Days of Models and Flight

Cessna 210 Centurion

Young Rhodesia was a fascinating playground for children. We were still pioneering within our multicultural society, with a unique ability in that most of what we did to entertain ourselves was a pioneering adventure of some sort. For example, my age group was even the first to be pupils in the new and first-ever full junior school named after the then governor of Rhodesia, Sir John Kennedy; we were the first generation to drive on the full-width tarmac main road between Salisbury and Bulawayo, and, most significantly, we invented and made some amazing toys and equipment while also exploring the bounty of our natural surroundings. Sometimes we were drawn back into what was going on in the adults’ world, and for us boys it was usually cars, trains and aircraft that appealed to us. We were truly blessed not to have any digital devices at all. We had to do our own thinking.

For me, the bundu with all its richness in fauna and flora came first on my interests list. Second to that came my love of aircraft. Anything that flew in the air carrying a pilot and maybe some passengers too, caused me to dream of becoming a pilot, but wasn’t that ambition true of most young boys? I think our fascination about flight was the reason why I became a kite builder at a very young age. Nobody taught me how to build a kite and I didn’t have the right material to build them, but I soon improvised and used dry khaki bos (Blackjack weed) stalks for the frames and newspaper for the covering, fixed with homemade glue. Watching raptors like Yellowbilled Kites, Whalbergs Eagles and other varieties in protective territorial mood, inquisitively circling closer and closer to my kites way up in the air, hundreds of feet above, simply added to my enjoyment. But it was the occasional sighting of aircraft in the sky passing over our town that always won in the interest stakes.

Light aircraft have always held my fascination, ever since the day my father took me to the Gatooma Aerodrome and the two of us went for a ten-minute flip over the area in a tiny Piper Cub in, as far as I can remember, 1951. The infrequently used aerodrome was situated in the expansive open vlei (rich grassland usually found between low hills) that later became the site of the town’s abattoir, and until then had been used more for grazing the beef herds of one of the famous local butchers, “Uncle” Jimmy Beatie. That weekend, some private pilot enthusiasts had flown their various aircraft to the ‘drome and had congregated to mingle amongst the town’s interested people to show off their planes and chat about aviation in general. Most of the planes were high-winged (like little Pipers) or they were biplanes (like Tiger Moths), and even one 1930-something de Havilland Rapide (also a biplane) that someone brought in. We marvelled at its six-to-eight-seater capacity, depending on the size of the passengers, and its purported top speed of 250 kilometers per hour! Most of the other aircraft taking people on “flips” only had room for on or two passengers.  

With almost all of Gatooma’s entertainment being by need and self-generated by different artists living in the area, an air show, albeit a very small one, was a great attraction and families arrived throughout the weekend to enjoy the rare show and tell experience or even pay for a short flight in one of the aircraft taking off from the newly manicured grass strip. When the two of us went to see the display of parked flying machines, I had no idea that my father had taken me there for a special surprise: he paid the fee which I remember was a whole seven pounds sterling, and helped me settle into the back seat of the three-seat Piper Cub. It was of the more recent series with two seats behind the pilot’s. Dad sat next to me, behind moustachioed Wing Commander Grace who was the owner and had retired from the Royal Air Force after the Second World War. He and his family settled in Gatooma where he was a businessman, prior to which he had commanded RAF Kumalo before being posted to the Middle East.

All of the planes at the show were “tail draggers” that had been given the name because they had a small wheel on their tail that caused the aircraft to sit at an angle on the ground. Before we took off, I wondered how our Wing Commander Grace could see where he was going when we were all facing the sky because of the tail dragger attitude! This was a common layout of undercarriage for large and small aircraft alike – two main wheels positioned on struts below the front seats and then one right under the tails.

