15) Arrival in Salisbury
We crossed into Rhodesia on 1st August 1968, our third wedding anniversary and Dominic’s first birthday. The journey to Salisbury was not good, the children were fractious and cried or fought most of the time, we were both very tired but we just had to keep going. We continued to take our stay awake pills; there was no way we could stop off at a hotel, who would have accepted this travelling circus.
The most memorable thing about the journey was the roadblocks. Ian Douglas Smith was the Prime Minister of Rhodesia and he had been negotiating with the British Government for a long while to get independence for his country. Britain did not want to grant it on his terms so on 11th Nov 1965 he had declared Unilateral Declaration of Independence. Britain had imposed economic sanctions on Rhodesia and most other countries had followed suit. Guerrilla warfare had broken out with terrorist crossing the borders from Zambia and Mozambique to try and destabilise the country. So all vehicles were stopped a few times along the road into Salisbury and searched for weapons and illegal entrants. Jonathan liked the soldiers and the big guns.
The journey from Chirundu to Salisbury is about 350 kilometres and we got to the outskirts of the city in the middle of the afternoon. We stopped off at the first kennels we came to and booked our dogs in, then travelled on to Ray and Jill’s house in a suburb called Milton Park. There address was 18 St Dominic’s Road. When we got there I was very surprised to see that they had furniture just like ours, a radiogram just like our too. I thought it was a coincidence but I was too tired to realise that it was ours. It was the furniture that Jonny had brought down a few months before and that the Wains had kindly looked after for us. It was a day or two before the penny dropped and I realised where it came from. We were both very tired but we had taken so many stay awake tablets we could not go to sleep. By now the Wains had had another addition to their family another little girl called Toni, so we bathed all the babies and put them to bed and I remember talking and talking to Ray and Jill until they were very tired and wanted to go to bed but I was still going on and on. Eventually the tablets wore off and I was ready to sleep and when I slept I just could not wake up. During the night Jonathan and Dominic woke up and I suppose that they felt strange in different beds in a different house. They cried and cried but I did not hear them and they woke the whole household. Jill came and woke me and brought them to me and I just tucked them into bed with me and we all slept until late the next day.
In the few days we had before we were due to leave for South Africa Ray and Jill told us about a housing scheme that they had learnt about for new immigrants. It was a government backed scheme that enabled new immigrants to buy their own homes easily. A 90% mortgage was available and although the houses were quite small they were to be well built and not too expensive. The total price was £ 4000 and that included the land, the house, the connection fees for all the services and all the legal fees. With a 90% mortgage we only had to put a deposit of £ 400 and our repayment would be about £50 a month. There were quite a number of plots of land to choose from and different house designs too. We decided that this was a good way for us to own our own home and so we drove around and looked at the available sites and picked out one in a suburb of Haig Park. We paid our deposit and applied for our loan. We were told it could not be processed until we were officially resident in Rhodesia and as we were going to South Africa and only coming back in September it would have to wait but as we had paid our deposit we could secure the building site we wanted.
To show our appreciation for their kindness and to celebrate, rather belatedly, our wedding anniversary we decided to take Ray and Jill out to supper. We asked them to show us a good place to dine out and they suggested the Golden Dragon, a Chinees restaurant in central Salisbury. We had a lovely night out; when we arrived at the restaurant we first went to the bar and had drinks, while we were in the bar we ordered our meal and ordered champagne to be served with it. The meal was very good and as we left Jonny paid the bill, leaving the change as a tip for the waiter when we walked out. We walked towards our car laughing and talking and the waiter came running after us, Jonny thinking that he was coming to give us our change called to him “don’t worry, keep the change” but he still kept coming. He caught up with us and said “You didn’t pay for the champagne” It was their fault as they had forgotten to put it on the bill, we just assumed that they had charged us for everything, we of course went back and paid the extra amount but we did tease Jonny, “Mr. Bountiful, Keep the Change” when he had not even paid the whole bill.
We visited friends who were living in Salisbury, Sonny and Isabel Mathison who had bought a house in Greendale and Peter Mansel had married a young girl called Lorraine who was nicknamed Cheeky. They had bought a house in Marlborough it was good to see them all and to catch up with how they were dong in Rhodesia. We arranged for the repair work to be done to the VW Variant and set off for South Africa. I don’t remember a great deal about the journey but with all of us in the Kombi, no furniture or dogs or the parrot, he was staying with Ray and Jill it was a much easier journey and we arrived in Pretoria to stay with Don and Vicky without any incidents.
Jonny flew to London to see about the Jaguar, he was only away about 10 days. He went to Swansea to see my family. He met Vic Mallows who was my sister Adele’s fiancée. While he was away I intended staying with Don and Vicky but my father-in-law wanted to spend some time with his grandchildren so I went there for a little while too. He and Delane were still living in Blyvooruitsig and Daddy was still managing a general store there.
