96) Sunbird Rd

We organised for a truck to transport all our belongings to our new house. We managed to get a truck that was going back to Natal empty once it had brought a load up to the Transvaal. This meant that it was not so expensive but it did have a downside to it. Because there were some other problems with their up load they did not arrive to collect our furniture until the middle of the afternoon. And we could only get on the road at about 6 p.m. We had intended to drive down during the day and be at the house to supervise the unloading at the other end. When we left Witbank we still intended to drive straight through even though we would be very late arriving at Pat and Ken’s house. We rang them to tell them that we were late leaving but were now on our way. When we got onto the road it started to rain and a very thick mist came down. It was very hard to drive in the dark misty road on a route that we did not know well, so after a while we decided to pull into a motel for the night. We were told by someone that trucks were not allowed to travel on that road at night so our furniture van would have had to pull up somewhere too so we would be able to catch them up in the morning. We woke early, after a rather disturbed night. I could hear so many trucks on the road passing the motel I realised that who ever had told us that trucks were not allowed on the road after dark was very mistaken or there were an awful lot of truck drivers who were disregarding the law.

As we did not have a key for our new house we knew that we had to go into Hillcrest to Ken’s hardware shop to collect it from him before we could meet up with the furniture removal truck at our house.

The vet had given us a sedative for Muffin, but as we had intending driving through the previous day we had given it to her when we left. Now she was wide awake and enjoying her journey. Muffin always enjoyed travelling in the car. She enjoyed barking at all the other traffic, she enjoyed barking at the pedestrians we passed, she barked at trains, trees, houses, shops, bicycles, in fact she barked at anything and everything. When she could not find something to bark at she just cried and whimpered. She was not a very comfortable travel companion. Eventually we got to the hardware shop in Hillcrest, only to be told that Ken had gone to our house in Inchanga to open up for the removal men. We had forgotten that we had given them Ken’s phone number in case of an emergency and when we were not at the house to greet them they had used their initiative and got in touch with him. When we arrived at the house we discovered that because of the position of the gate, so close to the corner of Sunbird road and Inchanga road, the truck was too large to turn left into Sunbird road and then turn right into out gate. To have to carry every piece of furniture from the gate into the house would have been a very long job so the driver had driven the truck further up Inchanga road and parked close to the house, though on the outside of the wall. Fortunately the wall was a precast one with concrete slats fitted into upright mullions. They had removed one section of the wall and were carrying our furniture through the gap and into the house. I was rather shocked at that and thought there would be trouble from our landlord, but once they had unloaded all our goods they replaced the slats and it all looked fine again.

5 Sunbird Rd. Inchanga

Ken was glad to see us, as he had to get back to the shop, so off he went and we carried on supervising the workers and started to get the house in some sort of order. As soon as they could, the removal men rushed off to their next appointment they were getting further and further behind. They had been delayed at the job just before ours and then our delivery had taken longer than they expected so they were very late for their next job. Jonny and I worked till evening to put up curtains, make up beds, find the kettle (very important) and all the other things that have to be done when one moves into a new house. As the sun went down we decided to call it a day and to go and sit in our lovely new large garden, out in the country and enjoy being away from suburbia. As we sat talking and enjoying the soft warm evening we realised how much noise we could hear from the Durban to Johannesburg highway. It was the Thursday before the Easter weekend and there was a lot of traffic on the road. At that point the road went through a big cutting and it deflected the sound of the traffic into our front yard. Although we could not actually see the road from there we could certainly hear it. Then an aeroplane flew right over our heads and we realised that we were on the flight path from Durban to Johannesburg. As it was the start of a long weekend the buses taking workers from the towns back to their villages were very busy and heavily loaded as they strained to get up the hill of Inchanga Road that was just behind us. It was a fairly steep hill so the buses crawled slowly up the hill and the wall was just the right height for the people in the bus to look straight into our garden as they went passed. Inchanga Road was a direct route from the main highway to The Valley of a Thousand Hills. Many of the Africans who commuted to work in Durban, which was about 50 kms east and in Pietermaritzburg, which was about 50 kms to the west, would catch buses that used this route so it was a busy road. In the valley there was among other things a sand quarry and the trucks that collected the sand would have to come along Inchanga road as they took their loads to town. As the road was a steep hill the drivers would have to use their air brakes to slow themselves down just about as they got level with our bedroom window. The trucks would start at about 4.00 am and go all day. Far from being the quiet country we had expected it turned out to be one of the noisiest places we had ever lived.
In spite of all the noise it was still a lovely place to live and we were glad to be there. By the end of the holiday weekend we had settled in and Jonny went off to work in the fencing business. In our spare time we did quite a bit of exploring in the area, as it was very beautiful. When we went into Hillcrest along the old road we would drive along the ridge of the hills that looked down into the beautiful Valley of a Thousand Hills. The scenery was spectacular, miles and miles of lovely rolling hills with little African villages dotted here and there. Along the road there were a number of look out points where one could stop and appreciate the beauty and there would be African women selling their traditional bead work and baskets or men with their carvings. The dominant tribe in this area is the Zulus, who were traditionally a warrior tribe and they could look very impressive in their traditional costumes. On each side of the road there were also many souvenir shops and even places where shows of traditional Zulu dancers could be seen. There were curio shops and art shops, antique shops and clothing shops, restaurants and coffee shops, lots of shops to capture the tourist dollars; there was even a crocodile farm. In spite of all of this it was still very beautiful and worth a visit. The road passed through the villages of Monatseal, Drummond, Assagay and Botha’s Hill. Drummond is the half way mark of the famous Comrades Marathon race and Botha’s Hill is known as the home of the award-winning writer Alan Patton. Patton’s most famous novel is “Cry the Beloved Country” which is a wonderfully story about the problems of the apartheid laws. (Well worth reading if you have not already.) We liked to use this road rather than the new highway, as it was so much more attractive.