Oranjemund Online

Brian La Trobe's material on Oranjemund is quite lengthy and may need to be posted in several chapters. His recall of being headhunted by CDM for the post and his first impressions of Omund are hilarious.
But more intriguing and I'm sure of great interest to Bertie is Brian's account of setting up the first fulltime dental surgery in Omund. He offered a very high level of dental care, including maxillo-facial surgery. Most of you who were children in Oranjemund in the Sixties and early Seventies would have been treated by him. At least one of his cases was presented at an international medical conference in Paris as a world first. Indeed a man for all seasons, he was an avid poet and published several booklets including poems on Oranjemund.
He was also a great community activist and among other things was behind the setting up of the Mule Derby and the associated children's playground. After Oranjemund he served several terms as mayor of Grahamstown and went on to international fame as one of the first eco-activists in the waste management field.   
Among other achievements he designed and built SA's first energy from Waste Project to produce electricity and developed a process to treat human waste by forced aeration composting. He also created processes to treat animal waste. and developed a patented waterless odorless sanitation system which is manufactured in South Africa and Ghana.
His work in this field attracted a swathe of awards including the very prestigious Gold Award for the best Innovation and Contribution to Health Care in Africa by the Organisation of African Union and World Intellectual Property Organisation, the Terra Nova award for Land
and the Intel Environment Award presented at the Tech Museum Awards held annually in Silicon Valley, California. His 'Enviro Loo' was one of 580 nominations representing 80 countries considered for the Tech Awards.
In his acceptance speech Brian explained that half the world's population – some 3-billion people – did not have access to fresh water and sanitation. His invention is a dry sanitation system that requires no water, chemicals or electricity for its operation.
If anyone is interested in reading further on this aspect Google The Brian La Trobe Foundation for a backgrounder.
Brian very kindly gave me permission to reproduce the Oranjemund period of his biography on the website. The first few chapters follow below.


HEAD HUNTED
I received a message late one afternoon to call a Dr Johnson as soon as I had a moment. I returned the call at the end of the day. The doctor introduced himself as the Senior Medical Officer of the Consolidated Diamond Mines of South West Africa as it was known in those days. The territory is now Namibia. As chance would have it we were going to the theatre and were looking forward to it, not having been out together in the evening for ages because of the children. A baby sitter had been arranged. Now this Dr Johnson was suggesting that he and I should meet for dinner. At first I turned down the invitation. He put down the phone but, on reflection, this chap had come all the way from SWA to see him and maybe it was a bit mean to turn him down. I called Peggy who was not amused to have her much awaited evening out cancelled. I rang back to Dr Johnson and agreed to have dinner with him after all. The decision would change our lives.

It appeared that I had treated a member of staff who worked for Consolidated Diamond Mines in Oranjemund. I never did find out who it was. However this person recommended me to fill the post of the first Dental Officer to be appointed to the Oranjemund hospital. Dr Johnson was checking me out for the post. A few days later I received a formal invitation to apply for the position. Once more our lives were turned upside down. We had barely settled in our new home, I had worked so hard to establish my first practice in an area of Cape Town where I was reasonably happy to spend the rest of my professional life. Now we were faced with a rethink of all that. We were invited to fly to Oranjemund as the guests of Consolidated Diamond Mines to ascertain if they were interested in the position. The offer placed us in a turmoil. For nights we hardly slept. In the end we decided to accept the invitation of a weekend in SWA and at the end say thanks but no thanks. 

The flight to Alexander Bay courtesy of SAA lasted about 1.5 hours. Our first glimpse of that Godforsaken place on the northern banks of the Orange River was not a welcoming sight. The river, which originates in the foothills of Lesotho 1,500 kms to the East, was busy regurgitating a gigantic mushroom-shaped gob of brown alluvial soil into the blue waters of the cold, mean and misty Atlantic Ocean.

A stark diminutive hut, an apology for an airport building, stood naked on a concrete apron. The only appendage to this desert tabernacle was a free-standing set of steps on wheels powered by two muscular but disinterested Ovambos. These gentlemen trundled the steps forward as the plane came to a halt. We, by now two very apprehensive travelers, alighted and took a closer look at our surroundings. The company's chief medical officer, Dr Dennis Johnson, was on the apron to meet us.
"Don't worry "he shouted to us. "It gets better as you get nearer to town."
I glanced over at Peggy. Her expression told me not to bet a rat's arse she would agree stay in this place.

The 10km ride into Oranjemund started with a 1.6km ride across the Oppenheimer Bridge, possibly one of the longest in Southern Africa and strangely constructed with a distinct kink about a third of the way across. It spanned the Orange River just a few kilometres from the mouth. Dr Johnson explained that repairs after a major flood had damaged the bridge columns and this was the result. Peggy was not amused.
On reaching the northern bank we were confronted by a large number of windowless concentration camp type barracks, enclosed by a high fence of barbed wire. Dr Johnson hastened to add that these were rows of garages that housed the private cars of all the employees of Consolidated Diamond Mines (CDM).

Oranjemund was a closed town. Private cars were a high security risk for concealing diamonds. All vehicles used within the township were the property of CDM and were kept within the confines of the diamond area. When a company employee went on leave he and his family were picked up in a security bus and taken to a high security facility. There, each individual potentially could be searched or x- rayed to check if they were concealing any diamond which belonged to CDM. To avoid embarrassment the thoughtful company had both male and female searchers on hand.
Once they were considered "diamond clean" the holidaymakers were transported in another bus to the company garages where their private cars were housed. Here, by previous arrangement, their car batteries would be ready and waiting having been trickled charged for the previous week or so; all services supplied by CDM of course.  Having finally packed their bags into the car they were off like a dirty shirt across the kinky bridge, heading for freedom and normality past the Alexander Bay Outer camp. There was a final security check some 10km down the road, south towards Port Nolloth
Here you handed in your security pass from CDM which gave you permission to leave the area. There was a more sinister explanation of the necessity for this final security post that will become more evident as the narrative unfolds.

Any employee of CDM had to sign and agree to these luggage checks and body searches and be subjected to X-ray if and when required. Dr Johnson explained all this in a cheerful manner and made light of all this necessary security effort to limit the illicit flow of diamonds from the company fields. Despite his light-hearted manner our sense of gloom deepened. It certainly went against the grain. Could we live and be happy under conditions which seemed to undermine one's basic rights and freedoms?
Oranjemund had no hotel but it did have a very well-appointed guest house. The cheerful Dr Johnson suggested that we have a rest and be ready for a guest house party at 7pm.
"Oh, and by the way, the general manager and his wife will arrive at 7.50 to make your acquaintance".
How bloody formal could you get I thought. When they got to our room Peggy turned and said: "If you ask me now the answer will be an emphatic NO; so don't ask." I knew how she felt.

On the dot of 6.50pm the general manager and his chain-smoking wife entered the guest house lounge. Dr Johnson made the usual introductions. After a minimal amount of small talk the GM moved our small party to the entrance of the lounge. We could hear the subdued murmurings of the guests outside. Precisely on the stroke of 7pm the guest house front door opened and in came the first guests. We were introduced as they entered into the lounge in a continuous stream. They must have all being standing in a line along the verandah of the guest house. By 7.10 all the selected guests were assembled. The wives scattered around the room in small groups chatting aimlessly while their spouses were getting drinks from the bar. I made a mental note. The GM was a stickler for punctuality.

Peggy and I ended up at opposite ends of the room chatting to many different groups. Each seemed hell bent  on telling us what a wonderful place Oranjemund was and how Consolidated Diamond Mines was really just one big happy family; all this while attempting to balance a plate of delectable buffet food with endless glasses of fine vintage wines.  After a while we gave up trying to remember names and where each was employed in the company.
At precisely 8.30pm the GM glanced at his watch. This was the signal for the last gulps of drinks to be swallowed, for wives to say gosh is that the time already how the evening has flown, accompanied by a casual throw of gossamer wraps over well-padded shoulders and a stampede for the door to avoid being last out. We could only look forward to a disturbed night of contemplating what the future would hold if our small family relocated to Consolidated Diamond Mines.

Next morning as we entered the dining room for breakfast it dawned on us that we were the only guests and therefore had the full attention of CDM's head chef, Otto Verfuss. Otto had been a chef on the SS Watussi, a German Africa liner which had been caught out by the outbreak of World War Two and been sheltering in the neutral East African port of Lourenzo Marques (now Maputo) in Mozambique. She had on board 43 passengers and 155 crew, and no one knew where she was bound. The ship's captain, after weighing up his chances, decided to make a run for it and vanish into the wide open spaces of the south Atlantic in the hope of making it back to Germany undetected.

Fat chance: the Watussi was detected by a South African Air Force reconnaissance aircraft 100 miles south of Cape Point. A couple of bombs dropped ahead of her persuaded her captain to alter course for Simonstown. A few hours later she was seen to be on fire and listing with her crew and passengers nearby in the lifeboats. The battle-cruiser Renown and the aircraft carrier Ark Royal which were searching for the Admiral Graf Spee arrived soon after, and the Renown sank the blazing hulk by gunfire as darkness was falling as she threatened to become a danger to navigation. The survivors were taken to Simonstown.                                                                                             

Otto spent the war in a prisoner of war camp in South Africa. During this time he met and courted a young South African lass. They say that love will always find a way but one wonders how an interned German seaman managed this almost impossible love twist. In any event they were married at the end of the war. In those days Namibia was an old German Colony known as South West Africa. All Germany was then a disaster zone and it was the natural choice for a young German lad who otherwise had no place to go. Otto was a great chef who cooked on a grand scale. Every dish was swamped in butter, every soup enriched with lashings of cream. If he could not be given ingredients such as truffles from France, the best caviar the Volga could produce, wild salmon from Scotland, king crabs from Alaska and cream by the gallon he would sulk. It was said that CDM was the only company that could afford to employ him.                                                                When we first met him for breakfast on that fateful morning in 1960 it was a definite milestone in my appreciation of the culinary art of cooking. During our first few years in Oranjemund Otto taught me the finer points of preparing crayfish and crabs, how to cook trout wrapped in damp newspaper on coals. The latter became my braai (barbeque) masterpiece. The fish was gutted then filled with (what else) lots of butter, zest of lemon and a splash of double cream. After that it was wrapped in copious sheets of newsprint, dumped into a water-filled basin until saturated and placed on the coals with tender loving care for ten minutes either side. At the end of the process the package looked like a burnt offering but when opened the fish, poached by super heated steam, was cooked to perfection.                                                                                                                             

I remember that first Oranjemund breakfast as if it were yesterday. Otto, in his chef's white coat with double row of white buttons and classic blue checked trousers, pirouetted with all the grace of a big man on a dray horse and came to the table with a great silver salvo on which was an array of bacon, sausages, mushrooms, delicate wafers of fillet steak, kidneys cooked in cream and brandy and lamb's liver. There was also a great mess of eggs, scrambled and fried by the dozen, and omelettes. When I accepted only two fried eggs his ample face took on a pained expression that only turned into a smile when I took a third. That platter had enough food to feed twenty people and only two of us to be fed but, as we later came to appreciate, was Otto Verfuss just doing his normal thing.
After the herculean breakfast I had an appointment to tour the hospital and meet the staff. Dennis Johnson was assisted by three other doctors. The rest of the hospital staff consisted of a pharmacist, physiotherapist, a medical technologist who looked after the medical and pathology laboratory, an ample supply of well-trained and experienced nurses and a team of Ovambo orderlies. There were two hospitals, one for the Ovambo mineworkers and the other for European employees and their families. The medical and nursing personnel staffed both facilities. The Ovambo orderlies were superbly trained in the art of first aid.

The company's huge mining area spread over a distance of some 180 kilometres northwards along the coast which required medical clinics at various intervals to act as first aid centres. These were intended to treat minor ailments which did not require hospitalization and provide first aid to victims of mine accidents before transport to the main hospital in Oranjemund.
There was a dental surgery but on Dennis Johnson's own admission it was ill equipped. If I accepted the position my first task would be to build and equip a modern dental centre to serve not only the dental needs of the company's 10,000 Ovambo contract workers but also the entire European township which in those days numbered about 5000 people. The Ovambos were employed on a year-long contract before being rotated back to Ovamboland. Most were employed on the mine but some served as domestic workers in the town.

Many who lived in the town at that time will recall their family domestic workers with great regard. The Ovambo adaptability to a new and strange environment was quite remarkable. Their home culture was one in which the women did most of the manual work. The children tended the domestic beasts and the men either hunted or spent their days in constant indaba with other men, sitting in the shade and occasionally drinking beer, made and served by the women. But it was a cashless economy, hence the attraction of work on the mine particularly by the younger men who needed to find the money for a bride price and a few head of cattle to set them up for life.

On coming to Oranjemund on their first contract they were assessed in a proficiency department which ascertained their aptitude for further training, whether this be as a hospital orderly, chef in the mess hall, a domestic worker, workshop labourer or driver of one of the company's fleet of locomotives, bulldozers and giant earthmoving machines. Should the tests showed little evidence of potential skill or initiative the recruit would be employed in the lashing gangs, the pick and shovel crews who cleared the bedrock after the machines had removed the sand overburden. I once submitted myself to this proficiency testing to see how I would fare as an incoming Ovambo employee hoping to drive one of the enormous 600 horse double-engined earthmoving machines. I failed miserably. As I hated washing dishes I would probably have been employed in the lashing gang.

All mining at CDM was open cast, in other words there was no underground tunneling and most of the mining was concentrated within a two kilometre strip parallel to the coast. Prospecting teams sampled this area at defined intervals along the coast. Wherever the data indicated diamondiferous gravel the earthmoving machines would move in and strip off the sand overburden which varied in depth between two and ten metres. The underlying gravel would be scooped up and taken to a screening plant where the larger rocks and fine sand would be screened out, leaving a much reduced gravel load for the final recovery plant. Here, at a central location, the gravel would pass through further treatment to finally separate the gem stones.

Back at the mine, the original bedrock of the ancient marine terrace would now be exposed. This was very rugged with clefts and crevices between the rocks which could still contain gravel and diamonds. The theory was that the diamonds were originally washed down the Orange River eons ago. Over the centuries the river mouth wandered up and down this coast depositing its gravel load and the accompanying diamonds on the bedrock. As diamonds have a high specific gravity they tended to deposit beneath the gravel at the bottom of the rock cavities. The company suctioned out these ancient deposits with a type of giant vacuum cleaner.

The final treatment was by the lashing gangs who went in there with a small brush and dust pan to sweep up any remaining precious stones. It was said that when the gangs were finished with a particular area you could eat off the rock and not consume a speck of dust. Originally each worker in these teams was given a flat bonus depending on the number of stones collected. This worked well until some bright spark discovered that a whack with a rock could easily break up a larger gem stone, thus increasing the number handed in and pushing up the bonus payment. After that demonstration of initiative the bonus system was quickly changed to avoid the rash of broken gems. Each worker was issued with a tin, similar to a child's moneybox, in which the stone could be dropped but not removed. Boys will be boys.

WHAT WAS ON OFFER.

I was told that within reason I could chose whatever equipment I wanted and build whatever surgeries I needed. In addition it would become company policy to spread the dental service to Kleinzee, a company town further south, and to Port Nolloth. The State Diamond Mines at Alexander Bay were also interested in having my services. This I would be allowed as a private practice for a limited amount of my company time (a day every two weeks). The prospects were getting better and better. It was beginning to look enticing from my point of view.

I had already noticed on a ward round that some patients showed gross dental pathology. Dennis informed me that new Ovambo employees had probably never in their lives been examined by a medical doctor or dentist. Clearly there was huge potential for pathological research. I was also looking for more experience in trauma surgery of the head and neck which was an interest of mine and was not getting much opportunity in Cape Town. The ongoing mine accidents could potentially give me further scope in the field of maxillofacial surgery. At CDM these cases were normally flown out to Johannesburg at great expense. If I could handle them it would be of great benefit to CDM and certainly give me the surgical experience of a lifetime

The initial monetary reward was not great but coupled with a free furnished house, a company car with fuel and service, and free education for the children to senior school level it was looking better. The conditions also included six weeks holiday a year, six months leave after five years service with an additional six months study leave on application, making it possible to study uninterrupted for a year plus the opportunity to attend postgraduate courses at local University on an annual basis.

While I was mulling over how I would adjust to full time hospital service, Peggy was being given the grand tour of the attributes of life in Oranjemund; the hairdressing salon, the company store, the library, churches, sporting facilities and the social club. When I rejoined her at the guest house in the late afternoon I could sense that my day had been more successful than hers. That evening we had a quiet dinner with Dr Johnson and his medical officers. Everybody seemed content with their working environment and all the hospital staff appeared to be a happy working team and enjoying their social life in the community. Still our doubts persisted.

