugger that I am. Or is that guppy-hugger?).