Daddy took me to visit his mother, so that she could see her great grand children. I’m afraid it was not a very successful visit. The old lady was very Afrikaans and still fighting the Boer war. She refused to speak to me in English and as I did not know any Afrikaans there was very little communication. I remember that there was another visitor there at the time, a elderly Afrikaans gentleman, I don’t remember who he was, just a friend I think but he knew that my grandmother-in-law could speak English and kept trying to turn the conversation into English but she just refused, the poor man was very embarrassed. It just ended with both of us maintaining a frosty silence and we did not stay very long.
Most mornings we were there I would walk down to the store midmorning with the children and have tea with Daddy. He loved to show the children all the interesting things he had in his store. It was directed towards the African Trade and I remember the lovely Basuto Blankets that they sold. They were lovely traditional blanket that the Basuto people wore instead of overcoats to keep them warm in winter. They are from the part of Africa that is now called Lesotho, which is very mountainous and in winter very cold. Besides blankets the store had penknives and tools, pots and pans, watches and torches, clothes and food, suit cases and cosmetics, cool drinks, sweets, cigarettes and all sorts of other things.
One morning after we had all been there for tea Daddy came rushing back to the house in a panic. He could not find his safe keys. He had looked everywhere for them and was very concerned as the last manager had been fired for losing his keys as the owners of the store thought that anyone who was irresponsible enough to lose keys should not be in a managerial position. He asked Jonathan if he knew were Oupa’s (Afrikaans for Grandpa’s) keys were. Oupa remembered that Jonathan had been playing with them earlier in the day. Jonathan said that he knew were they were, so he took Oupa’s hand and led him back to the store. Without any hesitation he went straight to the back room were there were piles of Basuto blankets on shelves all along the wall. He went to a particular place put his little arm deep in between the blankets and brought out; you guessed it, Oupa’s keys. You cannot believe how impressed his grandfather was. He told everybody who would listen, the story of how Jonathan had found Oupa’s keys. He thought that he was the cleverest child ever. We all kept saying “But who lost them in the first place?” but he ignored that. I think this was his favourite story and he was still telling people about it when we went there when Jonathan was about 16. I suppose it was clever for a toddler of just over 3 to remember so clearly where he had put them and good that he was prepared to own up, we could have searched for hours and still not found them.
Jonny came back from England; he had the name of the ship that the car was on and the date of its arrival in Cape Town so we made arrangements to go to Cape Town to collect it. We decided that the best thing would be for us to go by train rather than drive the long journey across the Karoo Dessert. It was a wonderful journey and I will tell you about it next week.
The most memorable thing about the journey was the roadblocks. Ian Douglas Smith was the Prime Minister of Rhodesia and he had been negotiating with the British Government for a long while to get independence for his country. Britain did not want to grant it on his terms so on 11th Nov 1965 he had declared Unilateral Declaration of Independence. Britain had imposed economic sanctions on Rhodesia and most other countries had followed suit. Guerrilla warfare had broken out with terrorist crossing the borders from Zambia and Mozambique to try and destabilise the country. So all vehicles were stopped a few times along the road into Salisbury and searched for weapons and illegal entrants. Jonathan liked the soldiers and the big guns.
The journey from Chirundu to Salisbury is about 350 kilometres and we got to the outskirts of the city in the middle of the afternoon. We stopped off at the first kennels we came to and booked our dogs in, then travelled on to Ray and Jill’s house in a suburb called Milton Park. There address was 18 St Dominic’s Road. When we got there I was very surprised to see that they had furniture just like ours, a radiogram just like our too. I thought it was a coincidence but I was too tired to realise that it was ours. It was the furniture that Jonny had brought down a few months before and that the Wains had kindly looked after for us. It was a day or two before the penny dropped and I realised where it came from. We were both very tired but we had taken so many stay awake tablets we could not go to sleep. By now the Wains had had another addition to their family another little girl called Toni, so we bathed all the babies and put them to bed and I remember talking and talking to Ray and Jill until they were very tired and wanted to go to bed but I was still going on and on. Eventually the tablets wore off and I was ready to sleep and when I slept I just could not wake up. During the night Jonathan and Dominic woke up and I suppose that they felt strange in different beds in a different house. They cried and cried but I did not hear them and they woke the whole household. Jill came and woke me and brought them to me and I just tucked them into bed with me and we all slept until late the next day.
In the few days we had before we were due to leave for South Africa Ray and Jill told us about a housing scheme that they had learnt about for new immigrants. It was a government backed scheme that enabled new immigrants to buy their own homes easily. A 90% mortgage was available and although the houses were quite small they were to be well built and not too expensive. The total price was £ 4000 and that included the land, the house, the connection fees for all the services and all the legal fees. With a 90% mortgage we only had to put a deposit of £ 400 and our repayment would be about £50 a month. There were quite a number of plots of land to choose from and different house designs too. We decided that this was a good way for us to own our own home and so we drove around and looked at the available sites and picked out one in a suburb of Haig Park. We paid our deposit and applied for our loan. We were told it could not be processed until we were officially resident in Rhodesia and as we were going to South Africa and only coming back in September it would have to wait but as we had paid our deposit we could secure the building site we wanted.