Deep down we both loathed the idea of giving up the Cape Town practice for which we had both worked so hard. It would mean leaving all our newly-made friends in Pinelands where we were very happy. Mark had been born there and it was where we had just moved into our first house after years of apartment living. Now this seemingly marvellous career opportunity meant making some tough choices. Early the following morning we flew back to Cape Town. I had been given a two week period to make my decision. The company, under pressure from the local community, was in a hurry to get the dental service going.

Oranjemund was a young community with a high number of children, many presenting with dental problems. We had picked up in the gossip that some of the husbands were proud of the fact that apart from Egypt, Oranjemund had the highest birth rate in Africa. The cause for this claim, according to the wives, was the power station siren. This was blown at 6am every morning to ensure that the workers would not miss the buses which transported them to the mine. Another contributory factor, it seemed, was that there was no television. If a child had a dental problem the only alternative was to travel to Cape Town, costly for the parents and not efficient for the work place. An itinerary dentist paid a visit every two months or so which was not satisfactory.

The following two weeks were charged with tension, indecision and lack of sleep. My dental partner in the practice was more than a little upset with the thought of my leaving the practice at such short notice. He demanded penalties which according to our agreement he had every right to expect. Big brother CDM said come, we will pay.
Still we dithered, the deadline loomed and finally we had to choose. We made our final decision by tabulating all the advantages of going back into hospital service and a life in Oranjemund in the left hand column and the disadvantages in the right hand column. The list showed a long list in the left hand column and only a few on the right side of the page. The die was cast.  We were off to a new life in Namibia with still some fear and trepidation; were we making the right choice?

LIFE IN ORANJEMUND

To make life even more complicated our friend, Kay Hartle from England, decided to visit us at this time. As it turned out she proved to be very useful in helping us in our packing and preparations to leave. Mark had been born a few months earlier which limited Peggy's ability to cope with the demands of giving up our Pinelands home. Fortunately there was little to pack apart from our clothes as we would be moving into a fully furnished home. Our few sticks of furniture were disposed of by private sale. It was decided that Peggy and young Mark would fly to Oranjemund while Kay, Chris and I would make the journey by car. By this time we were the proud owners of a big, lumbering two-tone black and white Pontiac. The idea of leaving it dormant in a garage for most of the year was a depressing thought but this was compensated by the offer of a brand new company car awaiting me in Oranjemund - at zero running costs.

I cannot recall the sequence of our arrival. I have a feeling that Peggy and Mark got there first and were met by the Johnsons They spent the night in the company guest house left to the tender mercies of dear Otto's gastronomic extravaganza. We arrived the next afternoon to a hive of activity in our designated 5th Avenue house. Peggy was overwhelmed by the generosity of our new neighbours and hospital staff members. The kitchen fridge was filled with meat, fresh fruit, vegetables, beer and wine. There were fresh flowers all over the house with a stack of welcoming cards. Before I could catch my breath a garage official pulled up. He called for my signature on a clipboard and handed me the keys to a brand new car, parked outside the front gate. The generosity and wonderful sense of belonging to the community was beyond belief. Even a cooked hot meal was delivered by a thoughtful neighbour as the sun went down.

The geologist Hans Merensky predicted in 1909 that diamonds would be found on the west coast of what was then South West Africa and also south of the Orange River. He went on to prove it 17 years later by discovering the diamond deposits at Alexander Bay and said that further riches also lay north. His discovery made him a millionaire but his assertions of diamond fields on the north bank were contradicted by a renowned German geologist who came to investigate. He dug investigatory trenches and took samples but found nothing. He pronounced that there were no diamonds on the northern bank. Geologists are by nature a very categorical group. The world believed him.

That is everybody except Sir Ernest Oppenheimer who rightly surmised that what had happened on the southern bank must surely have also occurred on the north side. He backed his hunch by taking a mining option on the northern bank all the way up to Luderitz some 180kms to the north. His company Anglo American, closely linked to De Beers Diamond Mines, has always been very secretive. We can only surmise the mining rights had not been expensive. Anglo sent in their own team of geologists who quickly discovered that the trenches opened by the German expert had missed one of the richest diamond gem stone discoveries of modern times by a matter of metres.

How this diamond mine was eventually developed is another story. It only remains for me to describe the town as we first found it in 1960. Viewed from the air it was a square in the Namib Desert a few kilometres north of the mouth of the Orange River not far from the coast. The cold Benguela current which arises in Antarctica brushes the shore line here and gives the town a temperate and sometimes damp climate. The southern side of the square is protected by a few rows of Port Jackson willows, a botanical species of small tree robust enough to withstand the adverse windy conditions that prevail in the area.

The first row of houses inside the protected border was First Avenue. There were 14 avenues from west to east. I have forgotten how many there were in a north/south direction. Roughly in the centre of the town was the power station which at that time was reputedly the largest diesel power station in Africa and possibly one the noisiest if you lived in close vicinity. At that time the senior staff - the mine elite - lived in Fifth and Sixth Avenues. If you had a house in either of these you had "arrived" according to the mine class distinction. The assistant general manager lived in No 1, Sixth Avenue. At the time of our arrival the incumbent of this august post was a man with a wife who was as deaf as a post. After a surgical operation her hearing was restored. Her house of privilege located as it was within hearing distance of the power station gave her sleepless nights so she resorted to ear plugs.

When the La Trobes arrived, never previously having lived on a mine, we could not have cared a tinker's toss about who lived where. Five years of being down and out students and the struggle of making ends meet during the initial years of practice building had knocked the stuffing of any delusions of grandeur we might have had or notions of our own importance. All we wanted was acceptance in the community to rear our growing family and to make friends with whom we chose.

One day Peggy came home from the Ladies hairdresser very amused. She just mentioned in passing to the lady under the adjacent hair dryer that she had been surprised with the delivery of a new hard rubber dust bin to our house. The lady's immediate response was "that's obviously a staff dust bin, we only get a metal bin." A sequel to the high decibel power station and the town's reputed high rate of birth was that the wives petitioned the General Manager to delay the early morning sounding of the power station siren from 6am to 7pm. This would effectively give their husbands less time to catch the transport to the mine. This request was agreed to but it was doubtful if it altered the birth statistics in any significant manner.

The overburden of desert sand over the diamondiferous gravels varied from two to perhaps ten metres deep. This was usually removed by massive caterpillar earthmoving equipment, working in teams of six or seven machines. These machines had replaced the prewar use of rotary bucket excavators imported from Germany. The rotary excavators or scoops had stripped the overburden at 600 tons per hour. Each carried its own electricity supply in the form of an onboard engine room with a diesel generator. As such they were highly efficient though by the mid-Fifties they were worn out and had been replaced by the American equipment which was less effective. When postwar German engineering reached full swing by the Sixties it was turning out a giant format of the original rotary bucket excavator for use in open cast coal mines, the difference being that the new model did not generate its own electricity. Somehow that slight detail was overlooked. The engineering consultants to the mine nevertheless ordered a trial machine.

Built in Lubeck and colloquially known as the Lubecker, the scoop finally arrived. When assembled on site it was certainly a gigantic piece of earthmoving equipment. Oops, it didn't have its own power supply but no matter, just hook it into the power station. After all that's what the power station is for, to supply power, right? Unfortunately the extra load caused a power shortage in the town and all the housewives were instructed to switch off their stoves. Few were amused. A quick heads-up arrived at a solution: throw out all the electric stoves and replace them with gas. So said, so done in short order. Within a few months the great machine was doing its thing out in the desert and every home in Oranjemund had a gas stove, complete with a set of exterior reserve gas bottles. Only a company the size of CDM could afford such expensive mistakes.
When we had been at Oranjemund for a few months Peggy quite innocently asked the General Manager at a guest house party:"Why do we all have gas instead of electric stoves?"  There was a deathly hush.

The CDM office was adjacent to the main office block. The guest house, hospital, school and sports grounds were all in the same location. The single quarters and its mess and squash courts were one avenue to the east followed by the main business centre which housed the company store, bank, library, the bars, recreation club, cinema, photographic club, post office, hair dresser and butcher shop all bunched together. The bowling greens were in the same vicinity but the golf course was some distance out of town along the banks of the Orange River. The sailing clubhouse was at the "Pink Pan" – so called because of its colour as a former salt pan but now much expanded in area and kept at high level by constant pumping of sea water - some distance past the golf course and next to the beach. This was a great spot for weekend socializing.

The entire town was double fenced with the outer gates locked at sunset. These were some way from town so there was never any feeling of being locked in. It had to be said that the facilities were well above the average standard for a town of its size. Crime was non-existent but we had a SA police station. The station commander was a sergeant who led an idyllic life. If you wanted to get him worried, you would inform him that you had heard he was to be transferred. It was, indeed, in the main a very happy and satisfied community. 

Life in Oranjemund as its dental surgeon.

The next day I went to the hospital where I officially met all the medical staff and nurses at a welcoming morning tea. There were already people at the old dental surgery trying to make appointments. A dental nurse had been temporally appointed. The dental surgery was ill-equipped but we did what we could for those with acute problems. There were a surprising number of children suffering from infective and decayed deciduous teeth that were beyond repair.

After consultation with one of the medical officers I decided to admit the worst cases to hospital to carry out these extractions under a general anaesthetic. The dental health was so bad that one could only describe the operation as a slum clearance. On that first theatre list we attended to five little children. No wonder management had been so keen to appoint a permanent dental officer.
The medical officer who administered the anaesthetic during my first morning's work in theatre remarked that if I thought the standard oral hygiene of children's deciduous teeth was poor in Oranjemund I had a shock coming when I visited Kleinzee, a company mine town on the coast about 120 kms to the south. Two days later I flew down to Kleinzee on the company plane piloted by Jack Campbell who turned out to be our next door neighbour in 5th Ave.

There I met Dr K for the first time; a mountain of a delightful Irishman. To get some idea of his size I took his stethoscope off his desk and plugged it into my ears. The business end of this diagnostic aid fell onto the floor. His car parked at the Kleinzee gate was a rare Bristol coupe which he drove around the dirt roads of Namaqualand like a madman. I was the house guest of Dr & Mrs K that evening. Next morning I was awoken by the pop of a bottle of champers which Dr K brought to my room with biscuits from Fortnum & Mason, Piccadilly London. This, he claimed, was a better starter to the day than coffee and in any case Namaqualand water was only fit to be turned into holy water by a priest.

I tipped most of my champagne into the toilet, bearing in mind that we had about a dozen mice in the trap (as Dr K described the children who had been admitted to the small Kleinzee hospital the night before for my attention.
The hospital did not have a surgical theatre and a labour ward was to be used as a substitute. A small field type of mobile theatre table, light and Boyles anaesthetic machine had been arranged. The nursing staff had organized and sterilized all my instruments. K and I entered the labour ward suitably clothed in green surgical clobber. All these little boys and girls who had had nothing to eat or drink since the night before and full of apprehension of what was to happen to them were not in the best of moods, to put it mildly. There was much weeping and gnashing of rotten teeth.

The first poor little soul arrived in the arms of a nursing sister who last saw the inside of a surgical theatre in her probationer days at nursing college, probably twenty years before. The pleading desperate call for "Mummy" set off all the other pediatric mice in the adjoining ward where the bawling was rising to a crescendo. Things were getting out of hand and I knew it. Three nurses finally got the terrified little patient flat on its back on the table. Dr K, seemingly unflappable, was busy spraying ethyl chloride onto a surgical gauze throat pack. He managed to get a mason gag between the gnashing teeth to hold the kid's mouth open and then placed the freezing throat pack at the back of the patient's mouth. After about three breaths all resistance ceased. Dr K turned to me and said: "Get going".
Never had I worked so fast to complete a surgical procedure. Fortunately there was little bleeding. Within a minute the decayed teeth were extracted. Once all the debris had been removed I slipped out the throat pack and got the patient on his side as quickly as possible. I breathed a sigh of relief when the child coughed and started to cry again.
"Let's go back to my office while they get ready for the next one," said Dr K.
"If it's alright with you I am going to cancel the rest of today's cases," I told him once we'd reached the office. "With respect I am not happy with the use of ethyl chloride as a safe anaesthetic and would rather refer these patients for treatment in the surgical theatre in Oranjemund where we have the experienced staff for these surgical procedures."
"I've been using it for these cases for thirty years with no complications, "said Dr K, slightly stung.
"I accept that," I said. "But I don't think I would be as lucky as you". 
I knew that ethyl chloride had been known in some cases to result in cardiac arrest.
Dr K retired within a few months. He was of the old school, had served rural communities in various parts of the world for most of his medical career and looked after the needs of his patients to the best of his ability. In his day a doctor would give an anaesthetic with a linen mask over the patient's face, a bottle of chloroform in one pocket of his white coat and a bottle of ether in the other. It was a bit of a hit and miss affair. They had grown accustomed to taking their patients to death's door in order to ensure muscular relaxation and felt no pain when under going surgical procedures. However, times had changed and I had been trained differently. It was time for Dr K to move on.

In the fullest of time these little ones were brought to the Oranjemund hospital where their ordeal of being anaesthetized was a little more humane and less traumatic. In Oranjemund legend had it that an old Scottish doctor in earlier times attempted to give an anaesthetic to an overweight British expat said to be suffering from appendicitis. The old Scot put the mask over the patient's face and told him to start counting. Both ether and chloroform are quickly absorbed into fatty tissue hence it took quite a large amount of these drugs to render such a patient unconscious. The story goes that when the patient had counted to eighty he decided enough was enough and sat up on the table.
"I'll go to Cape Town to have the frigging thing out before you buggers have to shave me again," he said, tearing off the mask.

During the war an old German doctor was required to work at the Oranjemund hospital in lieu of internment. He was remunerated for this work on a piece meal basis by the company. Nature being what it is the old man developed a predilection for doing appendectomies on Ovambo patients. Anybody who complained of a gut ache lost his appendix to the scalpel. The doctor also had a theory that the wound would heal faster if the sutured incision was kept under the weight of a building brick. In his era it was normal to see an entire ward of Ovambo patients all lying on their backs, each with an eight pound brick on the right side of their abdomen. Even fifteen years later when I was in Oranjemund some of the older Ovambos with a bellyache would come to the hospital and ask for "the brick".

In my time there was an eccentric medico at Alexander Bay who had a thing about patients who complained of a headache. He saw all headaches as a lead-swinging excuse for missing work so he had the mine workshop make a special chair to his design which he kept next to his desk in the consulting room. It had all the trimmings of an American penitentiary electric chair, with straps to retain arms, legs and abdomen. Over the back of the chair was a frame that suspended a pulley about two metres high. The end over the chair held a harness to hold the patient's head snugly below the patient's lower jaw. The harness was connected to a nylon rope that went over the pulley and down to a car hydraulic jack under the desk which the doctor could pump with his foot.

The first unfortunate patient who complained of a headache after the chair was installed was fitted with the head brace. The crusty old doctor then gave the car jack a good pump that lifted the patient into a state of cervical suspension with his bum levitating just clear of the seat, then left him in this state for a good ten minutes. Within 24 hours no one, but no one, ever again complained of a headache. That remained the situation until he retired from the Mine.

The same doctor believed that a surgical incision, be it an inch or twelve, all healed in the same time. On one occasion I was waiting to go into theatre at Alexander Bay to repair a mine accident jaw fracture. The crusty surgeon was busy carrying out a caesarian section on a local lass, assisted by one of my medical colleagues from the Oranjemund Hospital. I was waiting my turn in the adjoining doctor's room just outside the operating theatre. Suddenly the door from the theatre flew open. In came my associate tightly holding a bleeding index finger on his right hand.
"The old bastard has cut me" he said, hurriedly trying to remove his rubber glove to staunch the flow of blood.

The old boy always made incisions wider than expected. Assistants soon learned that if you did not react in time to get your hands out of the way you paid the price.  While on the subject of eccentric practitioners I might as well recount the trials and tribulations of the itinerant dentist who worked in the area prior to my appointment at CDM. I never met the gentleman. What I know of him are events and stories as related to me by some of his ex-patients.