But of course, as we gained speed along the grass-covered runway and the Piper began to fly within a few heartbeats the fuselage became level and us passengers could see out of the windows quite easily. Being a summer Saturday afternoon there were many of those invisible thermals that cause aircraft to bounce around in the air and for the first few minutes that day I wondered if I was going to survive my maiden flight. I mean, did people really enjoy spending hours flying high above the ground feeling so air sick? We banked over the Owl Mine road and approached our home at Sabonabon over the Cam Hill. The sight of my mother and siblings standing in the front garden waving at us quickly dispelled the motion sickness and I couldn’t stop grinning. What a wonderful experience I was being treated to!

The greatest thrill of all during our flight was on our return journey when our pilot swooped low over our house and then lined the plane up to fly over the Cam Hill and land. As we passed over the higher ground and the steep hill, the scenery on both sides of us visually dropped away in a split second because of the physical relief of the area. The sensation was a heightened thrill to me. No wonder people become pilots. I remember visiting Jack Kessler’s “The Sports Rendezvous” shop in town the following week and spending all my pocket money on an Albatross glider to build from the balsawood kit of hundreds of tiny parts contained in the box. The three feet wing spanned Albatross took me about three weeks to build, and about three minutes in the air before it nosedived into a tree and crumpled up. The lesson learnt was to be patient and only fly aircraft where aircraft are meant to fly.

The king of our local model aircraft hobbyists was without doubt, John Sapsford. I can’t tell you how many models he built and owned, but he had dozens of them. His perfectly constructed and beautifully painted models ranged from gliders to the free-flight versions of well-known real brands, to what we called control-line models that we used to do aerobatic manoeuvres with, for hours on end. Roger Nicolls, one of my best friends in those days came a close second to John. The Gatooma aerodrome was where we preferred to fly our planes because the open space allowed for fewer casualties amongst our models. We’d usually gather at John’s family home and all ride down to the strip together, carrying our models with us. He was also the best pilot by far and when I bought my first ED 3.4cc engine for my control-line Spitfire, I went to see him first for advice about flying such a fast, powerful model. Every boy wanted to own a model of the legendary Spitfire. I can still remember the day John flew his larger than average free-flight aircraft so high, so far, I was sure he’d never see it again, but he sprinted down the runway with a bunch of other friends in pursuit of the red dot hundreds of feet up, keeping visual track of its flight path. When they returned their smiling faces explained it all: the plane was safe and completely intact with not a scratch on it. None of Jimmie Beatie’s cows had stepped on it or stampeded off into the hills in fright!

Boxed Model Spitfire

Then interspersing the events of our lives during those scintillating years came when exciting aircraft like our Rhodesian Airforce’s Vampire jet squadron passed over town, sometimes flying so high that it was only their vapour trails that indicated their flight path, but there were occasions when they flew low. We were in our science class at Jameson High one morning when a couple of Vampires did an illegal low pass over us and all we heard was what sounded like an explosion and the sound of windowpanes shattering all around the school. Monkey see window, monkey see no window! It happened so quickly that there was no pre-warning of their approach: no familiar whine of approaching jets or their whine fading away afterwards either. I know those pilots were in serious trouble for violating basic aviation disciplines, especially in military aircraft. But sometimes temptation is too strong to resist. Boys will be boys, as the saying goes. In my ignorance I’ve often wondered if one of the pilots wasn’t perhaps from our school.

Another thrill I will never forget years later was in 1959 (if my memory serves me correctly) when Great Britain sent its truly magnificent Avro Vulcan jet “V-bomber” to show it off to all the Commonwealth countries, including Rhodesia. To cap it all, the spectacularly efficient and beautiful new generation bomber carried the esteemed elephant badge of 44 Rhodesia Squadron. The date and time of its fly-over was well advertised in each town, from Umtali on the eastern border and all along the main road connecting the towns from east, to Bulawayo on the south-west end of our proud country. The arrival of the Avro Vulcan over Gatooma was spot on to the scheduled (ETA) time and most of the folk within range of the experience waited outside to see it and what a sight it was as the enormous dart-shaped bomber did two slow turns over us and then accelerated away and quickly vanished into the distance like a very beautiful supernatural spectre.

