69) Getting Ready to Leave
When we got back to Umtali we started to prepare for our departure to Australia. Firstly we put our house in Hatfield up for sale. I contacted our tenant and told her we were going to leave the country and so would be selling the house. We asked if she was interested in buying it but she told me that she was also thinking of leaving. She was an English woman married to a man who was a lot younger than her. She had grown up sons by her first marriage and something that had happened to her youngest son had given her a big fright and made her make up her mind to leave. He son was in the Air Force at the time and he and his wife were planning to go to England on holiday to visit her parents. At the last moment something happened to stop him going, I don’t know what, but his wife went on alone. The young man pretty quickly managed to sort out the business that had detained him and decided to join his wife in England. He told his Mom not to get in touch with his wife as he was planning to just walk up to her parent’s house and knock on the door and give them all a great big surprise. She thought it would be a big joke so she just dropped him off at the airport and did not even bother to wait to see him board his flight.
After about a week she thought she would give them a call, as there was something she wanted them to bring back from England for her. She phoned and talked to her daughter-in-law and in the course of the conversation said, “What did you think when (whatever his name was) arrived on your doorstop. The girls said “What are you talking about Mom, I haven’t seen him” Both women thought that the other one was trying to play a joke on her but they eventually realised that it was no joke and the husband had never arrived in England. They started making inquiries and the mother found out from people at the airport that her son had never boarded the flight. As he was walking across the tarmac to the plane he was approached by the Special Branch and taken away in their car. He had been in custody for a whole week and no one seemed to know where he was. I think it took her another couple of days to find out where he was being held and a few more to secure his release. There had been an incident at the Air Force base, some of their planes had been damaged in an air raid and as he was about to leave the country they thought he might have something to do with it and so they had picked him up. There was not a scrap of evidence against him, in fact I think they probably just forgot all about him but it was a very frightening experience for the whole family. To think that he had been in jail for a whole week and no one had been informed had made them feel that no one was safe in Zimbabwe any more and they were going to go back to England.
The Special Branch was beginning to get quite a reputation. We often heard stories about people being arrested on the flimsiest of excuses and then beaten and tortured. I worried a lot about my family when they went out of an evening and lectured them to be very careful how they behaved and what they said. I did not really want to leave Zimbabwe but I could see that with things deteriorating that way it was good that we were going to Australia.
Another thing I did in preparation for going to Australia was to give up smoking. I worked out that if I was going to arrive on the shores of a brand new country, with no friends and probably not enough money to buy myself a packet of cigarettes I was going to be very miserable when I got there. I figured that it would be much better if I gave up the cigarettes while I was in my own home where it would surly be easier. I had tried giving up smoking a number of times before but had always gone back to it.
This time I was more motivated and succeeded and have always been very glad that I did.
We had looked into the possibilities of taking our pets to Australia but it was just impossible. I looked up the regulations on birds and it was just a definite “No” so there was no point in pursuing that. The dogs were a little different, the regulations regarding them said that dogs could be imported into Australia if they were coming from a country that did not have rabies and that they had lived in that country out of quarantine for at least six months. We had heard about people who were thinking of doing this. It would mean that the dogs would have to be sent to England, or some other rabies free country, spend six months in quarantine and then live in England for six months out of quarantine, presumably in a boarding kennel. Then they would be eligible to enter Australia but the quarantine regulations at that time required that animals coming into Australia had to stay in quarantine for 12 months. So one would need the money to send them to England and then on to Australia and to pay for their upkeep for the six months in English quarantine and for the further six months out of quarantine and then again for the 12 months quarantine once they reached Australia. Then after two years you would be reunited with your pets, who would have, I suspect, forgotten who one were by then. Just for curiosity I enquired what airfares for animals were and found that it was more expensive for a ticket for a dog than it was for a person. We did not see this as possibility for us.
So knowing that there was no chance of us taking our pets to Australia we started thinking about what we would do with our animals. Cindy was getting on for about thirteen and we knew that it would be hard to find a new home for her. Rocky was much younger and we thought that there would be someone who would like to give him a home. A friend of Jonny’s, Chris Ferreira asked if he could have Koos, our parrot. Chris was a single guy who really loved animals. He had a bulldog and a labrador that went everywhere with him. He took them to work and to the pub when he went there in the evenings. He was very fond of Koos so we gave Koos to him and wherever Chris and the dogs went Koos went too. He rode around on Chris’s shoulder and I suppose was given titbits by all the other men in the pub when he went there.