His main dental interest was prosthodontics, the art of making false teeth. By the same token he must have had little interest in conserving decayed teeth or maybe it was that his Namaqualander patients were not interested in keeping their teeth. The fact was that the average resident at Alexander Bay had little evidence of dental decay in his or her mush. Namaqualanders did not travel. Few strayed far from their place of birth. Most of the area's water supply contained high levels of sodium fluoride. A content of fluoride at 2 parts per million (ppm), reduces the rate of tooth decay dramatically. In fact, as a public health measure, many communities around the world artificially introduce small quantities of sodium fluoride into their drinking water to inhibit the spread of dental caries.
Water in Namaqualand and adjoining Namibia is a chronically scarce commodity that comes mainly from bore holes or underground rivers. This water has a high content of sodium fluoride averaging around 12 ppm with a concomitant high level of ordinary salt

In Cape Town one could always spot Namaqualanders in a restaurant; they add salt to their coffee. While they develop little tooth decay, the high level of fluoride stains the enamel of their natural teeth with unattractive deep brown spots. Until I came along they'd never heard of the crowning of teeth so the only remedy for them was to have all their teeth extracted and have dentures made which was tragic but it was right up the street of the itinerant tooth jockey.

With the diamond mines along the coast of Namaqualand and Namibia the art of IDB (illicit diamond buying) was prevalent. Even predikants of the Calvinistic Dutch Reform Church preached from their pulpits that it was not a sin to gather these precious stones and use them or sell them for a profit. After all, if God had put them in the ground and man took them out how could this be a sin? The moguls of Kimberley thought differently and therein lies the rub.

This tradition is borne out by the fact that a young girl from Namaqualand will not even entertain a proposal of marriage from a suitor unless he has, at least, been suspected of IDB. Another interesting custom there was that in order to look pretty on her wedding night the girl would have a full dental clearance and get herself a set of teeth, which like the stars, came out at night.

This then, was the bread and butter of the itinerant dentist. The story goes that on his first visit he took loads of impressions of many patients. From these impressions his dental technician cast plaster of Paris models and hot footed it back to Cape Town to make the clackers. Little did the dentist realize that among Namaqualanders with their inherent lack of interest in travel there was a fair amount of in-breeding. In fact in the entire territory there were only four main surnames. .

Imagine the quandary of the dental technician when he ultimately discovered he had eight full dentures for the Van Zyls, six for Van Wyks, ten for Van der Merwes, four for Goosens and one for a Meneer Burke. Mr Burke who could not speak a word of English turned out to be descended from an expat, an Irish stowaway put ashore in his birthday suit by an irate sailing ship captain around 1842. He obviously met the girl of his dreams and multiplied.

The itinerant dentist was a resourceful man. He packed the dentures in separate boxes under each family name and mailed them to the manager of the Alexander Bay Social Club. The manager was requested to put an announcement on the club noticeboard that teeth had arrived and were ready for collection on a certain evening. Each individual box was to be placed on separate tables from where the various toothless cousins could find a set that fitted. The rest of the club members must have had a hilarious time watching the operation and Mr Burke who always thought he was something special had his notion confirmed. His teeth were in a box all on their own.
Had the itinerant dentist but realized, the resident of Alexander Bay had long ago sorted out a means of identification with the use of nicknames.

Life in at Alexander Bay was further complicated by the fact that there were two living areas, dubbed the out and inner camps. The outer camp families lived relatively free of security problems as they never went into the mining area. Only their husbands went into the mine to work. They were the privileged few; managers, engineers, geologists, doctors etc.
The rest of the community lived in the mining enclosure in their state-built houses and remained there unless they came out to go on leave. The mine hospital was situated in the inner camp which was of significance to me when I was called out at night to attend to mine facial injuries. Both mines normally operated a night shift.

So there was no confusion in the community as to which Goosen or Van Zyl etc was referred to. It didn't matter in which camp he or she worked or lived as long as you had the correct nickname. For instance my nurse at Alexander Bay was a Mrs Hettie Van Zyl. There were perhaps ten other Mrs Van Zyls in the area which would have been rather confusing if it hadn't been for the fact that Hettie's husband was a tall blond gentleman with the name of William (Willem in Afrikaans). His nickname was "wit Willie" (white William). So she became Mrs Wit Willie and their three children also bore the same name. The English translation is a bit of an embarrassment as Willie signifies a diminutive William; white willy speaks for itself. This was not a sensitive issue at Alexander Bay for nobody spoke English. Even a Burk with an "E" couldn't understand a word of it. They were distinguished from other families of Van Zyls.  The head of another house of this family had a very wide mouth. His nickname was "Waenhuis Bek" or Wagon House Mouth.

A new arrival at Alexander Bay would rapidly be branded with his or her nickname. A new young doctor who was almost two metres tall was appointed to the mine hospital. His nickname was "Hemel Besem". Freely translated, it was heaven brush. My nickname was never used in my presence. It changed from time to time. I was usually referred to as "Tang" (Pliers).

Wow  Bob ,, most interesting reading ,,, knew the La Trobes ,  most interesting info  about his  eco  innovations that  we  were not aware of  , I have been considering the  composting toilet for my upstairs bathroom ..
a humorous story about  the La Trobes I recall was a very nice prolific  bush Mrs La Trobe was lovingly caring for  in flower  bed in  front of her house  ,, leaves vaguely resembling  tomato , was  kindly told by PPJ  that it was in fact a   weed      plant ...  how the seed got there is a mystery , via the  compost or someone throwing away pips after cleaning  their stash ?? 
This  story  could well  be one of the  Tall Tales  that circulated the town , but yes  it went around

Wow! Thanks Bob & Brian,

I know a lot of people on this forum, get a fright when they see a long post like this and then skip it....... IF YOU REALLY ENJOY TALES OF ORANJEMUND from YESTERYEAR....... Take the time to READ THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I actually read half at work this afternoon and could'nt wait to get home to read the rest....... All I can say is WOW!  what a flashback and a laugh!!!!!

Michael , nothing frightening  about it ,,,  its hard reading it on the screen ,, what I normally do is  print  it out
( on previously used paper on the other  side .. i'm pretty anal about that one ,,, my staff are only allowed to use  one side printed paper   for stats etc  .no fresh paper supplied ,,)  and then I read the hard copy .. been too busy today to completely read  over and over , but yes fascinating reading ... actually wonder if the doc La Trobe was around at the time of my mountain expidition ..  Bob if he still around  does he have a recollection ... ???

Hi Sandy,
                Will certainly pass your query to Brian. There's a lot more to come but the feedback suggests it is being posted at too great a length. Will cut future posts shorter.
Regards,
Bob.

@ Bob  you got the newspaper  clips on site from the  boy on the mountain post them to him ...  I just have this  fond remembrance of Dr La Trobe  and family ...    as said  I print out and read at liesure ... no need to  shorten too much ...

Come  Bob   ,, we waiting  for more  ////

Indeed we are.....  pls

THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE TOWN AND ITS MENTALITY

The pride and joy of the town's Park's and Gardens Department and the town hub was an oversized circle of grass in front of the Consolidated Diamond Mine's office on its west side. The throbbing power station was situated on the south side. Beyond the CDM office towards the coast was the security office. Further than that was verboten territory on the way to the mining operation. To the north were the guest houses, the hospitals, Catholic chapel, the school and the Mule Derby track and pavilion. Finally to the east were the interdenominational church, the swimming pool, amateur theatre, squash courts, and single quarters. The bars, social club and cinema were all on the main drag as were the company store, post office, butcher shop, gents and ladies hairdresser etc conveniently clustered together; planned and orderly.
The town planning had been ideal. Of necessity it had to be so. Most of the work force had no transport so all the facilities were all within reasonable walking distance.  Oranjemund had facilities above and beyond those expected of a town of its size. It needed to be so in order to attract employees to leave city living for life in a desert where sometimes the climatic conditions were not ideal. This cradle to the grave support (yes, the town had maternity facilities as well as its own cemetery) helped buffer residents against the profound psychological effect of being fenced in and confined. The majority, it seemed, coped well.
What really stuck in the craw of the average miner and artisan employee was the lack of personal transport. Though he might be the proud owner of the latest American or European wheels, they were languishing and rusting in the company garage some 7km away on the other side of the security fence. At times when carting home a heavy basket of groceries this, quite naturally, burnt the butt of many a wife. Likewise it was not easy to explain to a child why Daddy did not have a company car while others had this benefit. Even with all the advantages of living in a cashless society this must have been difficult to accept.
The benefit of never having the need for cash in one's pocket could at times prove embarrassing. After a few months in Oranjemund I flew to Cape Town on a private matter and walked through the arrivals section heading for the Avis car hire.  I put my hand in my pocket for my wallet. No wallet, not a bank note, no coin, not a brass farthing. I had to suffer the ignominy of appearing like a down-and-out confidence trickster trying to bum a ten cent piece to make a phone call. The first few attempts were brushed off. Finally someone took pity on me and gave me a rand. I had never been so totally embarrassed in my life. I got some change from a tobacconist stall and phoned a dental supplier to fetch me from the airport. He thought it was story of the week. He still continued to laugh when I informed him he would have to fund my stay in town until I could organise a refund from my bank.
"That's OK," he grinned. "I'm going to dine out on this for a month."
My company car was serviced every two weeks. It would always be filled with petrol before it was delivered back to me. When we went on our first leave from CDM I filled the car with petrol in Springbok. The astonished petrol attendant was shocked when I just drove off without paying. I realised my mistake on the outskirts of the town and drove back to the garage full of apologies.
"I thought so; you are from Oranjemund," was his only comment.
Times have changed. Today Oranjemund is an open town. All personnel can have their own cars in the town. The fence is now between the town and the mine which must be a huge improvement.

For anybody who grew up on a mine the strict class distinction might well have been seen as just the normal run of things but we found this hierarchical way of living quite constricting. We were both products of families who still remembered the hardships of difficult economic times of the 1930's. At the squash courts I met some wonderful players and potential friends. In the beginning after a great game I would invite my opponent home for a beer. I was mystified when he would demur, if he was a so-called daily paid worker, in case his boss was at our house. The problem eventually sorted itself out but in the beginning it was very upsetting.
Likewise there was always tension within the senior staff establishment. Who got invitations to guest house parties and who did not was a major issue, particularly if top brass was coming down from Johannesburg. And if the Oppenheimers were to attend, well......  Wives were particularly jealous of their husband's path of promotion compared to others in the same department. It was shades of my days at General Motors so many years before. However in Oranjemund the situation was more extreme. Everyone was labelled by their job description but we were in a unique situation. I was one of a kind and not in competition with anybody. I had no designs on a post at 44 Main Street Johannesburg.
Although the town was unique for its security aspects it was also, despite being just a few square kilometres in the desert, uniquely situated on fertile soil. The mouth of the Orange River had shifted up and down this coast over aeons of time, delivering not just a treasure trove of diamonds but also a covering of rich alluvial soil from the hinterland. The temperate coastal climate was ideal for growing a wide range of crops; just add water. The company did that in abundance (no water meters measured anyone's consumption). The results were amazing. Though Oranemund was famed for its diamonds, few beyond the gardening clubs knew it was also famous for its roses. The company's Parks and Garden's department played a big part in softening the harshness of the desert with shelter belts, tree planting on all streets, and small parks here and there, not forgetting first rate sports grounds and if not a world class cricket pitch at least up there with the best. Fifth Avenue was planted with olive trees which in later years bore a rich harvest. In most home gardens it was fascinating sight to see Mediterranean fruits such as grapes growing cheek by jowl with tropical mangoes and avocadoes.
At Beauvallon, on the opposite bank of the river, the company threw a fortune at a farming project with a profusion of the latest agricultural equipment for contouring, ploughing and preparing the land for production. It soon produced enough vegetables and fruit to keep the town self sufficient. The farm manager was Danie Pollard, commonly known to one and all as Oom (Uncle) Polly. This perhaps minor position belied the fact that he was a world authority on desert succulent plants. A visiting German botanist was very impressed with our Oom Polly when he showed him nearly four hundred of these fascinating plants that he never knew existed.
Polly's other claim to fame was his method of collecting wild antelope, particularly gemsbok, for the De Beers game farms near Kimberley. He would follow the buck at a gentle pace over the plains until it stopped from exhaustion and sat on the ground. His gang of labourers would cover the long antlers with a thick blanket thus securing the head of the beast while Oom Polly administered good slug of South African brandy to the thirsty buck. It was then loaded onto a truck with care and secured for the ride back to the farm. There it would be held in a camp with adequate grazing for a few days. Oom Polly had a way with wild game. Within a matter of days he would have them coming to the camp fence on his call to get their daily shot of cognac. Before the flight to Kimberley he would give them a double dose. Within a half hour they would be ready for loading. He would quietly lead them to the truck and then the plane talking to them all the time. Once secured in the body of the fuselage on comfortable blankets he would give them a farewell shot of the hard stuff and send them on their way. They apparently slept like babes all the way to Kimberley. On arrival they were still bemused enough to be led docilely to a holding pen. Captured game is always highly excitable and stressed by the trauma of the chase and ultimate capture. Tragically some die as a result. I believe the Pollard method never resulted in a fatality.

Here is the fourth instalment of Brian La Trobe's intriguing memoir. It covers the setup of the new dental clinic and introduces some characters of those days.


THE BUILDING AND EQUIPPING OF THE NEW DENTAL SURGERIES.