Horton drawing of an Avro Vulcan of 44 Rhodesian Squadron

And with the passing of time I became the husband of Barbara, father of Wayne and Leigh-Ann, and headmaster of my very special young Rhodesians attending Empress Mine Primary School (1974) where the kids made their parents proud as can be for their many remarkable achievements.

Not long after the Ministry of Education announced that they were about to start interviewing potential candidates to assume headship of Riverside Primary School in Gwelo, (a promotion post of note) I received a call from their Linquenda House offices in Salisbury, inviting me to attend a session with the promotion committee. My interview date and time was unilaterally set by them for a forthcoming Tuesday morning. We had already booked seats with friends Ruth and Rob Bester to watch an imported British dramatic production at the Gwelo Theatre. It was being staged on the Saturday night before my interview, so we arranged to billet our young children out with friends at the mine and spend the night in the Midlands hotel in the city, after the show. Due to the prevailing terrorist situation it wasn’t safe to drive back to Empress late at night, even with two cars in convoy and with the men armed. I repeat what I’ve said in previous stories and that is any assault rifle-carrying bastard, black, white, green or yellow, who ambushes innocent citizens who are going about their daily lives is a terrorist. Not a freedom fighter.

On the Saturday night Mother Nature intervened, however, and the area experienced severe thunderstorms throughout the rest of Saturday and Sunday and from within the safety of our hotel we could hear the crashing thunder, with both streak and sheet lightning illuminating our rooms every few seconds. Oh for those fantastic storms that either energised people like us, or terrified others by the simultaneous visual and audio spectacles and the unparalleled, delightful smell afterwards of the country’s wet earth. Just add the trill of the season’s cicada beetles and… It’s heaven on earth!

Those things only seemed to happen in that part of the world. We were accustomed to the reality of the inclement weather situation and as quickly as we were able to be ready on Sunday morning we climbed into our cars and sped back along the main road to Gatooma, hoping to get home before the effects of the local thunderstorms could interrupt our journey, but as we had suspected, when we crossed the Umniati River on the main road we could see that it had become an angry Umniati River. Our fears were ultimately realised when we looped back on the Empress road to where we had to cross the same raging river again. The churning floodwaters many feet above the level of the bridge told us to stay back. So there we were stranded, with our children some miles on the far side of the Umniati, and their parents sitting anxiously in the car on the water’s edge on the opposite side. Barbara needed to get back to our children and home, and, whatever we did, I needed to be able to attend my promotion interview and do so wearing a fresh suit, collar and tie. We were on the wrong side of a river preventing us from satisfying very important, urgent needs.

We had but one option and that was to find someone to fly us back to Empress, collect Wayne and Leigh-Ann from our friends, pack a family suitcase of clothes at home, board our plane and immediately take off to fly back to Gatooma where we knew we could stay overnight with my parents at Matamba, Sabonabon. Barbara had an epiphany and contacted local Chartered Accountant Peter James, a friend of her parents and who we knew owned a six-seat Cessna 210 Centurion which would be ideal if he were available to help us. When we went to talk to him, Peter agreed to be our rescue pilot subject to four requirements: first, we would have to fly early on Monday morning so that he could get back in time to honour his prearranged business appointments; secondly, that the Empress Mine Security guys would check the bushveld landing strip for its ability to take the Cessna’s landing without being stuck in thick, clinging mud, and, most important, thirdly, that there was no sign of landmines having been planted on the landing strip overnight. The fourth prerequisite was that there would be armed security personnel on site throughout the duration of the landing and take off. I phoned the mine head of accounting and good friend Barry Symington and he quickly approached management about our request. They gracefully agreed to all we asked for and things were put in motion.