To show our appreciation for their kindness and to celebrate, rather belatedly, our wedding anniversary we decided to take Ray and Jill out to supper. We asked them to show us a good place to dine out and they suggested the Golden Dragon, a Chinees restaurant in central Salisbury. We had a lovely night out; when we arrived at the restaurant we first went to the bar and had drinks, while we were in the bar we ordered our meal and ordered champagne to be served with it. The meal was very good and as we left Jonny paid the bill, leaving the change as a tip for the waiter when we walked out. We walked towards our car laughing and talking and the waiter came running after us, Jonny thinking that he was coming to give us our change called to him “don’t worry, keep the change” but he still kept coming. He caught up with us and said “You didn’t pay for the champagne” It was their fault as they had forgotten to put it on the bill, we just assumed that they had charged us for everything, we of course went back and paid the extra amount but we did tease Jonny, “Mr. Bountiful, Keep the Change” when he had not even paid the whole bill.
We visited friends who were living in Salisbury, Sonny and Isabel Mathison who had bought a house in Greendale and Peter Mansel had married a young girl called Lorraine who was nicknamed Cheeky. They had bought a house in Marlborough it was good to see them all and to catch up with how they were dong in Rhodesia. We arranged for the repair work to be done to the VW Variant and set off for South Africa. I don’t remember a great deal about the journey but with all of us in the Kombi, no furniture or dogs or the parrot, he was staying with Ray and Jill it was a much easier journey and we arrived in Pretoria to stay with Don and Vicky without any incidents.
Jonny flew to London to see about the Jaguar, he was only away about 10 days. He went to Swansea to see my family. He met Vic Mallows who was my sister Adele’s fiancée. While he was away I intended staying with Don and Vicky but my father-in-law wanted to spend some time with his grandchildren so I went there for a little while too. He and Delane were still living in Blyvooruitsig and Daddy was still managing a general store there.
Daddy took me to visit his mother, so that she could see her great grand children. I’m afraid it was not a very successful visit. The old lady was very Afrikaans and still fighting the Boer war. She refused to speak to me in English and as I did not know any Afrikaans there was very little communication. I remember that there was another visitor there at the time, a elderly Afrikaans gentleman, I don’t remember who he was, just a friend I think but he knew that my grandmother-in-law could speak English and kept trying to turn the conversation into English but she just refused, the poor man was very embarrassed. It just ended with both of us maintaining a frosty silence and we did not stay very long.
Most mornings we were there I would walk down to the store midmorning with the children and have tea with Daddy. He loved to show the children all the interesting things he had in his store. It was directed towards the African Trade and I remember the lovely Basuto Blankets that they sold. They were lovely traditional blanket that the Basuto people wore instead of overcoats to keep them warm in winter. They are from the part of Africa that is now called Lesotho, which is very mountainous and in winter very cold. Besides blankets the store had penknives and tools, pots and pans, watches and torches, clothes and food, suit cases and cosmetics, cool drinks, sweets, cigarettes and all sorts of other things.
One morning after we had all been there for tea Daddy came rushing back to the house in a panic. He could not find his safe keys. He had looked everywhere for them and was very concerned as the last manager had been fired for losing his keys as the owners of the store thought that anyone who was irresponsible enough to lose keys should not be in a managerial position. He asked Jonathan if he knew were Oupa’s (Afrikaans for Grandpa’s) keys were. Oupa remembered that Jonathan had been playing with them earlier in the day. Jonathan said that he knew were they were, so he took Oupa’s hand and led him back to the store. Without any hesitation he went straight to the back room were there were piles of Basuto blankets on shelves all along the wall. He went to a particular place put his little arm deep in between the blankets and brought out; you guessed it, Oupa’s keys. You cannot believe how impressed his grandfather was. He told everybody who would listen, the story of how Jonathan had found Oupa’s keys. He thought that he was the cleverest child ever. We all kept saying “But who lost them in the first place?” but he ignored that. I think this was his favourite story and he was still telling people about it when we went there when Jonathan was about 16. I suppose it was clever for a toddler of just over 3 to remember so clearly where he had put them and good that he was prepared to own up, we could have searched for hours and still not found them.
Jonny came back from England; he had the name of the ship that the car was on and the date of its arrival in Cape Town so we made arrangements to go to Cape Town to collect it. We decided that the best thing would be for us to go by train rather than drive the long journey across the Karoo Dessert. It was a wonderful journey and I will tell you about it next week.
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