I soon learnt at CDM that if something was required urgently all associated departments of design, engineering, construction and supervision by a clerk of works did not mess about. It got done. I also came to learn that once the general manager had made a decision he did not want to be bothered with detail. After the initial design discussions for the dental clinics were completed and plans were drawn for approval I pointed out that as the garage for the very smart Mercedes Benz ambulance would of necessity have to be moved. I also added helpfully that it might save some expense to incorporate part of the concrete slab and roof into the new surgery. The chief engineer looked at me as if I'd just crawled out of cheese.
"Listen Doc" he said. "The boss man said I had to finish this frigging job ASAP. So do me a favour, you stick to teeth and let me get on with the job."
To the Clerk of works he added: "Bulldoze the frigging garage, throw a new slab, build a new garage somewhere else and get on with it."
I got the message and concentrated on ordering the equipment. It took a while to grow accustomed to this attitude of don't mess about, get things done and to hell with the expense. The reality was that the cost of a couple of dental surgeries and equipment was, in the overall context of the mines colossal turnover, small cheese indeed. When I mentioned this to Dr Johnson he recalled an incident when he first arrived at the hospital He had noticed that the meat truck which brought meat from the abattoir to the butcher shop had a slightly tatty canvas cover. Putting on his public health hat he stormed into the GM's office demanding an immediate new cover for the meat truck. The GM, Stan Devlin, who was busy writing a letter never even looked up from his writing pad.
"Buy a new truck. Good day," he said.
Johnson left, totally deflated. The GM had a reputation that he was always accessible but heaven help you if you disturbed him without either notice or good reason. Needless to say the town got a new, fully enclosed, meat truck.
I now set about the utter luxury of acquiring the best type of dental equipment money could buy. The company plane flew me first to Cape Town and then to Johannesburg to consult with the dental supply houses to see what was available. The methodology for making a reservation on the company plane had a very fixed set of rules. There were two aircraft stationed in Oranjemund. The largest was a twin engine De Havilland Dove, a six-seater with cockpit for both pilot and co-pilot. It had an on board toilet at the back of the aircraft. The engines were water-cooled and designed with the oil sump at the top of the engine. Oil flowed through the engine by gravity and was then pumped back to the top sump. It was an extremely quiet aircraft.
The second plane was a twin engine air-cooled Beechcraft Bonanza which seated three or at a pinch - four passengers and the pilot. It was a powerful aircraft with a lusty roar, typical of air-cooled engines and the faster of the two.
The De Haviland Dove was the GM's and his wife's plane of choice. It was only available on rare occasions but one could catch a ride if the "old man" happened to be going to the same destination as you. On occasion the Anglo American Gulf Stream turbo jet stationed in Johannesburg would fly to Oranjemund bringing the company's chief consultant and his entourage. Such visits were akin to the Second Coming together with all the angels and archangels. In the eyes of some an invitation to a guest house reception for such exalted visitors was to die for. This sublime and almost orgasmic fulfilment was only surpassed when the Oppenheimers headed up the list of visiting dignitaries.
It happened now and then that the Oppenheimer's crème de la creme aircraft would be in Oranjemund with some spare seats back to Johannesburg. On one occasion the entire plane was totally empty when I needed to get an Ovambo patient to Johannesburg for complicated surgical treatment. If I was gobsmacked by the occurrence the Ovambo must have thought he was going to Heaven. As he could not speak English I had no way of getting his verbal impressions but his facial expression indicated he was on his way to his eternal reward. When this luxurious turbo jet ascended into the sky the exquisite look of wonder on his face demonstrated in no uncertain terms that he thought he was going to meet his Maker.
As you entered this plane there was a long bar down the one side. Various expensive bottles of the hard stuff nestled in cushioned pods to prevent movement during take off and landing. Seating was arranged in batches of four. Seats turned towards each other at the flick of a switch. Hit another button and a table came from nowhere for card games and exotic meals. Mrs Oppenheimer was very fond of this particular plane. Years later when her husband Harry was given the freedom of the city of Grahamstown I was Deputy Mayor at the time and found myself seated next to Mrs Oppenheimer during the celebratory luncheon. I enquired of the whereabouts of "Sport" Van Heerden the Anglo Chief Pilot who had just retired. We were bosom buddies while I worked for CDM. On visits he would while away his free time in the town, between flights, in my dental chair cashing in on some high class crown and bridge work which in Oranjemund came free of charge.
Mrs Oppenheimer reminisced about this plane with genuine appreciation of its comfort. When it reached the end of its useful life in the mid 1980's the Anglo Board because of a temporary downturn delayed its replacement. Bridget was not amused. On a subsequent flight with the Oppenheimers in this aging but still much loved plane Sport was about to start his approach to land. The plane's flaps refused to drop. He reported the malfunction to his august passengers and reassured them that all would be well. They need not be concerned. He would just have to land the plane a bit faster than normal. Mrs Oppenheimer related to me that the landing was a "bit hairy". When the plane had come to a halt she said she turned to Harry and said "To hell with the Board, Harry. Just buy the new one yourself." He probably said "Yes dear." At the time the replacement costs would have been about $30m.
I recall that when we landed at Johannesburg international Airport with that over-awed Ovambo so many years ago we had a lift into town with Sport in his Mini Minor.  While zipping down the highway dwarfed by large trucks and monstrous pantechnicons the mini hardly came up to the height of their large screaming tyres. Sport philosophised that in the air while flying the Gulf Stream he was a Greek God. He looked around at the crush of traffic and added: "Down here in the mini I'm just a goddamn Greek."
Much later a De Havilland 110 jet aircraft joined the Anglo Stable. It was nothing like the luxurious Gulf Stream. It was faster but could not reach Oranjemund in one hop and needed to land in Kimberley to refuel. Sport flew to the UK to do an upgrade on the new jet and was at De Havilland for three months on the familiarisation course. The poor chap was hugely embarrassed on his first visit to Oranjemund in the new aircraft when he was unable to restart the jet for the flight home.  A technician eventually had to fly from Johannesburg to get it going. Sport was not amused when a week later I mailed him a primus picker, the old-fashioned type with a fine wire tip at right angles to the metal handle, used to unblock the paraffin jet when clogged with carbon. My note suggested that every competent jet pilot should carry one of these in his top pocket.
If you had a regular need for an aircraft such as my twice a month visit to treat patients at Kleinzee it took priority. If no aircraft was available one had to slum it and go by SAA. If someone else's need was considered greater than mine for Kleinzee I would have to go by company car, about a 200km return trip. In the early days of establishing the dental clinic I seemed to have an additional priority on the plane, probably the directive of the GM. I felt like a king. The word soon got out amongst dental suppliers that the newly appointed dental officer to Consolidated Diamond Mines was in the market place for some serious dental equipment. They soon surrounded me like moths around a flame.
One of the rather over-eager salesmen who has long since been pushing up daisies assured me if I placed the entire order with his company he would arrange two buxom ladies of different hue in my hotel room for the duration of my Johannesburg stay. In addition with some fancy foot work with the invoicing I could make a nice pile on the side.
"And if I did that, "I told him, "I would be in your back pocket for the rest of my life. Get lost".
On return to CDM I informed Stan Devlin about the offer. The GM's only comment: "Just as well you told me. If I had found out later from another source you would have been fired."
Ultimately all the necessary equipment was ordered. Some came from local stock with the rest on order from the UK, Germany and France. Meantime the building of the new clinic was progressing at an acceptable rate. I was kept occupied with Ovambo clinics and treating dental emergencies with the available equipment. One Ovambo patient brought back an echo of my training days in the UK. He was referred to the hospital from a clinic out on the mine, and presented with a hugely swollen upper lip. An x-ray revealed a large abscess over one of his upper incisor teeth. The offending tooth was completely black and long since dead. He was admitted to hospital, given a shot of penicillin and starved overnight. The following morning he was taken to theatre to drain the abscess. This required a quick incision to get rid of the pus. In those days I had an anaesthetic machine which delivered vinesthene - a rapid-acting, rapid dispersal anaesthetic. The surgeon had perhaps a 30 second window of opportunity to incise the abscess and relieve the pressure. It was ideal for short procedures when operating alone with no additional help.
The patient spoke no English. Through an interpreter he was told that to make his lip better it was necessary to open the abscess. As this would be very sore we were going to "put him to sleep" for a short while so he would not suffer any pain. The mask was placed over his nose. The interpreter told him to breathe normally. Three breaths and he was gone. The incision produced a great emission of pus. Within seconds the patient opened his eyes, conscious but bewildered. He asked the interpreter where the doctor taken him. It was very nice this other place and could the doctor please take him back again? Ovambos came to work at CDM on a year's contract. This man had been away from home for almost that period. He'd had a vivid dream involving some Ovambo female, poor chap.
The day came when with the kind cooperation of Joel's Transport a series of wooden crates of dental equipment arrived in Oranjemund. Dental technicians from Cape Town and Johannesburg flew in for the installation. Everybody was smiling. I was smiling at the safe arrival of the equipment and the technicians were smiling for having landed the most valuable order of their careers and in anticipation of hefty bonuses to come. Within ten days the Oranjemund Dental clinic and the Kleinzee surgery were ready for business. One surprise was that when the packing cases from Germany were opened each contained a well wrapped earthenware bottle of Steinager schnapps; a good marketing ploy to ensure further orders for this enterprising Germany company. This marked the beginning of a lifelong habit: chasing a beer with a glass of ice cold schnapps, the notorious kleine kleine. The earthenware containers served superbly as hot water bottles for many winters to come.
The general population of both Oranjemund and Kleinzee were intrigued and curious at all the activity surrounding the building of the new dental clinic and the arrival and unpacking of the crates. Many made examination appointments just to take a gander at the new dentist and the interior of the clinic. At the same time I decided on a new dress code. After years of seeing nurses in white uniforms I thought it time for a change. The new dental nurses were given a choice of style and four different colours. The colour of the day was left to their discretion as long as everybody pitched in the same colour. I ordered new high necked dental coats in blue with matching pants. In the usual white dental jackets I had always felt like a donkey looking over a white-washed wall.
The first day's patients were intrigued with the new fangled dental chairs that looked more like beds. They explained to their curious neighbours and anybody who would listen that when you sat down the dentist pressed a switch and the back of the chair fell slowly backwards until you were lying flat. The dentist and his nurse sat on either side of your head on little stools on wheels. There were new drills that they seemed to pull from nowhere and the newfangled lights were brilliant and very fancy. As a result of all this propaganda the dental waiting list increased dramatically.
An amusing incident at this time was created by a seven year old child. The mother was German, from Berlin where they are proud of their pure dialect. The father was British-born within the sound of Bow Bells. The little girl took one look at the new styled dental chair and said " Yesus, Ma, kyk net at die lekker stukkie plestik (Jeez Ma, just look at that lovely piece of plastic)."  She was referring to a fitted plastic cover to protect the grey leather of the bottom of the chair. It tickled my sense of humour that both German and Cockney parental influence on the child had lost out to the local Afrikaans dialect.
I also recall an appointment made by the wife of the chief mining superintendent in those early days. The husband was considered to be "rather big cheese." I had met the good lady during our guest house party prior to our arrival in Oranjemund and remembered that she volunteered the information she was a great lover of game biltong, (jerky), and just adored chocolate peppermint crisps. Her dental complaint was that she had no toothache but a very sensitive tongue and her mouth seemed to have more saliva than usual. She had been to see the medical officer who referred her to me.
At the time there was a serious pandemic of foot and mouth disease in the cattle population of the territory. On examination there was little evidence of any clinical disorder in her mouth but there was a mild swelling of her lymph glands at the base of her lower jaw. I enquired if she still ate a lot of biltong. She was surprised that I still remembered her habit but her answer was very positive. "Every day and lots," she said. I told her I was going to take a swab of her mouth and pop next door to the medical laboratory to have it checked out for foot and mouth virus.
"It's rare in humans but it can happen. But don't worry. It's a serious disease in cattle and game but  not in humans, just stop eating biltong for about a week and the symptoms will gradually disappear."
She laughed but within the hour I had a call from a very irate and upset chief superintendent. "How dare you imply that my wife has foot and mouth disease," he ranted. I tried to assure him it was only a possibility and that we should wait for the laboratory tests to come back before passing judgement. The test came back positive. The lady still thought it was a helluva joke and the husband had the good grace to apologise for his behaviour. She stayed off the biltong for about a month then went back to her old habits.
Another incident at Kleinzee a few weeks later amused me but created mayhem for the locals. The night before my planned visit I received a phone call from the mine manager. He had just fractured a front crown while having dinner.  He was to attend a De Beers board meeting in Kimberley the next day. In fact the plane taking me to the mine was scheduled to fly him to Kimberley and pick me up on its return. A few pertinent questions made me realise the crown was an old fashioned one called a steel facing. The back was made of gold with a grove that carried a ceramic front section which had to be cemented into position. I recalled seeing some spare facings from the old dental surgery. The colour might not be a prefect match but anything would be better than nothing.
Next morning we duly arrived in Kleinzee. It had been decided that as I would only visit this mine every two weeks a waiting room would not be added to the dental surgery. Benches in the passage outside of the surgery would suffice.  When I arrived at the hospital there were already two benches full of patients waiting to see me. I explained there would be a delay as I had to carry out some emergency treatment for the manager prior to his flight to Kimberley. Everybody was very accommodating and willing to wait.
As Sod's Law dictated that day, as soon as the manager was seated in the dental chair the power went off in the section of the hospital where the surgery was situated. There was however still power in the maternity ward some 50 metres down the passage. With great presence of mind I phoned the electricity department to quickly bring over a long extension lead and a small Black and Dekker drill. As the manager was involved they arrived in a flash. One electrician rushed down the passage with the extension lead and plugged it in to a socket in maternity. The other came into the surgery with the Black and Dekker and closed the door. He then rushed out again and shouted to his mate. "Is the cable connected?"  "Yes, the doctor can go ahead," was the reply. He came back into the surgery and closed the door.
I fitted one of my small grinding stones into the Black and Dekker. While the electrician held the drill on a small stainless steel trolley I managed to trim away the excess ceramic material. After a number of trimmings it was a perfect fit. The facing was cemented into position. With grateful thanks all round the manager was whisked off to the awaiting plane for his Kimberley flight. I was all pumped up with elation to have displayed great initiative in unfavourable circumstances and been of service in a time of emergency. When the electricians had removed the mess of cables and the Black and Dekker I asked the nurse to bring in the next patient. She went into the passage but quickly returned, looking confused.
I'm afraid there is no one there any more, Doctor, "she said.
Only then did the reality of the situation dawn on me. I was totally naïve not to have realised how the unusual events would have been perceived by patients awaiting treatment. Potential dental patients are nervous at the best of times. Today they had witnessed a situation where there was no power for the specialised surgery instruments and the fool of a dentist was willing to substitute a Black and Dekker drill to work in the mouth of the general manager. Who the hell appointed this idiot? Without a word they took to the hills. This maniac was not going to work in their mouths.
I now had a free day. I knew the rocks off the coast were alive with crayfish and asked the nurse if she knew where I could borrow a crayfish net. She called Fred Rich the foreman carpenter. It was a fortuitous occasion as Fred and I became great friends. Fred was a true Namaqualander of huge proportions; just over two metres tall and weighing 180Kg with not an ounce of fat. He could never find shirts long enough to fit him. As a result his shirt tails were always flapping in the breeze. His hands were the size of tennis rackets. When I admired his physique he said his sister was bigger than he. In contrast his wife was a little piece of Dresden china who tipped the scales at no more than 55 Kg.
Fred was born in Kamieskroon and was fifteen years old before he first saw the sea at Hondeklip Bay some 35 kms distant. As previously mentioned Namaqualanders are not great travellers. He had only been to Springbok, 50kms from his home, on one occasion and had never seen Port Nolloth (110km) but was planning to spend his long leave there to do some serious fishing. He had three great passions: fishing, darts and drinking beer. He could caste a line almost out of sight. I never once saw him use a gaff or net. He would play the fish to exhaustion close to the rocks then stick his banana-like fingers into its gills to throw it up onto the shore.
He was a terror at darts. His huge hand would totally envelop the dart and deliver it with huge force while his great height and forward stance placed his hand well forward of the white line.  A quart beer mug in his hands looked like an egg cup. Fred was a carpenter of note. He did some exquisite wood work for the hospital dental surgery. Sometimes I would overnight in Kleinzee and, after closing the surgery, we would head for the rocks to do a spot of fishing. Even if I had only flown in for the day we were not averse to slinging a quick hook during the lunch break He showed me all his favourite fishing spots along the coast.  Fred was such a gentle giant. I considered it an honour to have known him.
On one of my first visits to Kleinzee I met Fred Carstens, the assistant mine engineer. And thereby hangs a rather tragic tale. 

Aah the days of old  ... the  expense was not the issue ... good reading ... now more ......???    pls

Instalment Five from Brian La Trobe's memoir.

FRED CARSTENS, A KLEINZEE TRAGEDY

Fred, the assistant mine engineer, retired a short while before I had taken up duty in Oranjemund. I asked him how long he had worked at Kleinzee.
Quite a long time", he told me.
But said it with such a wry smile that I wondered if there was more to the story. He was not forthcoming. I later heard he had written a memoir, a short run edition no longer in print, and made it my business to track down a copy. Months later I found one in Cape Town and was pleased I had persevered. It was a wonderful and illuminating read.

In his youth Fred had been the old type of prospector, the loner who went out into uncharted territory in search of riches. One day, on a hunch he pitched up in Port Nolloth, bought a couple of donkeys, loaded up with provisions and headed south along the coast. Alluvial diamonds had been found to the north at Alexander Bay at the mouth of the Orange River. He reasoned that similar geography existed to the south and there was a good chance that diamonds could be found in the estuaries of the dry river beds along that coast. For months he had no success but when he was about to give up for lack of funds he came upon the dried river bed of the Buffels River. He dug a couple of prospecting trenches and hit a rich lode of alluvial diamonds.
Fred rushed back to Port Nolloth as fast as his donkey would carry him to register his interest. As soon as the formalities were complete he hurried back to his claim to start developing the site.  Little did he realise he had found one of the richest deposits of alluvial diamonds of gem stone quality in the world at that time. Being a loner he had great difficulty in working the diggings and protecting the site when he had to travel to Port Nolloth to gather supplies. Closemouthed, like all prospectors, Fred said nothing to anyone but his very behaviour was attracting interest. He sent his first parcel of gem stones from the Port Nolloth Post Office to a diamond sales agent in Kimberley. Imagine doing that under present day South African conditions. In all probably they would not get past the post master's office. Even if they did they would most certainly be "lost" along the way.
            When the parcel arrived in Kimberley the agent was astounded at the pure quality of the stones. The story soon got around that someone had recently found a rich
strike of gem stones somewhere in Namaqualand. One of the pillars of Kimberley
society was among the first to hear the news. He was also the first to get on the
road for Port Nolloth. It took him little time to find Fred.
            "Just walk south along the coast. He's down there somewhere," they told him at Port Nolloth.
            Acutely aware of the hordes of fortune seekers in his wake, he wasted no time in finding Fred and putting a proposal to him. Sketching a picture of the storm of publicity that was about to burst around him, he pointed out that now more than ever Fred needed an honest partner well versed in the ways of the world that would look after his interests in the cutthroat town that was Kimberley. For a modest fee and s small share in the equity he would he would perform that service while Fred continued to work the claim. Fred was delighted to have someone looking after sales in Kimberley. A man of instant decisions, he agreed.
             "Let's go and see a lawyer to sign an agreement."
             "Good God, man. Surely you know. MY WORD IS MY BOND".
             Fred's resolve faded in the face of such transparent honesty. The deal was done on a handshake. The gent went back to Kimberley and Fred Carstens went back to the claim with the intention of making them both rich. He took some time to assemble the next parcel of stones and delivered them, as usual, to the Post Office in Port Nolloth. He had estimated the value of the parcel at about £75,000.00. That done, he went out and bought a Kimberley newspaper. To his horror he read that his partner had sold his claim to De Beers. A distraught and disbelieving Fred rushed back to try to retrieve the parcel he had just mailed to Kimberley.
The Post Master refused to give it back. It was already in the custody of the South African Postal services. If he could have retrieved the parcel, he could at least have sold the diamonds to another agent. Not only had he foolishly given away his valuable claim without a binding legal agreement, he did not have the funding to legally contest the actions of the partner and his high-powered Kimberley friends.
The man who claimed that his word was his bond did show Fred some compassion. He arranged for Fred to be offered a permanent position at the mine. As he did not have a mining degree he could not hold the post of chief engineer but instead was given the sop of assistant. Demoralised and almost broke, Fred had no alternative. For the rest of his working life he watched powerlessly as the mine each month delivered a small fortune in diamonds to swell the coffers of the internationally famous company which now owned it. Apart from his monthly salary not a cent of these profits came his way.
The mine was situated on a sub section of the farm known as Kleinzee (small sea). The title of Fred Carstens's book said it all: "A FORTUNE THROUGH MY FINGERS ". To me, the story is so tragic it is difficult to comprehend. How did this poor man suffer such personal torment and sense of loss, year in and year out for the rest of his career? It hardly bears contemplation.