The two of us met Peter at the Cam and Motor Mine aerodrome very early on Monday morning as arranged and after a routine but mandatory check of every detail of the aircraft we boarded, fastened our seatbelts and took off. Peter trimmed the aircraft for its flight directly to Empress Mine and within about twenty minutes he was circling the strip for the presence of the men assigned to see us in safely. Barbara is a white-knuckle passenger even at best in a jumbo jet on a regular commercial flight, so it doesn’t take much imagination to guess how much she enjoyed our flight that morning. Absolute Zero is the polite answer! The need to hurry in Barry’s car, fetch our children, go home and throw our clothes into a suitcase, secure our home and return to Peter waiting at his Cessna in light intermittent rain took her mind of flying and before she had time to start worrying again, we were shoving our kids into their seats while Peter considered his very limited take off options in worsening conditions.

At the end of his taxiing to the end of the strip just as he was beginning rev up the plane’s engine, turn and release the brakes for his run down the bowl of porridge below us, Wayne who had never flown before and had obviously picked up on his mummy’s nervous state, began to cry “…I want to wee…!” Peter reduced throttle and we dangled our son out of the side of the Cessna so that he could do what nature called on him to do, as quickly as nature allowed him to do. Leigh-Ann sat wide-eyed, fascinated by the goings on and completely at ease about everything while Barbara stiffened like a steel rod when the retractable undercarriage folded away, sounding to her as if the bottom of the plane had blown off!

The rest of our flight back to the Cam and Motor Mine proved uneventful although stressful for most on board and the one compensation was that it was dry there. We compensated Peter for his kind assistance and cost of privately hiring his aircraft before we said goodbye and drove a few miles down the road to our parents feeling more relieved than our son was when we let him out of the Cessna!

I drove myself to Salisbury for my interview where a panel of some eight senior officials questioned me about my ability (couldn’t they read the inspectors’ reports?), my general education philosophy, and how I handled problem children who have problem parents. About a fortnight later I was called out of a classroom at my school by Mr. Dearling who was the Chief Education Officer: he made me feel proud with his words “Congratulations. You’re the new Headmaster of Riverside Primary School!” I was flying.

A TIGER IN A BOAT

Whalley Range farm in the fertile tobacco-growing Gatooma/Hartley (both midlands towns) area was purchased in the early fifties and developed from virgin land offered to qualifying farmers by the government of the Federation of the Rhodesias and Nyasaland, and over many years my wife-to-be’s parents, the van Lingens, toiled day and night to turn it into the very model of a mixed farm of some eighteen thousands acres in extent, with about a mile of Mombi river frontage.

There they produced mainly tobacco and maize (corn) but also peanuts, cattle and sheep, fruit and vegetables, all in regular abundance. Their fruit orchard was a rich sight to behold: the hot local climate and seemingly endless supply of borehole water fed via furrows between the rows of fruit trees caused branches on many trees to have to bend down low under the sheer weight of the tropical fruit varieties ripening under the sun, waiting to be picked.

Typical of the specific region, the irregular weather patterns prevailing over the years brought them times of bounty, and worrying times of drought too, but generally the profits they made were good and the three hundred black people and two farm managers they employed permanently, all enjoyed a happy and healthy lifestyle. The benefits available to the farm workers  and their families included weekly food handouts that were very fair and balanced for everyone; the farm provided a school for their kids; in situ medical services, and a shop where most of the usual family needs were met, from clothing to loaves of bread, from tinned foods to boxes of matches. The farm dynamics were supportive of all that the resident families could ever want, within reason. Nobody can deny that if the present Zimbabwe rural farming families had an opportunity to return to those stable, good old days when everything worked and tummies were kept full, under white rule, they’d pounce on that opportunity without a moment’s hesitation!

Once Whalley Range was running as a well-oiled farming business, with no need to clear more of the bush for new lands on which to grow more crops, or cut new roads, Pop van Lingen no longer had major projects to work on, and most of what was required of him was to maintain the tractors and other farm implements while his wife, affectionately known as “Sister Phyl” kept an eye on the teams curing the Virginia tobacco in the massive barns, the livestock, and the running of the household and ongoing maintenance of farm families’ health, while their only child and daughter, Barbie, was away at boarding school for almost nine months of every year. The farm had awe-inspiring varieties of wild animals, including nomadic herds of kudu and eland antelopes, as well as herds of regal sable antelope, impala and others abounding among the populations of free-range cattle and sheep. It is heartbreaking to acknowledge that the ‘new dispensation’ in Zimbabwe has rendered Whalley Range farm a barren and unproductive tract of land today.