There were many changes taking place in Zimbabwe about that time, the names of towns were changed and Salisbury became Harare, Umtali became Mutare and Gwelo became Gweru. Street names were changed, Jameson Avenue became Samora Machel Avenue, and I think it was the Kingsway that was named after Kenneth Kaunda. Also companies had to change their names if their name had a prefix of Rho. Things like Rhosteel had to become Zimsteel, Rhomills to Zimmills and so on. In Rhodesia traffic lights had always been called Robots, goodness only knows why, they are called Robots in South Africa too. Once the new laws about the changing of the Rho to Zim people laughingly called them Zimbots instead. I rather like that name but when I use it no one knows what I am talking about and I have to give long explanations so I don’t use it now.
After about a week she thought she would give them a call, as there was something she wanted them to bring back from England for her. She phoned and talked to her daughter-in-law and in the course of the conversation said, “What did you think when (whatever his name was) arrived on your doorstop. The girls said “What are you talking about Mom, I haven’t seen him” Both women thought that the other one was trying to play a joke on her but they eventually realised that it was no joke and the husband had never arrived in England. They started making inquiries and the mother found out from people at the airport that her son had never boarded the flight. As he was walking across the tarmac to the plane he was approached by the Special Branch and taken away in their car. He had been in custody for a whole week and no one seemed to know where he was. I think it took her another couple of days to find out where he was being held and a few more to secure his release. There had been an incident at the Air Force base, some of their planes had been damaged in an air raid and as he was about to leave the country they thought he might have something to do with it and so they had picked him up. There was not a scrap of evidence against him, in fact I think they probably just forgot all about him but it was a very frightening experience for the whole family. To think that he had been in jail for a whole week and no one had been informed had made them feel that no one was safe in Zimbabwe any more and they were going to go back to England.
The Special Branch was beginning to get quite a reputation. We often heard stories about people being arrested on the flimsiest of excuses and then beaten and tortured. I worried a lot about my family when they went out of an evening and lectured them to be very careful how they behaved and what they said. I did not really want to leave Zimbabwe but I could see that with things deteriorating that way it was good that we were going to Australia.
Another thing I did in preparation for going to Australia was to give up smoking. I worked out that if I was going to arrive on the shores of a brand new country, with no friends and probably not enough money to buy myself a packet of cigarettes I was going to be very miserable when I got there. I figured that it would be much better if I gave up the cigarettes while I was in my own home where it would surly be easier. I had tried giving up smoking a number of times before but had always gone back to it.
This time I was more motivated and succeeded and have always been very glad that I did.
We had looked into the possibilities of taking our pets to Australia but it was just impossible. I looked up the regulations on birds and it was just a definite “No” so there was no point in pursuing that. The dogs were a little different, the regulations regarding them said that dogs could be imported into Australia if they were coming from a country that did not have rabies and that they had lived in that country out of quarantine for at least six months. We had heard about people who were thinking of doing this. It would mean that the dogs would have to be sent to England, or some other rabies free country, spend six months in quarantine and then live in England for six months out of quarantine, presumably in a boarding kennel. Then they would be eligible to enter Australia but the quarantine regulations at that time required that animals coming into Australia had to stay in quarantine for 12 months. So one would need the money to send them to England and then on to Australia and to pay for their upkeep for the six months in English quarantine and for the further six months out of quarantine and then again for the 12 months quarantine once they reached Australia. Then after two years you would be reunited with your pets, who would have, I suspect, forgotten who one were by then. Just for curiosity I enquired what airfares for animals were and found that it was more expensive for a ticket for a dog than it was for a person. We did not see this as possibility for us.
So knowing that there was no chance of us taking our pets to Australia we started thinking about what we would do with our animals. Cindy was getting on for about thirteen and we knew that it would be hard to find a new home for her. Rocky was much younger and we thought that there would be someone who would like to give him a home. A friend of Jonny’s, Chris Ferreira asked if he could have Koos, our parrot. Chris was a single guy who really loved animals. He had a bulldog and a labrador that went everywhere with him. He took them to work and to the pub when he went there in the evenings. He was very fond of Koos so we gave Koos to him and wherever Chris and the dogs went Koos went too. He rode around on Chris’s shoulder and I suppose was given titbits by all the other men in the pub when he went there.
There were many changes taking place in Zimbabwe about that time, the names of towns were changed and Salisbury became Harare, Umtali became Mutare and Gwelo became Gweru. Street names were changed, Jameson Avenue became Samora Machel Avenue, and I think it was the Kingsway that was named after Kenneth Kaunda. Also companies had to change their names if their name had a prefix of Rho. Things like Rhosteel had to become Zimsteel, Rhomills to Zimmills and so on. In Rhodesia traffic lights had always been called Robots, goodness only knows why, they are called Robots in South Africa too. Once the new laws about the changing of the Rho to Zim people laughingly called them Zimbots instead. I rather like that name but when I use it no one knows what I am talking about and I have to give long explanations so I don’t use it now.
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