I am really really enjoying this!

The book mentioned,  Fortune through my fingers!, is still available at The Springbok Cafe in Springbok. Not sure what the price might be!
So much history in this west coast diamond Saga....

Indeed a  tragic  happening ... they say the wheel is  round .. I trust the universe took care of ensuring the  wheel turned for the   dishonest person...

From Brian La Trobe's memoir

THE OPENING OF THE DENTAL CLINIC


There was no fanfare or official opening day. Management were just thankful to have the service available. There was simply relief that a resident dental officer was available to deal with problems which would save the company a great deal of potential loss of working time when staff had to travel some 800kms Cape Town to alleviate the pain of an aching tooth. In fairness to CDM it had provided a quite magnificent standard of public health care in the form of its four medical officers and well equipped hospital. The need for a dental surgeon probably did not cross the collective mind of management until the size of the town and the mine warranted such an appointment. When the need became obvious they reacted albeit a tad slowly.
Just prior to the opening of the dental clinic the rumourmongers started to work overtime. Most of them were variations on the theme of CDM spending millions on new dental equipment for staff members only while daily paid employees would be treated with old equipment left by the last itinerant dentist; the new dentist was half blind; he had an attractive wife with very naughty kids; the dentist himself was bloody ugly.
The origin of these rumours was always a mystery. After a while I began to suspect that most of them originated from a small workshop – a large, starkly unpainted, corrugated iron shed out in the desert at a desolate spot surrounded by dunes and scrub called Mooimeisiesfontein. Freely translated, the name means fountain of beautiful girls, an example of the sardonic humour of its workforce. The site, far removed from any other habitation, had been set up to service earthmoving machines at a nearby mining area. The artisans there were very savvy ex-pats who kept themselves sane in their arid surroundings with endless quips at the isolation of their wilderness workshop. True, the desert did have a stark beauty of its own but this spot, long stripped of vegetation and criss-crossed by sand tracks, became a howling wilderness when the East wind blew like a breath of Hell from the Kalahari. Interestingly, morale was high perhaps because of their refusal let the sand win.
The few who couldn't cope developed a condition known as "sand happy" in which the sufferer either drowned himself nightly in booze or more sensibly left for more attractive working conditions elsewhere. Their rumour machine was just an extension of their very dry sense of the ridiculous. It combined with an most effective form of  bush telegraph in telecommunications as I found when a couple of years later a new  nurse, whose husband worked at this workshop, came to the dental clinic. On occasion when a new patient would barely have been admitted to hospital he would phone his wife to tell her that so and so had been admitted suffering from such and such a condition. His information was always right on the button. Yet until he rang, we at the clinic right there in the hospital complex would be totally unaware while he was about 10kms from town.
The dental clinic's first nurse was a retired theatre sister who had grown accustomed to fighting the good fight against all bugs and germs. Prior to a surgical list starting at 7am Francis would be in the theatre, boiling and sterilising everything in sight and sluicing down the theatre walls with absolute alcohol. It's a mystery why the theatre block never caught alight on her watch.
In the dental surgery she tried to follow the same regimen. I got a black look every time I picked up an instrument without donning rubber gloves. This, of course was in the days before HIV& AIDS. I had to give her a personal seminar to explain that it was a biological toss-up as to which cavity, the human mouth or the human anus, had more micro organisms, fungi, yeast cells, viruses and pathogens in the form of staphylococci,streptococci , pneumococci and any other cocci to name but a few. In dentistry we were only interested in preventing cross-infection from one patient to the next.
She gasped when I told her about a dental practice bucket shop in the east end of London which only extracted teeth and nothing else. The old practitioner told me that he used the axial rub method to sterilise forceps between patients. This comprised of placing the used forcep into the arm pit of his not so clean white coat, closing down his arm on the blades and wiggling the forcep north and south, readying it for the next patient. I enquired of the bucket shop dentist if he had ever heard of a steriliser. He said he was averse to them as they made the forceps too hot to handle. Dear Francis was appalled. I did not have the heart or temerity to tell her I was pulling her leg.
She had a pretty face, a sort of cross between a Madonna and a Mona Lisa, strong arms, a formidable bosom and a wide child bearing pelvis with ham-like thighs. Part of her early nursing training was undertaken at Woodstock Hospital Cape Town.This was in the heart of the old District Six, a tough area. There one learnt the fundamentals of nursing Florence Nightingale style plus the art of self defence. We had only been in business for a matter of days when a young man appeared at the surgery without an appointment. He had been cooking up an abscess under a front tooth for a couple of days, had not slept the night before and had just spent three hours in Casey's Bar, the single men's pub in town, building up sufficient courage to come to the clinic. Francis told him to wait and he would be fitted in.
No doubt the alcohol he consumed knocked out some of the lad's cranial inhibitory centres or perhaps life as one of several hundred single men in a town with few single women had emboldened him. Either way, his amatory skills left a lot to be desired. The next time Francis passed his chair in the waiting room the young man slipped his hand under her skirt onto one of her very adequate thighs. Her reaction was swift and devastatingly accurate. A blow to the chin sent him clean over the back of the chair. When she told me of the incident I asked her if she wanted to take the matter further.
"Oh, no," she said confidently. "He won't touch me again. If he ever tries it I'll moer (clobber severely) the hell out of him."
It was a totally chastened, very apologetic and nervous young man who slumped into the dental chair. Francis's gaze could have frozen steam. On examination, the Francis hammer blow had burst the abscess. I gave him a shot of penicillin and told him to come back in a week for root canal therapy. Before he left the surgery I told him he had been a very stupid fellow in doing what he had done to the nurse. He was also fortunate as Francis had graciously decided to forget the whole incident. The matter was closed and would go no further than the surgery. So much for my grasp of the Oranjemund rumour mill; within hours the story had spread around the village. Francis became a legend as someone not to be trifled with. Not sure what happened to the young man but I imagine he would have had a hard time living it down.
Before the clinic opened I had spent much time thinking over my own position. How could I best serve the community and what could I best derive professionally from the appointment? Part of my terms of reference was that I to provide free dental treatment to the company's employees and their families. In turn, the company did not stipulate the standard of the dental treatment I was to provide. That was left entirely to my discretion. It was this side of my contract more than anything else that had lured me away from a potentially very good dental practice in scenically beautiful Cape Town to bring my young family to the Namib Desert. A desert and the people who lived there, I had to admit, which engendered a fascination within my soul that has never been entirely extinguished. Even now in my twilight years some four decades later friendships nurtured there have – even when dispersed to the ends of the earth – withstood the test of time.
In Cape Town, as a newly qualified dental surgeon with only a couple of years of experience, I had been fast becoming frustrated by a number of facts. Patients confronted with cost of dental treatment would often opt for the cheaper alternative; a partial denture as opposed to more sophisticated crown and bridgework. If the need arose for treatment under general anaesthetic I would battle to find operating time in nearby private hospitals even though the teaching hospital, Groote Schuur, was virtually on my door step.
Many of my associates had overcome this problem by arranging with an anaesthetist to carry out the operation in the dental chair. This I steadfastly refused to do. In addition, I found my rather youthful appearance was against me. If a mature patient was going to agree to an intricate and expensive crown and bridge course of treatment they would, I felt sure, would be more comfortable with an older and experienced practitioner. I did not agree with the concept but grudgingly had to admit that I still looked a bit wet behind the ears. Such were the frustrations of youth, despite a rigorous course in the training hospitals of London, a number of academic awards, a dental degree with honours but no suspicion of grey hair or even the odd facial wrinkle to look the part.
The Oranjemund appointment was thus tailor made for me. Although the salary was not exactly a fortune, the house and car were free. There was the opportunity of free attendance at post-graduate university courses at local dental schools and the further chance of future long leave study leave. There would later be free schooling for the children and all sporting facilities were free for the taking. My favourite sport of golf had been denied me since qualifying. For one I was too busy trying to build the practice and in any case could not afford the entrance fee to gain club membership. In Oranjemund there was a magnificent, fully turfed, nine hole golf course along the banks of the Orange River where I could play to my heart's content outside of surgery hours. There was also a squash court often available within walking distance of the surgery.
I was determined to use the job to provide the best dental service to the community of Oranjemund. I would also ensure that my time at CDM was well spent in honing my dental and surgical skills. The cost of dental treatment was no longer an issue. Provided I could convince the patient of the benefit of sophisticated treatment it would not affect his pocket, nor would the company, within reason complain. I was only obliged to work normal office hours and if I needed to take two hours or an entire morning to prepare a patient for a particular dental process, it mattered not. My salary was fixed. I could thus afford to repeat a procedure until it was concluded to my satisfaction. I was never pushed for time.
The same applied to mine trauma, jaw fracture surgery and pathological conditions of the head and neck which came my way. The latter was particularly pertinent in the case of Ovambo employees who had probably never before been examined by a dental surgeon. In the surgical department there is no better way to learn and improve one's experience when you are confronted by a new and pressing surgical situation on the operating table before your eyes and the nearest specialist in the field is two thousand kms away on the other side of the country. In such circumstances one learns fast.
I was also determined to partake in all facets of small town community life and was soon involved with the Cripple Care Organisation. This was the community of Oranjemund's main fund-raising effort of the year. Most of those funds were generated by the annual Mule Derby in which the entire community participated.
As I had never forgotten my own traumatic visits as a child to the dentist in Port Elizabeth I was determined gain the confidence of all children who came to me for treatment. Memories were burnt into my brain of that dour old Scot with the ginger haired banana fingers who never gave me the time of day when I came for treatment, so petrified and ready to wet myself. He just got on with the job in hand. I cannot recall him ever saying a word directly to me. He just talked over me to his dental nurse, as if I was not there. His Scottish brogue was so broad it could have been a foreign language. If the old bugger had just told me what he was doing I might well have been a more cooperative patient.
I resolved such a situation would never occur at my clinic. A very few of the children came willingly, some were mildly apprehensive, the majority affected by fear to a varying degree. It was a long term project. I began with the pregnant mothers. To them I explained that the crowns of their baby's milk or deciduous teeth were already formed and calcified at the time of birth. In fact the child's first permanent molar tooth, which would only erupt at the age of six, was already beginning to calcify at birth. I tried to dispel the notion that baby teeth were expendable and did not require treatment, a concept that was quite prevalent in my early years of practice.
I encouraged young mothers to make individual appointments for young children from the age of two years. This was just to get them accustomed to the visit to the dentist. I still kept an old type dental drill with the belt drive, not for use but to amuse the children. I would attach two wads of cotton wool to the belt about a foot apart and ask the child to "watch the bunnies and see if the back one catches the front one". Their little eyes would gyrate to the tempo of the speed of the cotton wool wads around the belt's trajectory, almost oblivous of my probing and prying in their mouths..
We would also take them for a ride in the dental chair and show them how the drills worked, the noise they made when operating and how they sprayed water which my nurse would suck out of their mouths. We would polish their teeth with a small brush attached to the drill. Time spent in this fashion paid dividends later. When the child developed a small cavity he or she was already familiar with the dentist's armoury of drills and the method of filling a tooth. The removal of the dental caries and the placing of a filling was almost stress free. Contrary to popular belief milk teeth lack any sign of nervous tissue in the pulp of such a tooth. Expose a pulp or so called "nerve" of an adult tooth accidently, without an anaesthetic, and you will have to scrape your patient off the ceiling. And the chances are that once he or she leaves the surgery the dentist is unlikely ever to see this unfortunate customer again.
In contrast the exposed pulp of a deciduous tooth can be tweaked with impunity with no reaction from the child, thus nature has devised a brilliant method of conserving milk teeth. Such teeth never need an injection of local anaesthetic for a filling; hence time spent on preparing a child for future dental treatment is well spent.
It was always my experience that any child well prepared for future dental treatment in the manner described would react favourably. In most cases a child who has confidence in his or her dentist will often endure more protracted dental treatment than an adult. By contrast, a child who comes to the dental surgery after being awake all night with toothache is never going to be conducive to treatment in a room full of strange bits of equipment and a dentist he or she has never met. Parents of such children often make the mistake of promising them a treat on the way home if they are "brave" at the dentist.
The child immediately thinks he or she is in for something that needs courage, thus putting the dentist on the back foot before he even sees the patient. Children of this age group have a limited vocabulary. They tend to interpret every word literally. Parents need to choose their words carefully when speaking in front of their children. Fortunately, today's parents seem to be more aware of this. In times past many people enjoyed bragging about their "operations" and often went into the gory details, actual and imagined, in front of their children. They seldom realised how much of this is stored in young minds.

This just says it all about our Oranjemund:

"I had to admit, which engendered a fascination within my soul that has never been entirely extinguished. Even now in my twilight years some four decades later friendships nurtured there have – even when dispersed to the ends of the earth – withstood the test of time"

msn emoticon (8)

again interesting ..... more   pls

Brian La Trobe's memoir. Next instalment.