But in the early sixties, Pop decided it was time to build a cabin cruiser that he hoped his family and friends would be able to enjoy on vast stretches of water like Lake Kariba, and to get the job done unhindered by weather conditions, he commandeered half of the extensive side verandah at Whalley Range and began to purchase things like aluminium tubing for the main skeleton; sheets of plywood for the shell; many gallon-capacity cans of fiberglass resin;  rolls of fiberglass fabric; engine parts, and general boating commodities as well as all the special tooling he required to build his dream vessel to plan. His new boat building project entirely consumed him for more than the next two years, and his devotion placed extra burden on his wife, but the result was a magnificent achievement. Only a professional engineer could have produced such perfection, especially in the craft’s fiberglass skin. Pop finished it to within mirror surface quality. His overall achievement could have stood out proudly at any boat show exhibition.

Much later, the Rhodesian Independence Day long weekend of November 1967 was nominated as the day when the family could invite South African relations Connie and John Pridmore and their good (local) friends, the Guests, to make up the launch party at the main harbour at Lake Kariba. I was a bachelor teaching in Gatooma and because of our family friendship and partly because of my growing fascination with Barbie, I was somehow included in the convoy traveling to the lake for the momentous occasion, just as long as I took my own car, and was prepared to sleep in it because accommodation at the harbor campsite was fully booked. I was happy to do so, although I found my new Cortina GT’s seats to be anything but comfortable overnight.

Within a couple of hours after arriving at the site, one of Kariba’s notorious storms blew up and Pop called me to help him move the boat to a safer mooring. The task proved to be very challenging: the wind had blown up huge waves and in the storm the boat had a mind of its own, not obeying any of the directions the rudder was indicating, so approaching the jetty, tying the craft securely and then disembarking from one bucking object and onto another – the jetty – without landing in the lake, or being bashed against the boat’s railings, was no fun at all! Back at the campsite Pop told me he was bitterly disappointed in his craft’s performance. There was apparently plenty of power on tap from the inboard car engine he had installed in the hull, but the top speed of his boat out on the water was below planing speed: the problem, he suggested, was in the size and pitch of the propeller blades. It was a problem we’d simply have to live with for the time being, or at least until a new prop could be purchased. With time running short, the plan was to sail out left from Andora Harbour and find a stretch of water where we were likely to hook a couple of Kariba’s famous tiger fish.

The next day we rose early, and all climbed on board Pop’s boat which was floating in water as smooth as the fiberglass on its gleaming hull. While the rest of the group packed food and dinks safely away in the shade of the cabin, I untied the mooring ropes and tucked the shanks into pockets at the stern, and Pop piloted us into the open mass of lake, but keeping reasonably close to the shore opposite Zebra Island, where drowned forests of mopani trees created an ideal habitat for thousands of wily tigers, the ones international fisherman eagerly fly in to fish for, hoping as we did, to catch one or two of the larger predators renowned for their fight and their needle-sharp teeth that could take a man’s finger off with a single snap.

Halfway through the morning and with not a nibble on any of the bait types we tried, Pop suggested we move all the way across the lake to near the Sanyati Gorge and try our luck there. But as the boat moved away from where we had been fishing, the engine spluttered to a stop. Pop tried to restart it, but there was no response. On investigation he quickly noticed that the propeller shaft was not turning, as if it had seized up somewhere, and his logic suggested that the shear pin that locked the prop onto the shaft, might have been stripped. The only answer was for someone to dive under the boat and examine the assembly unit, and since I was the best swimmer on board by far with a lung capacity that allowed me to hold my breath for close on four minutes, I was elected, by unanimous vote, as the group’s professional underwater explorer (no goggles, no flippers, nothing but me.) When I swan under the boat it was easy to deduct what had happened: a mooring rope had been left dangling over the side when Pop maneuvered out of the sunken forest and the propeller had quickly scooped it up and wound it tight as steel around the shaft, choking the engine to death. It was a bad situation for us to be in by anyone’s book.

