87) Dominic Starts Work

Ever since Jonny had left the used car business he had been doing any kind of extra private work that he could and before Dominic started work he would help his Dad. They did a very awkward plumbing job for a friend who was doing alterations to his house. They had to install a lot of the piping in the roof cavity and there was not much room for them to work. Jonny also enclosed a veranda with steel work for a couple we had met. That job was hard because the wall that the steelwork had to fix on to was curved and sloping so that each of the upright steel pieces had to be a different length for the job to fit. Together Jonny and Dominic put some roofing sheets on a large building. While Dominic was up on the roof putting in the fasteners he slipped and nearly fell off. Luckily he managed to grab hold to one of the beams in time and did not get hurt. They took some huge garage roller doors down from one building and put them up in another building. The little van that they were using was the one that Jonny’s brother, Don had lent us. It was rather small and very old. The building that the garage doors had to be installed in was in the next town, Middleburg and the van only just managed to get up the hill it was so heavily loaded. They made a security door for my friend Phyl Vinnacombe and Spanish burglar guards for another of my friends. They made a roof to cover in a neighbour’s courtyard and erected a very tricky semi-circular roof for someone else. They made gates and all sorts of other things while Jonny was also holding down a full time job on the mine. He was working very hard but it did help us to get out of our financial difficulties and on our feet again.

Dominic and Jonathan

At the beginning of 1988 Dominic was due to start work. He had been accepted for an apprenticeship as an Instrument Mechanician with the Highveld Steel Company. We knew that once he started work, there would not be much chance of us all going on holiday together again so we decided to go to the Eastern District for a few days. We booked into a motel in the town of Sabie and had a really lovely time. We visited the Kruger National Park, and saw a wide variety of wild animals. We went to Pilgrims Rest, which is an old mining town that has been left as it was in its hay day. Gold was found there in 1873, thirteen years before the more famous discovery of the huge deposits in the Johannesburg area. The shops and houses are just as they were during that time, they were furnished as they would have been in those days and it was interesting to see them. It was also a little disconcerting to see items that I remembered from my childhood included in the displays, it made me feel rather old. The Eastern District is a very lovely hilly area of South Africa and there are many attractive waterfalls in there. We saw Mac Mac Falls, Bridal Falls and others. Mac Mac is said to have got it’s odd name when the president of the South African Republic, Thomas Burger visited in 1874 and said that there were so many Scotsmen in the area “that every second man seemed to be called Mac”. One of the view sites I really enjoyed was a look out called “God’s Window” it was spectacular, with stunning views across the lowveld and into Mozambique.

Mac Mac Falls

We were pretty sure that this would be our very last family holiday, all together before the boys would no longer be interested in going on holiday with Mom and Dad so it was a rather nostalgic time. We spent a lot of the time saying, “Do you remember when ………? We laughed a lot and brought up all the things we could remember to tease each other. It was a good time. On our way home we drove through the Long Tom Pass. The tarmac road follows the track of the old wagon road by which supplies were brought into the Transvaal and on to Rhodesia in the early days. It gets it’s name from the gun that the Boers placed on the top of the pass to defend The Transvaal from the British army coming from Durban to fight the Boer War. I could not help think of “Jock Of The Bushveld“, one of my favourite books by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick. Percy Fitzpatrick (he was not Sir in those days), was a transport rider and he travelled back and forth along that old road. The book is the story of his faithful dog Jock, and is a wonderful story not only about a dog but also about life in those times and that place.

View from God’s Window

Things were rather different when Dominic was ready to start work from when Jonathan had started. By the time Dominic started to apply for work the country was in a bit of a recession and jobs were harder to come by. He had applied to quite a few places before getting taken on at the Steel Works. I think that he did his initial training at Highveld Steel but after that he was transferred to Rand Carbide and worked there until he finished his apprenticeship in 1990.
Not long after we had moved into the house in Nuffield Street we got a visit from a little girl who lived in the house next door about one to us. Her name was Claudia and she was about four years old and seemed to enjoy playing in our house. Sometimes she would come with her older brother but to begin with she came on her own. She knocked on the door and asked me if I had any children that she could play with. I told her that my children were too big to play with her but I introduced her to Dominic. She really liked Dominic and always went and said Hello to him when she called on us. Her father was from German ancestry and her mother I believe was from Dutch stock but they were both English speaking. Claudia was a very friendly little girl and soon made friends with a little Afrikaans girl called Beth, who’s family moved in across the road a week or two after us. Beth was about the same age as Claudia and she spoke no English just as Claudia spoke no Afrikaans but this did not seem to dampen the friendship in any way. I would see them calling for each other and they would walk together up to our house and knock on the door. They would ask if they could come and play in my house and I would give them a drink of juice and a couple of biscuits and they would spread all their dolls out on the lounge floor and have a great game. My Afrikaans was not good but I could understand what both of them were saying and it was obvious that they were playing very different games but they did not worry at all. After a little while they would collect up their toys, say thank you for the cookies and off they would go. Obviously this was a good way to learn the others language because soon English words starting to crop up in Beth’s vocabulary. Claudia seemed a little slower to pick up on the Afrikaans but I think this had a lot to do with parental attitudes. I know Beth’s parents were very keen for her to learn to speak English well and encouraged every new word.