THE TREATMENT OF EDWARD

Everything said in the previous chapter is true in my experience, save for one very important caveat. Most paediatric patients, even nervous and bolshie little critters, can be conditioned with time and patience to become ideal dental patients. There is however a small percentage who, despite all your tender loving care and prolonged effort to allay their underlying behavioural patterns and primordial fears, are only treatable under a general anaesthetic. Only with experience does one realise when you are flogging a dead horse. A good old South African saying sums it up: "When you get a tiger by the tail, let go."
Some children shout and scream or cry. One can often break this cycle by screaming or shouting back at them. It's often better to see these patients without the parental presence in the surgery. Some children will react by pissing or crapping in their pants. Others will vomit, preferably over the dentist. This process is seldom repeated when they are made to learn the hard way that they have to clean the mess themselves.
The young and uninitiated dentist might take a few appointments to categorise his diminutive terrors into the appropriate pigeon holes. One such case was Edward who first entered my surgery backwards, dragged in by his mother with her arms under his armpits. There was no screaming or shouting, no kicking of legs, just Ghandi type silent passive resistance. I asked his mother the nature of the problem.
She just opened the flood gates of her heart. Edward was steadily driving her to total distraction.  The child hardly ever spoke and refused to eat fruit, meat or vegetables. From the time of weaning he had survived on spoonfuls of peanut butter, condensed milk, dry corn flakes, chocolate, toffees, boiled sweets and more chocolate. He would only drink Coca Cola. Mother was convinced this was pure rebellion at being taken off the breast. Whatever the psychology of Ed's fit of pique over the denial of his mother's mammaries his dietary preferences were playing havoc with his deciduous dentition.
True to form, he refused to open his mouth for me to have even a peek.  From his past history alone he probably had a mouth full of rotten baby teeth. He was, in fact a dental accident waiting to happen, His mother was instructed to bring him back at the first sign of any swelling of glands, increased temperature or pain. These cases are so tragic. It is sad that having not even reached the age of four, there was absolutely no hope of any conservative treatment for Edward possible. All those teeth would have to come out. Some early parental control could have helped.
Within a month Edward was back with a swollen lip and running a temperature. Probably one or more of his rotten teeth was harbouring a serious infection. I gave him a course of antibiotics, reserved theatre time and did the usual slum clearance of all his teeth. There was not one that could be saved.
A week later mother and rebellious child were back in the surgery for a post-operative check. Ed's silence was deafening. His black look of reproach could kill a mosquito at ten paces. He refused to open his mouth for me to check his healing gums. At three and a bit, Ed would have to survive edentulous until the age of six when his first permanent six year old molar would erupt together with his front incisor teeth. I thought that period was a bit too long for good nutrition and decided to make him a full set of dentures As far as was known at that time this would be something of a first. The idea was fraught with difficulty. Deciduous teeth were not replicated as false teeth. Each tooth would have to be individually made by my technician in Cape Town. In addition, to make a set of dentures there needs to be a modicum of cooperation and rapport between patient and dentist. ED was singularly lacking in this department. He was not the sweetest child in the village. However, I had youth and overconfidence on my side.
I hand-made upper and lower impression trays from models of a child's mouth I had from the Cape Town practice. Ed's mother was told to make an appointment for about three months hence when the lad's gums should have stabilised enough to take the impressions. This was also a ploy in the hope that Edward's father would perhaps have arranged employment elsewhere away from CDM or anywhere such as the USA.
On the day of the appointment both parents accompanied Edward. The air was electric with vibes of non-cooperation and distrust. Give him his due, Ed climbed up into the chair unassisted. Probably his father had softened him up with a couple of clops around the ear hole. As the poor little devil was only three and a half years old I allowed the parents, on this occasion to remain in the surgery and I turned on my best chairside manner. It had no affect on Ed. Hs doleful brown eyes never left my face. His expression said it all
What's he going to do to me this time? Last time he sweet talked me in the hospital and when I was not looking someone pricked me in the arm and I went to sleep. When I woke up all my teeth were gone. I strongly suspect that this arsehole did it. He won't catch me a second time.
I had my patter ready: "Now young man you see these nice little trays, I made them especially for you. We are going to fill them with porridge and hold them in your mouth for a short while until the porridge sets so that we can make you some new teeth".
Bad call: Ed who possibly hated porridge, clamped up his mush in an instant. The impression material set before we could get his mouth open. A dentist has a few tricks of the trade to get an uncooperative child to open his mouth. A little mild pressure on the nostrils between thumb and fore finger will usually do the trick. When they need to take a breath, you're in. Another is to get the child to say HAH loudly. When the lips open, slip the forefinger quickly to the back of the mouth behind the last tooth. A small amount of pressure will cause the mouth to open.
The method is fraught with difficulty. If the finger ends up between the masticatory surfaces of the last molar teeth the patient as a conditioned reflex will clamp down on the dentist's finger. It will then be necessary to get the patient to say "HAH" once again in order to get his damaged finger out of the mouth.  John Citizen seldom realises the coordination between sight and texture of the food to be masticated and the distance to be travelled by the working jaw. We have all experienced the pain when the tongue gets out of synch and gets the message a little late. The result is a painful self bite.
In estimating the texture of the food to be chewed, experience and conditioned reflexes all play a part to prevent shattering of the teeth due to excessive force. The muscles of the jaw and teeth are attuned to a very fine balance to prevent trauma when eating. Most of us can recall the jolt of biting onto an unexpected piece of lead shot when eating game food such as rabbit, duck or venison. Replicating the intricacies of the human biting pattern requires the meticulous placing of teeth on a new denture and the correct relationship of upper to lower teeth, all vitally important to the future comfort and well being of the patient. Accurate registration of the patient's "bite" is therefore essential. As Ed was not exactly giving much in the way of cooperation it was a major complication.
Ed's first dental appointment for his impressions was an unmitigated disaster for me and a total victory for him. Full ten times the nurse mixed the impression material and ten times it set in the tray before getting anywhere near his diminutive jaw bones. Each time he promised to open his mouth under the threat of drastic corporal punishment from father but as I approached with the refilled tray he would change his mind and clam up like a virgin oyster. In the end I think the little shit was actually enjoying himself. I was lining myself up for a coronary thrombosis, his father was on the verge of taking out his first born, his mother was in tears and dear Francis was having difficulty in controlling a very itchy right hand.
"Bring him back in a month" cried a defeated and demoralised dentist. The second visit was no better. By now we had wasted a tin and a half of expensive impression material. All we had was a near demented dentist, an apoplectic father, a distraught mother and a deeply religious nurse who never profaned saying "Just leave the little son of a bitch toothless until he is six and see if I care"
At the next attempt I stipulated no parents were to be in attendance. Francis, in no mood to be trifled with, took him to the chair, pointed to it and said "SIT" He obediently did.  I told Edward that both Sister and I had now had enough.
"Today we are going to get these impressions done even if it takes us a month and none of us are going home until they are done. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"
Ed was backed into a corner from which there seemed no escape. He looked at me with those doleful clear eyes and with but one heave sent a projectile of puke all over my chest. For afters he turned on an abdominal spasm that vented every last vestige of shit from his entire gut through his diminutive anus. Mother was called to take the small SOB home. I said to her. "Don't call us, we will call you" I needed time to re-evaluate the way forward.
I went home to have a shower while Francis wrote out her resignation which I refused to accept. While in the shower I could not but admire the little bugger but equally I could not admit defeat. There had to be a way past Ed's terrors. That evening I retired, hurt, to my study with large sheets of paper, pens and a bottle of old matured whisky. I was about to start an honest swot analysis of Ed versus Brian. Was it symptomatic of his family life? Why did he not shout and scream? What level of fear could have caused his extreme gut reaction? Should I have been more forceful or more coaxing? Were there similar zoological examples in the animal kingdom which would account for using this deterrent of spraying body waste to get out of a situation? A stressed octopus gives out black ink to cover his retreat; a pole cat sprays evil smelling urine to repel boarders.
All this maybe pertinent but what was this young terrorist's Achilles' heel? In a flash I had it: chocolate. I could visualise it: a dental bracket table loaded with large thick slabs of chocolate, a kilo of scattered crème toffees, a small mountain of multicoloured gob stoppers and marsh mallows.
And so it came to pass, at Ed's next appointment his chocoholic's eyes came out on stalks when he saw this wonderful array of sweetmeats. I interrupted his mouth watering thoughts by saying: "Edward, you let me take those impressions of your mouth and this lot is all yours". The job was all over in less than five minutes. Ed left the surgery with bulging pockets.  He also took home a post-hypnotic suggestion that he would get the same again each time he came to see me.
There was never any further trouble with Ed's appointments as long as the little incentives were there for all to see. For the rest of his treatment he was the epitome of cooperation. The wheels came off slightly when he got the dentures. Ed would not wear them, possibly because I took a picture of him and made a great fuss. Even Francis smiled. It was his nature to be a rebel and it would be out of character to get too close to the management.
I told his Mother to take them home and within the next few days arrange a party for Ed and all his young mates. I instructed her to get Ed to show how he could take his teeth out and put them back again. His pals marvelled. None of them could do that. Ed realised that he was different and basked in his uniqueness. Within 48 hours he could eat anything and chewed like a veteran.
A sequel to the story unfolded years later when Edward start to erupt some of his permanent teeth. I then started to use his dentures as space maintainers to guide his permanent teeth into their correct positions. I saw quite a lot of Ed in those days. He was still a quiet lad but no longer so rebellious. He and I had come a long way together in what was initially a love/hate relationship but eventually he was something rather special to me and I like to think that he in turn felt an attachment to me. When he eventually had his full set of permanent teeth and his well worn dentures were at last obsolete I congratulated him. His reply floored me.
"Uncle Brian, these new teeth of mine feel so hard and tight in my gums. I think I prefer my dentures."
After we left Oranjemund I lost all contact with Edward and his family, and have often wondered how he fared in later life. It is doubtful if our paths will ever cross again. I think of him periodically. Not often, but occasionally when I have a quiet moment of reflection on my earlier days of practice. When I think of Edward I have a fulfilling feeling of achievement and, yes, amusement at how we managed to tame him. And I'm sure that Francis, up on high, would nod agreement.

@Sandy,
              Just had an email from Brian. It seems he only arrived in Omund long after your sojourn with the baboons on the mountain. Re the infamous dagga plant, his reply as follows:

"Checked with Peggy and the PPJ story. I Have no recollection but she remembers it well. She says it was not a tomato plant; it looked more like a marigold flower. It was indeed PPJ who advised it was the dreaded dagga which she had so carefully been nuturing outside our front fence on 5th Avenue!
Brian."

good  to hear  my recollection   of the  weed  was correct .....

OTHER CHARACTERS WHO TOUCHED MY LIFE

Ronny Jew.

One day the receptionist called me to the waiting room to say someone wanted to have a word with me. I went out and there stood a muscular, cocky looking character with a broad grin.
"Hey, Doc," he said. "My name is Ronny Jew. I believe you play squash. I think I can beat the pants off you."
That was the beginning of a friendship that would last as long as we stayed in Oranjemund. Ronny was a fitter and turner by trade who held a supervisory post at the mine workshops and a scavenger of note. He could find just about anything on the mine Apart from becoming my permanent squash partner he was my most useful "finder of things" when we were building up the Mule Derby equipment for this annual charity event which eventually became my baby and sole responsibility, but more about that later.
Ronny was a great athlete. He was no mean squash player and had represented Transvaal, now Gauteng, at baseball.  He came close to being awarded Springbok colours. He was a very intense fellow with a constant smile and always ready to help his fellow man. We played squash twice a week for at least five years. We knew each other's game inside out. Ultimately the only way to win a point was to create some obstruction or do something that was on the borders of legality in the rules of squash. As an example Ronny would hit a shot to the wall and immediately get into my line of vision but just allow the ball to pass between his arm and body. I would eventually position myself behind him. When the opportunity arose I would aim a full-blooded forehand drive not at the wall but at his backside. He would bellow in pain. I would say sorry. He learned fast.
Squash is not a spectator sport but word got around that watching the two of us play raised a few laughs so we often had an audience. The old CDM squash court was attached to the end of the company main mess hall for single staff. There was a small gallery, the steps of which lead straight off the street. Ronny had a gammy knee which would occasionally dislocate during a game. It was painful and he would bellow in agony. I would get him down on the court floor, put his foot over my shoulder, grab his leg behind the knee and give it a violent jerk. As there was no place on the court for him to get a firm hold, I would sometimes drag him around the floor jerking the knee before it would click back into position.
On one occasion an old lady taking her afternoon walk passed the squash court and heard Ronny's cries of agony. She came running up the stairs to the gallery and saw me in the throes of trying to reduce his dislocation.
"Stop that, young man. Stop this fighting, at once, you are hurting that young man," she shouted.
Fortunately the next jerk reduced the dislocation. We both had a good laugh. The incident would be the end of the day's game. Ronny would go home and get his wife, Milly, to massage the injured knee with copious amounts of wintergreen oil, a remedy in which he had great faith. For the information of the young and the near young, winter green oil is powerful counter irritant; a sort of a powerful deep heat but much more potent. As when cutting up chilli you don't ever touch your eyes or your genitals without a thorough washing of hands or you do so at your peril. The same applies to oil of wintergreen but doubly so.
Milly and Ronny had a black Scottish terrier. Unfortunately it was terrorised by a neighbour's cat. All CDM houses had a laundry attached to the kitchen. In Ronny's house the laundry door had a small aperture covered by strip of leather thongs so that small domestic animals could gain free access to this room into the garden. Their Scotty slept in the laundry. Ronny would be constantly awoken most nights with the wails of anguish from the dog being filled in by this irritating cat. He would rush to the kitchen to rescue his timid mutt but each time would just be in time to see the tail of the bullying canine disappearing through the flapping leather thongs.
One night when his slumber was again disturbed by the feisty cat, Ronny who always slept in the buff, tried a different tactic. He jumped out of the bedroom window and ran to the outside laundry door while the fight was still in progress, tapped on the door to alarm the cat and, holding his hands like seasoned baseball catcher, caught the cat as it came flying through the opening door and held it to his hairy chest. It scratched like blazes but he ignored the scratches. He was going to teach the animal a lesson it would never forget.
He thought of his bottle of wintergreen in the bathroom cupboard. So, holding the squirming animal, he made for the bathroom and got a hand to the bottle. Ronny then tried to remove the cork from the bottle with his teeth. Alas, in the excitement of the moment he forgot that he no longer had his natural teeth but a denture. All he managed to achieve was to tip the entire content of the bottle over his lower abdomen and of course his crown jewels. His blood curdling scream woke Milly who rushed to see who was murdering Ronny. The released cat had long since scarpered with no other injury but its hurt pride while Ronny was in agony. Milly found him sitting in the bath with both hot and cold taps fully open, gushing a torrent of water onto his genitals. He turned a pain-wracked face to Milly and pleaded: "BLOW MILLY, FOR CHRIST'S SAKES BLOW.
When Ronny's private parts had sufficiently recovered our titanic squash court struggles continued. One day Ronny, looking concerned, confided in me that he thought he had cancer. It seemed that Milly had found a lump on his back. I didn't ask how dear Milly came to get a grip on Ronny's back but asked him to let me have a look. He pulled up his tee-shirt and bent forward.
"Please tell me if it's serious, Doc, as I need to make a will," said a very worried Ronny.
The swelling on his back was immediately obvious. It was well defined and quite soft to the touch. On palpating the swelling it showed no hard or indurated border. It had the typical feeling of a fatty benign tumour known as a lipoma.
"Is it serious, Doc? Do I need an operation?
"No, you daft ape," I was happily able to tell him. "It's totally benign and definitely not a cancerous growth. You can leave it there or if Milly gets a bit squeamish about touching it have one of the medical officers shell it out under local anaesthetic. It's too far from the mandible to be in my field."
"Are you absolutely sure, Doc? Don't I need some tests or something?"
"Ronny, I lay my head on a block, it's not cancer".
His mood lightened. He was his cocky old self once more and showed it by beating the hell out of me in the next game and went home with a spring in his step. Shortly after I reached home there was a phone call from Milly.
"What's this larpaloma that Ronny says he has on his back?"
Perhaps because of our squash court antics interest in the game gradually increased to the extent that one court was inadequate. I pressed the Recreation Club committee to budget for a better facility and also kept nagging the GM. Eventually they both got fed up with my persistent pleading and a new squash complex was built, ironically at about the time we left Oranjemund. However, I had the pleasure of playing on these magnificent courts on a subsequent visit and still have the beer mug given to me when I was Club Captain.
We had only been in Oranjemund a short while when after an early evening game of squash I mentioned to Ronny that Peggy needed a wheelbarrow for use in the garden and wondered if they were sold at the company store.
"Doc, at CDM you don't buy a wheel barrow, you just borrow one from Rumbles, the local building contractor. I'll have one here for you in ten minutes".
True to his word, Ronny pulled up in his truck pulled up in a cloud of dust at our front gate.
"One wheelbarrow, compliments of Mr Rumble" he said, departing as quickly as he arrived.
It seemed that Mr Rumble considered wheelbarrows a bottomless pit. As fast as he ordered new ones the faster they disappeared into the community. Mr Rumble was not concerned about the phenomenon of the disappearing wheelbarrows because CDM was paying for them all and in any event wheelbarrows – or anything else that could conceal illicit diamonds - could not be removed from the security area which enclosed the town. I thought no more of it until about three years later when a general circular was issued to all houses in the village. Some clever dick in the accounting department had at last noticed that the mine was being charged for what was a vast number of wheel barrows which Mr Rumble could not account for.
The circular suggested that if all townspeople harbouring such an illegal garden implements would return them to the lawn between the swimming pool and the single quarters on an appointed evening, no further punitive action would be taken. Being slightly embarrassed by the situation, I waited until well after dark and trundled Mr Rumble's illegitimate wheel barrow up to the swimming pool. On the way I noticed figures leaving the pool area but they always slunk into the shadows nor did anyone offer a greeting. It was a classic Whiskey Galore situation.
The following morning as the new day dawned not only was the swimming pool lawn covered with wheel barrows but the entire road was blocked with wheel barrows as far as the eye could see. It took the Parks and Gardens and all their trucks the entire day to cart the lot to Mr Rumble's contractor's yard which became congested with wheel barrows, leaving no room for anything else. When I mentioned this to Ronny he said rather disparagingly: "It's only you honest okes who took them back. The rest of us just kept ours."

George Glover.