I cannot remember how many times I swam back under the boat carrying a carving knife temporarily borrowed from the picnic basket to continue to hack and slice and chop at the offensive coil of stretched rope, but I know it took a long time and a fat portion of determination. My extended effort to cut through rope like that, deep in the water, under Pop’s boat, with exertion from irregular breathing being a problem, made the work really hard work. And each time I broke surface for another deep breath, I reminded everyone on board not to go anywhere near the start button on the pilot’s console, because I had visions of being sliced up like sandwich ham if the engine suddenly turned the propeller while I was playing Superman in those murky depths. With the freeing of the rope eventually done, I rested most of the way across to our destination near the gorge. We moved slowly. The laboured forward motion of the boat meant that it was almost lunchtime when we finally arrived at our destination on the other Sanyati side of Kariba.

But once we were moored, my energy returned and when I caught sight of some young black children catching dozens of tiddlers at the water’s edge about a hundred yards from where we were, I had an idea. The tiger fish weren’t biting on lures that day, so I cast my cares to the wind and dived in and swam over to where I bought as many of the kids’ live bait tiddlers as I could fit into my pocket. They were happy to have the cash, and I was happy to have live bait. Thinking back over the experience now, I wonder what on earth got into my head when I opted to swim to those children. The entire area was so heavily populated with both hippos and crocodiles, as most of Lake Kariba is, and always will be. That afternoon I was inviting trouble of massive proportions, for sure.

Safely back at the boat, I climbed onto the roof of the cabin to sunbathe with willowy Barbie, and while I was sorting through a few items, I baited a large hook with a couple of tiddlers and cast the line out, back within about fifty yards of the shore. I took care to secure my fishing rod to a chromed fastener in case I had a strike and lay back to bake in the balmy Kariba heat with my beautiful lady friend to chat about anything and everything on our minds. Below, the family enjoyed the peace and comfort afforded by Pop’s boat using the time to catch up on names and events of their common interest because they hadn’t seen each other for many months and had plenty to talk about. When none of us was talking, the silence of the environment brooding under that sun all around was almost tangible: it’s thick and it’s heavy and those who have been on Kariba during midday and early afternoon will know what I mean.

Then I heard the sweet sound all gamefish anglers long to hear, and dream about. The reel on my rod suddenly started screaming and the two of us both clambered up to sitting position while I grabbed at my rod and struck as hard as I could, attempting to set the hook. I could feel that I had caught  something to be really proud of, something that was an exceptional swimmer, but in those exhilarating seconds of time while the fish ran my line out, I wasn’t sure if I had hooked a tiger, or a large vundu (variety of giant catfish) although it didn’t matter much. The game was on. To prove it, the fish changed direction and swam back towards the boat very fast, and then crossed under us, swimming in the opposite direction to where I was facing. Trying to keep a fighting tiger on one’s hook can be dicey enough, but to keep him under control and land him while he’s trying everything to throw the hook and swimming on the wrong side of one’s wide boat complicates the catch even more. Eventually I managed to guide the fish around near the front while I got myself into an advantageous position on the bow, from where I could continue to enjoy play my big, over-energetic tiger, as it turned out to be.

Barbie skillfully used a net to help me land my trophy, and when we got it on board we kept well clear of its interlocking teeth (more like fangs) until its life leached out and we felt it was safe to heave it up and admire everything about my magnificent Zambezi waters’ trophy. The attached photo of Barbie and my tiger displayed on board the boat shows the actual scene, taken a few minutes before we had to pack up and make ourselves comfortable for the long return journey across to Andora Harbour. It was the only decent catch anyone had during that trip, but what a privilege it was, what a wonderful experience I had. And then there was the warm feeling that I had sunk another hook somewhere else too!

THE RUSH

A strip road:  on which most Rhodesians learnt to drive their cars (Thank you, Terry)

Even for the local people who were accustomed to living on their own large properties in our little town, a visit out to our family home at Matamba was considered to be something special. The reason was not only because they knew they would be made to feel very welcome, but because our rural property had such great appeal. From the day Dad’s team of well sinkers struck a sufficient supply of life-giving water rich in natural ingredients on our patch of virgin land, he began planting fruit trees of every variety that one could get to grow in the hot and dry Gatooma climate. The expansive vegetable garden reflected the same: even in the dry months it had rows of all the vegetables we could ever use, including different leaf vegetables like rape (chamollier, as they called it) that our black employees preferred to our Western favourites. We always had an abundance of vegetables to give away and very few visitors ever left without a basket of soil-fresh fruit and vegetables.

Then there were the varieties of most recent animal and bird orphans brought to us by local farmers and others who happily handed them over for nurturing back to health and eventual release back into the wild (if their release ultimately proved possible.) Duiker antelopes were the most common orphans because their mothers were easy prey for poachers using snares. For a while we actually had nine of them to care for, nursed to adulthood by bottle feeding. And us kids seldom didn’t have pookies to keep in our bedrooms as cuddly pets (also known as night apes; lesser bushbabies; nagaapies; pukunyoni, or more scientifically correct, as a Galago) and we always had mischievous (actually, destructive little buggers) vervet monkeys running free. Free to come and go as they liked, but the abundance of food at home usually kept them as permanent residents on our property. Wild as they were, all these wild friends often came into our home when they wanted some human company, a scratch, or a favourite titbit. For us kids, to be able to entertain friends was never a problem. Kids were always told to go and play outside, and we always found plenty to do even if it was only to employ the art of finding scorpion holes and dig up the reluctant inhabitants to amuse ourselves.

But then there were the other species. Humans. Some truly beautiful ones. Exquisite, in fact. Take Robyn for example. When this stunningly attractive teenage girl walked through our front door behind her parents, my senses rushed clean out of my head and immediately into my bloodstream where they set about blinding me! To say that I was staring at her agape and wide eyed must be the understatement of the decade. Robyn was simply beautiful from her shiny black hair all the way down to her painted toenails peeping out of her shoes. She looked as if she had just stepped away from an international models’ photo shoot, still wearing a famous designer’s clothing brand. Men are never born so perfect. Only women. Even so, not all of them are.

After a typically warm, Rhodesian-style family welcoming of our in-transit visitors, a chat, a drink and something to nibble on, I took Robyn on a tour of the Matamba menagerie. She was quickly drawn to our monkeys and for a change the vervets seemed to be in a good mood, allowing her to pet them, just as long as she didn’t try and pick one of them up for a cuddle. I crouched close by, keeping watch over Robyn and still very much mindful of an unfortunate social visit the previous weekend when I was showing another young lady around when one of the duiker antelope males took an instant dislike to her and charging up suddenly in the fading twilight it butted her hard, puncturing her one thigh with its spiky horns. I had never known any of our buck to behave that way, and I felt terrible, embarrassed and sorry about the inexplicable incident. It might have been a jealous duiker who had picked up on her hormonal condition. Who knows?

When Robyn saw uncle Dudley’s home-built sports car parked under the flamboyant trees behind my huge aviary, all her interest in our fauna and flora evaporated and she rushed ahead of me with her hair bouncing on her shoulders as she ran towards the austere performance vehicle. In appearance it was not much more than a very low-slung two-seater sports car he and a sports car enthusiast friend had constructed on a 1950’s-something Volkswagen Beetle chassis and powered by a modified VW engine with a supercharger to make it run extremely fast and accelerate like a rocket. As my father said the first time that I took him for a ride in it, one felt “…as if one was having one’s bum wiped by the tarmac!” Being seated so close to the road, one experienced the distinct illusion that the car’s performance was far in excess of reality, but nevertheless, it was very fast!