George and Gwen Glover lived two houses down the road from us. When we arrived in Oranjemund they had recently come to town after 17 years living in Elizabeth Bay, never once having taken any vacation. Elizabeth Bay was as remote spot in the Namib Desert south of Luderitz, a ghost town abandoned by a German mining company during the First World War. To go there was an eerie experience. Most of the buildings stood silent in the grinding sand. On the windward side of a house the abrasive sand laden wind would have abraded away the bricks, leaving a honeycomb of the wall's mortar. Chimney stacks would have the same appearance.
Wandering through it was an exercise in loneliness. A deserted recreational club with enduring painted murals on the interior walls left without human appreciation for 50 years; kegel bahns, (bowling alleys), still looking as if the players had just gone to the bar for another beer, and outside a mountain of empty green beer bottles, frosted not by the cold of refrigeration but by the punishing wind. Some of the bottles would be so worn by the sand laden winds they would have whole sides and tops ground away as if sliced by a knife. To visit there was an uneasy experience. Yet George, his bride and a team of Ovambos lived there in that Germanic ghost of the past for all those years. At least the Ovambos went home after an annual tour of duty.
George was one of a dying breed of old type prospectors, soon to be surpassed by academic snotty-nosed geologists or "klip doktors (stone doctors) as described by George. He and Gwen both originated from Kimberley. In his day he was quite a cricketer, famed for his left hand bowling. He was selected to play for Griekqwas and was very proud of his Griekqwas provincial blazer which he wore on all formal occasions. Unfortunately on his debut he blotted his copy book. While playing a provincial game being a tail end batsman he and some pals decided the more established batsmen would see out the day. They travelled hence to one of Kimberley's dens of iniquity for a few frosted ones. Unfortunately for George the opening batsmen all collapsed and when he was called on to bat he was sitting at a bar miles away. Needless to say he was never again invited to play cricket for Griekqwas.
He had many a tale of his days in Elizabeth Bay. He told of the old German recovery plant which tipped its rejected overburden onto the beach which included many semi-precious stones amongst discarded gravels.
He got his team of Ovambos down on their hand and knees in line, showed them a small diamond and told them to keep all such similar stones and bring them to him. At the end of the day he was disappointed as to how few they had collected. He said he expected more. The Ovambos said they had found more but they were all bigger so they turfed them back. I had no way of verifying this story. It might have been a prospectors tale but who knows.
A ship's life boat was once washed up on the beach at Elizabeth Bay. There were no oars but George fancied a trip around the bay as a preliminary to a spot of fishing at a later date. He had plenty of shovels in his prospecting stores for the Ovambos to substitute for oars. The Ovambos always considered the sea to be something to be looked at, not to go on, even in a boat. Where were the people who had journeyed in the boat?  George somehow convinced them it was perfectly safe. It was a calm day with hardly any waves so, against their better judgement and with fear and trepidation as none of them could swim, they shovelled out gingerly into the bay.
All went well until a shark suddenly bumped the boat. It matters not whether it was a great white, a ragged tooth or a hammerhead, nor whether it was the same length as the boat or twice its size. Such details could vary with the number of shots of whiskey George had consumed at the time of telling, but the two foot high dorsal fin that started to circle the boat was definitely not part of a 1958 Chevvy.
An Ovambo was never known to demonstrate any signs of excessive energy expenditure or the desire to move rapidly from A to B but that day, with no experience of oarsmanship, they propelled that large and heavy life boat with shovels back to the shore with such force that its entire keel was clean out of the water as it left the surf. What is more George was flattened to the bilges by their panic to be the first out of the boat. According to George, his frightened gang of souls were a lighter shade of black for at least a week after the incident.
Shortly after we arrived in Oranjemund Dr K resigned as the Kleinzee Medical Officer. The family had a magnificent Great Dane dog whose name was Sally, which they were going to "put down". It was still in its prime and I felt it was a shame to do this to such a magnificent animal. Her coat was of the black and white spotted variety. I offered to take her into our family. The first problem was getting Sally to Oranjemund as she suffered so badly from claustrophobia she could not be coaxed into a car. We had to consult a veterinarian in Cape Town as to what size dose of barbiturate was needed to keep a 90 odd kilogramme hound unconscious for some two hours. We had to trot Sally down to the mine stores to weigh her on a large commercial scale to get the dose right.
On the appointed day, I travelled down to Kleinzee in my trusted Pontiac with a CDM medical orderly, just in case the dog started to regain consciousness while I was driving. A security truck was on hand at the company garages to bring the dog to the town from the company garages. The trip was uneventful. Sally slept on our lawn for a further hour before she awoke to take her first groggy steps and sniffed out the members of her new adopted family.


I had purposely forgotten to inform Peggy that Sally's diet consisted of  3 kilos  of muscle meat, two litres of milk and a couple of eggs per day, just in case she refused to give the dog a home. Fortunately meat was only 25 cents a kilo from the company butcher shop, so it was no big deal. Everything about Dr K was on a grand scale. Sally was accustomed to a diet of steak. We slowly weaned her off such expensive fare to enjoy ox hearts and offal which was cheaper.
She soon came to enjoy the company of our children. One day she decided to leave our garden and explore the neighbourhood. Unfortunately the Glover's front gate was open. She trotted in to have a look around. Gwen looked out into the garden over the rim of her elevenses, a morning G&T, at the precise moment Sally placed her big paws on the wall while standing on the flower bed to look into the lounge. Gwen's shriek and the crack of her glass of G&T against the window startled Sally who cantered off to the safety of home. Gwen instructed her domestic Ovambo to check the flower bed for paw prints just in case she had imagined the scenario and if perhaps she should maybe lay off the booze for a week or so. He came back all wide -eyed and in a dither
"Meesus, it could be a leopard or a cheetah."
Gwen rang George: "Come home this instant, there has been a leopard in the garden and Johannes has seen the spoor. I have locked all the doors and windows."  George drove back from the mind to calm his wife. On arriving home he first checked the spore in the front flower bed.
"Jesus," he exclaimed. "It could be a friggin' leopard." Shouting to Gwen to stay in the house and don't move he rushed off to the Police Station get Sergeant PPPJ Kruger. Fortunately PPJ had been at the company garage on the day I arrived with the comatose Sally en route from Kleinzee.
"Oom George have you seen your neighbour's dog?" he asked. To settle George's nerves PPJ drove him to our house where they quietly looked over our fence. There was Sally fast asleep on the lawn. Problem solved.
We always knew when Gwen and George were having a party. George's favourite recording was very loud version of Ketelbey's "In a Monastery Garden".  I think it must have been one of the few records he possessed. As soon as the party started to hot up George would say:"Let's have a bit of Kettlebe" and the fun would start. The recording would be played louder and louder as the evening wore on. I can imagine how the ghosts of Elizabeth Bay must have enjoyed the quiet once the Glovers left that deserted town.

Chapter 30.

Mmm that story of the " leopard " did get around the  town  ... I remember the great dane .. we kids with the fertile imaginations called her the "cow dog "  because  of her size and the  black and white  markings ,

Me thinks the shopping centre could have a run a special on wheelbarrows for a month on the returned stock! Would love to have seen a photo of all those wheelbarrows~!

Bob, please convey our thanks to Brian for penning all the history..... and Sir! i once again implore you, to write your memoirs..... those tales need to be preserved......

@ Michael,
             I have some pics from Brian to illustrate his material but am at a loss at how to transfer them from an attachment on an email to the body copy of this thread; would appreciate some direction on that.

Re my "memoirs": Oranjemund represented the idiot phase of my life during which I was an all-out adrenalin junky, achieving little other than a few unscheduled stays in hospital, loss of acres of skin, the odd punch-up or two, a couple of boxing and yachting cups, the record for the Cape Town to Omund road trip and a dawning realization I would eventually join a few of my friends in the Oranjemund graveyard if I didn't change my ways. In retrospect all very boring and much too self-centred to be of interest to anyone.
For that reason I felt the Oranjemund of those days would be best illustrated by posting a few of my freelance newspaper articles of the time and describing the exploits of some of the outstanding characters who enriched that period of the town's history.
The only things which change your life are the books you read and the people you meet. In that respect I was indeed fortunate. George Lovett was an early mentor. He was a larger than life character at a time when Oranjemund was filled with them. He is mentioned earlier in this thread. Brian was another. He arrived in Omund at a time when I nearing the end of my stay, considering full-time study at UCT but concerned at my ability to support a young family at the same time. He not only urged me to take the leap but also staked me to some time out from the grind of study and part-time work.
It was just the boost I needed. I am forever mindful of this and pleased that in later years I was able to pass on his generosity to others in a similar position. My only request was that they in turn pass it on. In this way I hope to keep the ripple started by Brian spreading further and wider. We live continents apart but have visited from time to time and kept in touch over the years. I was pleased hear he was writing his memoirs. They are intended for family only but using some arm-wrestling by email I was able to get his permission to post some selections here. Placed as he was at the centre of community interaction, he gives a very entertaining and all-round account of life in Sixties Oranjemund.

The next instalment follows:

THE OVAMBO AND THE DENTIGEROUS CYST


I would periodically hold a clinic for Ovambos who worked in areas some distance from the town. They would assemble at First Aid stations scattered around the mine. Acute cases were immediately transported to the town's hospital but non-urgent cases would be accumulated until my visit was due. On such a day I was confronted by a fit looking Ovambo who complained of a very mobile tooth on the left side of his lower jaw, which he wanted me to extract. He felt no pain but the tooth's mobility was annoying him. When I examined the patient his mouth appeared to be perfectly healthy. The offending tooth was, indeed, very loose. There was no sign of any infection and the surrounding gum was perfectly healthy. The tooth was so loose that I even contemplated trying to extract just with my fingers but fortunately the little man on my right shoulder rang his bell. I sent patient into the dental clinic for an x-ray. On checking this small dental x-ray there appeared to be no bone supporting the tooth and referred him back to radiology for a full lateral plate.
When this plate was delivered to me I nearly fell out of my shoes. The entire left side of his mandible was completely hollow, filled from the mid line of the lower jaw to the mandibular joint with a dentigerous cyst. The cyst was attached to the un-erupted third molar (wisdom tooth) which with the pressure created by the liquids in the cystic bag was now almost being pushed out of the mandible at the angle of the jawbone.   
In early embryological formation of teeth there is an invagination of surface cells into the underlying mesodermal layer. Teeth are formed from this invagination of epithelial cells. As the fully calcified teeth begin to erupt they have a covering sac of epithelial cells. In normal eruption this sac bursts with eruption. If something goes wrong such as the tooth becomes impacted, this little sac can start to grow.
It grows by osmosis. The liquid within the sac is more concentrated. Body fluids then flow into the sac via osmosis in an attempt to dilute the concentration of the sac content. As the sac or cyst grows it exerts pressure on the bone which melts away. A dentigerous cyst is a benign tumour, very rarely do they turn malignant. It does not produce new growth which will invade the surrounding tissue nor will it spread along the lymphatic drainage system or enter the lung via blood vessels. They cause no pain and are usually discovered on x-ray at routine dental examination. They are easy to remove with the offending tooth. Even if the cyst has been left to grow within the bone their surgical removal is simple and they seldom reoccur.
However this cyst was enormous. It had probably been left unattended for the best part of twenty years. The entire left side if the jaw was egg shell thin. The mere extraction of the tooth could have caused the collapse of that side of his face with a serious pathological fracture of his lower jaw. The un-erupted tooth could have in theory been forced out of his jaw on its lower border. However, he would probably have a jaw fracture in the first instance. If this had happened in his home in Ovamboland the mind boggles as to his disfigurement and the inability to even eat.
The biggest example of a dentigerous cyst seen in dental pathology books was probably roughly 25 mm in diameter. Even those evident in skulls taken from Egyptian Pyramids were maybe twice as big. Run your hand along your own lower jaw and estimate the length from the midline to the angle then up to the mandibular joint. That cystic sac could potentially have measured about 190 to 200mm in length. Its shape was atypical from the normal circular shape because it was confined to the shape of the jaw. Never again in forty years of surgical dental practice did I see such an enormous cyst.
My first impression of this frightening pathological phenomenon had nothing to do with international dental historical records but how was I to treat this urgently required surgical intervention. In six months the patient was to return to Ovamboland
As an emergency he was admitted to hospital. I took some full impressions of his upper and lower jaws. I sweated bricks during the impression of the lower jaw in case the mere taking of the impression caused a fracture, particularly when removing the impression from the mouth. The gods were kind to me on that day. I kept the patient on a liquid diet. The following morning the company plane flew the impressions to Cape Town for my dental technician to make metal cap splints which could fix his jaws in position with stainless steel wires in case of fracture. Two days later I cemented these splints over his teeth. I breathed a sigh of relief. At least if his jaws fractured now I had the means of localising the bone fragments.

In the two nerve-racking days while waiting for the splints to arrive I had not been idle. My books on dental surgery were of little help. I phoned Prof Lester Brown of the Wits Maxillofacial unit of the University and described the size of the tumour, "What on earth have you been smoking? I've never seen anything that size! Send him to me," said the Prof.
"Not possible," I replied. "His contract stipulates he cannot be employed or transported out of Namibia".
"Then your only solution is to marsupialise the cyst.
"Prof, I have never done one of those in my life before nor have I even seen one performed."
"Nor have I ever carried out one of the magnitude that you are describing. Have fun and remember to take some pictures." He put the phone down.
In zoological terms a kangaroo is a marsupial because it has a pouch on its abdomen where it keeps it young, transports them from A to B and is a cosy haven for the young sprogs to take a nap. In surgical terms, if the cystic tumour is too big to be removed or if the threat of weakened bone damage and fracture is a factor then marsupialisation is the approach whereby the surgeon will attempt to turn the cyst into a pouch. This will release the high pressure on the damaged bone. With the fullness of time the bone will regenerate to replace the damaged area and thus restoring its strength. That's the theory. The practicalities are a tad more complicated.
I realised that, daunting as the task would be, from an ethical point of view we were to a certain extent honour bound to preserve a record of the operation for future up-and-coming surgeons and for maxillofacial units. I was a member of the Oranjemund Photographic Society so I decided that best way to record the work was to make a 16mm film of the operation. Our cinema projectionist, George Magnus was the club's expert with a sixteen mm camera.
The film production was fraught with all sorts of difficulties. Lighting of the interior of the mouth would be a huge problem.  Camera angles were another. I had no idea if George would faint at the sight of blood and gore of the operation, particularly when he was perched on a table next to the operation table. We would have no mechanical arms as in the Hollywood productions. We were just rank amateurs with amateur equipment. Finally and probably the biggest obstacle to overcome was the theatre sister. When I first broached the subject she exploded.
"I'll not have any half-arsed cameraman in MY theatre spreading all his germs and cracking his skull on the theatre floor when he falls off the table in a faint."
I managed to sweet talk her into grudgingly changing her mind in view of the uniqueness of the pathology which we needed to record for posterity.
Before she had second thoughts I got George in for a few lessons on how to scrub and how to don a gown and mask under the overpowering glare of the theatre sister. Just because she had agreed to let accept him into her domain did not mean she had to accept him with open arms. Theatre sisters can be bitches of the first order. We also had George watch the removal of a couple of deeply embedded wisdom teeth as a kind of baptism of fire. In the beginning he turned a bit white around the gills but soon appeared to grow accustomed to the cutting of bone and the accompanying gore.
I spent many hours with him explaining exactly what I intended to do and made a number of diagrams of the various phases of the operative procedure. I explained that at each stage of the procedure I would stop to give him the opportunity to get his shots. I tried to talk with a confidence which I secretly did not feel. I remembered my days as a houseman with Mr Graham.  If only he could be with me now.