They say that petrol and alcohol don’t mix on the roads, but sure as rainbows have colours, nor do petrol and hormones: when Robyn asked me to take her for a drive I probably croaked something like “Yes, lets…” but meanwhile all the standard vehicle checks I would routinely have carried out before driving onto the main road were taken as ‘done.’ Being a Saturday afternoon, there were very few other vehicles on the road, probably only one or two other cars passing every half hour at the most. The exhilarating feeling of the power of the vehicle as we tore down our long driveway and then onto the strip road towards Gatooma could only be matched – in part – by what it was like to have such a thrilling companion squashed into the small seat we shared. She whooped with delight as we raced along some two hundred yards of driveway and watching her expressions made my chest swell with pride. If only my pals could have seen the two of us having so much fun as we came over the brow of the Cam Hill and then down, speeding like a demented whirlwind.

Its hard to try and describe the vast contrast of emotion I felt when the engine died on me. Without any hint of a warning it shut down at the bottom of the hill and immediately it happened I remembered that I hadn’t stuck my finger into the filler cap to check the fuel level in the small tank when we first decided to go on our joyride. I was singularly responsible for my stupidity.  Before the vehicle came to a complete stop I managed to pull over on the shoulder of the road while my mind raced. What about Robyn? How was I going to be able to get her to safety while I sorted out the petrol problem? How could I leave her alone in the bush, miles from anywhere? Where should I go for help? Which was the best alternative – trying to get home, or trying to get to town? The questions flooded my mind and one of the biggest threats I had to face was how to explain my irresponsibility to Robyn’s parents, and mine too. My father had absolute zero tolerance of anyone who ran out of petrol on any road, always asking “…Do you honestly think you save fuel when you drive your car on an empty tank…?” How true.

Still preoccupied by horrible mental images of what might happen in the forthcoming hours, I was distracted by a deep, rich voice coming from behind me where a black man was greeting me as he dismounted from his bicycle. I cannot remember what I said to Robyn to reassure her, but within a few minutes there I was, a young adult, sitting side-saddled on the carrier on the back of the stranger’s bicycle and off we rode to town! There he kindly dropped me off at Dad’s “Duly & Co” Ford outlet and I persuaded the petrol attendant “Foyer” to let me borrow a one gallon can filled with petrol for the urgent rescue of my uncle’s quicksilver, but functional, vehicle. That was the easy part. How to return to Robyn, the vehicle, and my own reasonably sane state of mind was another challenge altogether! It seemed that there was just not another soul in town that evening.

My guardian angel must have arranged it, but after a relatively short wait during which I had made up my mind to walk across to the Model Bakery in the main street and ask Mr. and Mrs. Wood if I could phone home, call for help and face the wrath of my father, when Isaak Niehaus arrived driving his brand new and thumping-big Ford Starliner which everyone thought was the most beautiful new car in town, and imported specially from the USA. Isaak had ordered his dream car from dad and had proudly taken delivery of it only a few days before. Can you imagine my embarrassment when I had to ask Isaak to do me a special favour and take me, and my can of petrol, back to where I hoped to find Robyn unharmed? I could imagine him thinking how stupid I was, especially since he knew I was the son of the manager of Duly’s who surely knew enough about cars, with cars pulsing in his veins, to avoid anything like this event ever happening to him.

I’m sure my whole head glowed bright red all the way back to the spot at the bottom of the Cam Hill. When we arrived, Robyn looked distraught to say the least, but she was safe and unharmed, thank goodness. As Isaak drove away the burble of his Star liner’s huge V8 engine echoed off the dense hillside vegetation almost in rhythm with my pounding heart. But this time it wasn’t because of Robyn’s effect on my hormones that it was happening. It was aftershock!