On the appointed day we assembled at the operating theatre in the Ovambo hospital. George was there long before me getting his perch, his power lines, lights and tripods ready. The Sister, bless her cotton socks, was browbeating him, by insisting he cover his cameras (Bell & Howell movie and Pentax still) with white linen sterilised covers.  I could see he was building up a sweat.
Dr Roley Bazeley had agreed to assist me and Dr Derek Radford was to administer the general anaesthetic. On the previous day the senior medical officer, Dr Dennis Johnson, called me to his office to discuss the operative procedure for the patient. He wanted me to realise that although he had agreed for his medical officers to assist me they would be of very little help if things went wrong. This was, in his opinion, specialised surgery for which they had no experience. The responsibility would rest squarely with me. Talk about being made to feel out on a limb. I thanked him for allowing Bazeley to act as an assistant as the operation needed more than one pair of hands. In the circumstances I had no option but to accept the responsibility which was always going to be mine anyway.
Next morning while Radford was anesthetising the patient I was quietly going over each step of the procedure I was about to follow. I would take each step one by one. There were four major pitfalls or complications, jaw fracture , severe haemorrhage, difficulty of suturing the cyst lining to the mucous membrane of the mouth  and major contusion or severing of the main nerve to the lower jaw and lip. I had anticipated the first complication but the rest would have to be dealt with as and when they arose.
I made the first incision on the outer side of the lower jaw from the mid line right back to beyond the last molar tooth all along the margin of the gum. This tissue was stripped away from the bone all the way to the ramus or outer side of the vertical section of the mandible. When the bleeding was arrested we gave George his first shot of the denuded bone.
The mobile tooth was extracted, George got another shot. Now came the first tricky bit.  I started to slowly cut a window in the bone behind to last molar tooth. I required a hole about 25mm in diameter. The tension on me at this moment was intense as the mandible appeared to be very thin. I took my time. When I considered the cavity to be sufficiently wide I prepared to wash out all the bone debris. George during this time had the mutters that he could not film because my hands were getting in his line of vision and there was not enough light in the area to be filmed. When cleaning out I was spraying water and Roley was doing all the suction of the water and bone fragments. Having used a swab there was the hole in the bone and just below it was the pure white thick wall of the cyst. Hallelujah! I lock on to it with two artery forceps. Making certain that the forceps were tightly locked in to position, I cut a 20mm opening into the wall of the cyst between the two artery clamps.
The internal cyst liquid welled up around the incision, thus the pressure of the cyst was released. George was screaming for more shots. I felt that the worst was almost over. I gave him the luxury of a few minutes of taking a lot of footage while the tension drained away from me. There was one a minor hurdle ahead of me. I began the task of suturing the cyst lining to the oral mucosa. The space was so confined. Roley was battling to retract the patient's tongue, the space was even further reduced by the position of the artery clamps and I was attempting to position the first suture to attach the cyst lining to the mucosa of the mouth. In future years I came across a needle holder designed by the wartime plastic surgeon, Sir Hugh Gillies. It was known as a Gillies needle holder. If I'd had one on that first and crucial day it would have made my life so much easier. In all future operations I never went into theatre without it. It not only held a needle but also had a set of scissor blades to cut the suture. One could tie the suture and cut the thread in one movement. Finally the suturing of the cyst wall was complete. George got some more footage. That small aperture into the cyst looked just great.
The detached gum tissue was sutured back into place. All that remained to be done was to pack the cyst cavity with what was known as Bismuth and Iodide paste on ribbon gauze. This helped to disinfect the cyst cavity and keep it patent. It took about three metres of this ribbon gauze.   With a great sense of relief I pulled off my rubber gloves. It had been two and a half hours since pulling them on. I was still on an adrenalin rush but poor George was almost falling off his perch with exhaustion. Standing on that table for such a long period was no mean feat. The patient was wheeled off to the recovery room and I felt exceedingly chuffed. Another step up the surgical ladder as part of my apprenticeship.  I was, indeed learning fast.
The next morning I had more x-rays taken. The BIP pack filled the cavity and the lower jaw was still intact. The patient was a bit bewildered as his jaws were wired together and would remain so for the next six weeks to allow new bone formation to begin to strengthen his mandible.  He would have to survive on a liquid diet until the fixation wires were removed. He looked at his x-rays with great awe.
There was no way of knowing how long it would take to fill the internal cavity of the bone. Each week the bip gauze was removed, the cavity irrigated and the shortened
bip gauze replaced. By the time he went back to Ovamboland the cyst cavity was all but reduced to a very small volume. The pack was removed for the last time before he went home. Through the interpreter I told him to make contact with me as soon as he returned for his next contract.
He did not come back for a full year. As soon as he arrived I again carried out a full radiological and clinical examination.   Bone regeneration was in satisfactory evidence. The aperture into the cyst had completely healed, He was cheerful and seemingly in good health. However one of his x-rays displayed a worrying feature. I called him back a month later and took another picture. It appeared that the internal cystic lining was starting to show signs of malignancy, a condition I suspected after seeing his first x-ray. I sent the film to Prof Lester Brown for a second opinion. He unfortunately confirmed my suspicions. It was a tumour that was locally malignant which would not spread via the lymphatic glands but malignant nevertheless and slow growing. This was going to be a huge disappointment to the patient and to me personally.
Talking to him through an interpreter was difficult at the best of times. It was not easy for him to comprehend why he would require another operation, particularly when it seemed to him that he was well on the way to recovery. I got the impression he thought I over-reacting. He showed great concern when I made it known to him we would have to take him out of Namibia to Johannesburg for an operation by the Professor at Wits Dental School. The only certain way of avoiding a recurrence of the tumour was to carry out a hemi-resection of his lower jaw and replace it with a bone graft from the iliac crest of his own hip bone. When he eventually understood the full meaning of what I was implying, the incredulous look on this poor man's face was a haunting experience. From his simple point of view he had come to me originally with just a loose tooth which wanted me to extract. On my advice he had been involved in a big operation where he had to endure having his jaws wired together for a long time with endless visits to have things packed in and out of his mouth. I could see his faith in me was slowly but surely receding.

I felt helpless as I was obviously not successful in explaining to him the full impact of his situation and decided to seek the help of Rev. Cawthorne. This pastor of the Anglican Church had spent many years in Ovamboland and spoke the language fluently. We arranged a meeting. After a long discussion with Rev Cawthorne the patient seemed more reassured.
First the Mine Authority had to obtain permission for us to arrange transport to Johannesburg. This having been procured, as they say in the classics, the rest is history. The day after arrival Prof Lester Browne conducted the operation. He graciously allowed me to assist. The anaesthetic was administered By Dr Speedy Bentel. Dr Bentel was a world-renowned anaesthetist who specialised in "hypotensive anaesthesia ". By means of certain drugs and positioning of the patient's legs the blood pressure could be lowered in order to be able to operate in an almost bloodless field.
In essence, during this operation all the soft tissue attached to the left side of the jaw was stripped free of the bone. In the mid line the mandible was cut in half with a surgical saw and removed. Next an incision was made over the patients left hip. A slab of bone was excised from the iliac crest of the pelvis of an appropriate size. The incision was closed with sutures. The bone for implant was then fashioned to the approximate size and shape of the removed section of the mandibular bone. It was then wired to the remaining section of the mandible with stainless steel sutures. Again both jaws were stabilised with interdental wiring. All the major muscles were reattached. The final sewing up was carried out but not before the patient's blood pressure was brought back to normal. The extensive wound was then observed to make sure that all the major blood vessels had been sutured and minor ones "tied off" to prevent the risk of post operative haemorrhage. And so it was done. A week later we flew back to CDM. After a month's recuperation the patient was placed on light duty and for the remainder of his contract he was in sheltered employment.
After six weeks I again removed the interdental wiring. By this time the poor fellow had lost a great deal of weight. The hospital dietician was entrusted with the task replacing his lost body mass. He also had weekly sessions with the physiotherapist. I gave him a simple clothes peg to bite on every day to help increase the strength of his jaw muscles. By the time he left for Ovamboland ten months later he was in pretty good shape. When he opened his mouth wide there was just a slight deviation to his right side. I promised to make him replacement teeth when he returned to CDM for his next contract.
He returned in little over a year. He looked in good health and had put on quite a few kilos, always a good sign. He refused my offer to provide him with some replacement teeth with a smile. I had the feeling he was suspicious of what chain of events might transpire the second time around. And who could blame the poor chap. He was, however, alive and well. I lost contact with him when I retired from CDM but like to think that he lived to a ripe old age. I will never ever forget him and I doubt he will ever forget me. I hope that he enjoyed "dining out on his operation" and that his friends looked upon him with awe. He certainly deserved it.

Interesting ... never knew such a condition could exist ....  I recently lost a friend to cancer in the jaw , they  did the  cutout and   graft from the hip  but it  had  spread  into the body ,  did not  respond well to the  chemo and radiotherapy ...

Brian La Trobe's memoir.

THE MAKING OF THE MOVIE OF THE OPERATION

My team of film makers were all amateurs. We had a large footage of film in the can but it still had to be processed, edited and the sound track superimposed. I had written the script in the prescribed fashion, prior to the shooting of the film. It should have been relatively simple to coordinate and synchronise the film and voice over. But I had made a fundamental error. The film opened with a sequence of me talking directly to the camera to explain the purpose of the film and the technicalities of the operation.
This was well before the days of the computer and digitised film memory in colours which I still do not understand. In those days of yonks I put sound to 8 mm film on a magnetic tape. On 16mm film there was an optical sound system. Even that was too advanced for my cranial ability. Be that as it may, a full frontal shot of anybody talking required a process of lip synchronisation.
To make matters even more complicated we did not have the facility of a soundproof studio. A 16mm projector makes one hell of a clatter. There is no way that one can superimpose a sound track on a film in the same room as the projector. We cunningly overcame this difficulty by projecting the film on a screen in my study. The microphone and its wires were passed through a small hole drilled in the window frame to where I, the commentator, stood on a box in the flower bed watching the film through the window. Our best opportunity to carry out this work was at dead of night to obviate general traffic noise. As the process took place in the winter months the rest of the film crew were comfortably wrapped up in the study while I was outside exposed to the rigors of the climate with only a torch to read my script. I also had to keep to keep an eye on the film being projected inside to ensure synchronisation. It was a near impossible task.
Every attempt proved to be a failure. When you see your lips move on the projected film, you take a breath. This immediately puts the commentator's voice a half a syllable out of synch. After many, many failures I managed to train myself to take a breath a fraction of a second before I uttered the first sound. I knew the script backwards after attempts that extended over many weeks. I was worried that some of my helpers would grow tired and just admit defeat but to their credit they persisted.
The problem was even more complicated. None of us had any idea how to add the sound in sections. So even if we accomplished the initial voice section in sync, a later mistake in the latter half of the film meant that the whole sound track had to be done again from the beginning. I can't begin to describe how the tension built up during the many failures. I would perhaps get the most difficult voice sync part absolutely perfect and would immediately sense tension in the rest of the crew. Then I would get nervous. Please God, don't let me make a mistake this time. Within a few sentences of the end of the script they would slowly begin to rise from their chairs with knuckle white hands about to give the thumbs up sign. And I would falter over a simple word because of a bone dry mouth or just a tensioned and congealed tongue. Result: another failure.
I well recall when the sound saga of the film was at its lowest ebb. It was a Sunday evening. We had assembled for the umpteenth time for yet another recording session. Oranjemund was cold, misty and quiet as a used coffin. I climbed onto my perch in the flower bed and got the nod as usual from inside the warm study. The film started to roll, my timing and diction were perfect, the first difficult part was completed without a hitch and I could see the team start to tense up. We were well over half way to a long awaited success. Was this to be our evening of glory? I tried to calm the excitement in my voice while from the other side of town came the dulled but ever increasing crescendo of a Landrover with a blown exhaust muffler.
Would my commentary finish first or would it again be ruined? With the last few sentences to go and only a short piece of film remaining to pass through the projector the bloody Landrover roared past our garden gate, the driver blissfully ignorant of the shit and derision, mayhem and chaos he had caused us that fateful evening. If I'd had access that night to a 12-bore shotgun or preferably a G7 self-propelled cannon I think I would have happily blasted the driver and his poxy vehicle into eternity and savoured the moment. 
So near and yet so far; we had no stomach left to pick ourselves up and start again. It was another three weeks before I once again began to rehearse my unnatural conditioned reflex action necessary to achieve lip synchronisation. When I felt reasonably confident I summoned the team. Almost apologetically, I suggested we give it one more try. The first attempt was useless, the second nearly right and the third was perfect. Success was almost an anticlimax. As I recall there was little celebration; everybody was simply relieved to get the job done and have it safely in the can.
A while later an international dental congress was held in Paris. Scientific papers were called for. There was a section for films produced by practitioners on pathological subjects. I entered the marsupialisation film. With the typical lack of communication, which was even worse in those days of 1960's I missed the date and time of its showing. This was a disappointment but my short fuse exploded when my request to have my film back was refused.
I made the request in person to the French official in charge of the congress archives. I was on my way to attend a post graduate course at the Eastman Dental Research Clinic in Rochester New York State where I hoped to show them my case study. I was told that according to French law the film had to be sent back to its country of origin by mail as it had come into France without the payment of sales tax. This did not impress me at all. I threw all my toys out of the cot but the official, though very sympathetic, was adamant. To add rub salt into the wound the gentleman asked me for $20:00 for the return postage. Though my French was non-existent and his English rather basic he certainly got my message to go and suck eggs.
A month after I returned to Oranjemund the film arrived safely back in my post box. It contained two envelopes. The first had a note in French from the luckless official from the dental congress. Fortunately the company had a French-speaking helicopter pilot who did a translation for me. The gist of the letter was that he was sorry and understood my feelings of frustration at not be able to take the film from France. He had personally paid the air mail fee to get the film back to me safely and if I looked in the other envelope I would find the First Prize certificate that my film had been awarded at the congress. What an embarrassment!

From Brian La Trobe's memoir

THE MULE DERBY IN MY DAY

The Mule Derby was an annual charity event in aid of the Cripple Care Fund that took shape in the late Fifties, a few years before our arrival. Originally it was just a series of mule races using animals from the company farm at Beauvallon on the south side of the Orange River. The idea was first mooted by the farm manager, Danie (Polly) Pollard, who undertook to train a few of the Ovambo farm labourers as jockeys.
A site was selected in the desert scrub on the north side of town and marked out roughly as a race course. Race colours for individual jockeys were quickly run up by a band of dedicated wives and worn with great pride by each jockey. When the day dawned the townsfolk took to the idea with enthusiasm, dressing in Derby Day high fashion. A primitive tote system proved a great attraction for the punters, though God knows it must have been a very hit or miss process to choose the right horse from the collection of motley mutts that Danie had assembled.
The kids were entertained with trampolines and makeshift trolley rides. Food stalls brought in a steady stream of cash but nothing compared to the bonanza from the tote, all of it going to a very good cause. Each race was called over an amplifier by a hyped up commentator whose excitement wound up the crowds and kept the race-goers agog as they watched the action. 
In subsequent years Polly introduced a few animals he had caught and broke in from a feral herd of horses that had long inhabited the lower delta of the Orange River. Legend had it they were the survivors of a group of 20 animals which escaped when an early prospector drowned while crossing the river in 1913. Whatever their origin, they were a feisty bunch of nags who showed some hair-raising form in contrast to the ambling mokes from the farm. It was an idea whose time had come and the Mule Derby quickly established itself as a popular annual event
The track was roughly circular with some topsoil or clay condensed into the sand. It was demarcated with the odd petrol or oil drum some distance from each other. This was a distinct disadvantage as occasionally the leading jockey of the race would lose his way on a bend and career off into the desert with the rest of the horses following suit. But it was all in the day's fun.
When that happened the race would be rerun. It all added to the excitement. The racing tote eventually became a highly organised easy access system run by staff from the accounting department. By the time we arrived the event as a whole had taken on quite a professional air with side shows of tombola, white elephant stall, a shooting gallery and a coconut shy. The coconuts were especially ordered for the occasion and came all the way from Durban. The food stalls had proliferated and offered a wide range of food, including a special smoked sausage stall organised by the butcher shop. The recreation club had its licence extended on the day to provide a more than adequate bar at the site.
A train and track lay out was organised for the children, using an "obsolete" small-size diesel loco purloined from the mine to pull a set of coaches. The miniature open-air set of gaily painted coaches were the product of the engineering department and the carpentry workshops. And, as was typical of a mining bureaucracy, a mine railway inspector flew down from Windhoek each year to inspect the track and check the train driver's licence before giving official permission to operate as a passenger carrier for the day.  All in all it was a great fun day, the product of the combined voluntary efforts of a large number of people. I served on the Mule Derby committee for a couple of years before I was asked to assume the chairmanship.
Among other things, I felt we needed some extra joy rides for the children. This was where Ronnie Jew was an enormous asset. I envisaged a miniature carousel with little aeroplanes and cars for the kids but it all seemed very daunting when I considered that such a setup would need an electric motor and cables, control panel, transformer and a gear box with drive shafts and bearings. Ronnie assured me there'd be no problem in finding these basics somewhere on the mine. The canopy, suspension rods, planes and cars were easy to make in the well equipped company workshops, all done in overtime hours volunteered by the artisans. However, we hit what could be a major snag. Ronnie pointed out that the carousel needed a hefty supply of power, much more than that previously needed by the race caller's small, plug-in amplifier. He estimated that the nearest point to get power from the street lighting system was about 200 metres away but had no idea where the nearest transformer was located. I said I would handle this detail.
I made an appointment to see the Chief Engineer who fortunately was a race horse fanatic. He had been walking around with a temporary dental filling in his mouth for about two years. He was a man quite happy to meet socially and play golf with me but was abnormally petrified of my profession.
"Hugh, I need a three-phase connection to the Mule Derby site. It might need cabling of about 250 metres." His reaction was immediate, and negative. The conversation went something like the following:
."Are you bloody mad? Do you know what it would cost?"
"I know Hugh but I just thought you could hide it somewhere.  It's in a good cause."
"Piss off, Brian. You want your head read even thinking I could do such a thing."
"Hugh, how is that temporary filling I put in about two years ago holding up?"
"It's fine and it's staying that way until it gives further trouble."
"OK," I said.  "When the day arrives for me to replace it with a permanent restoration I can fix it in two different ways."
"What do you mean?"said Hugh, alarmed.
"Painfully or painlessly," I said with a smile. And while I had him on the ropes I added: "What about lending me one of those big earthmovers, a road scraper and a bulldozer with drivers for a few a weekends to cut a new race track. Oh, and I also need some fence posts and cabling keep the horses on the track".
"Get, the hell out of here you bloody chiseller," he yelled. I left, confident and quite shameless about playing on his phobias.
A couple of weeks later one bright Sunday morning I had a call to say I'd better get my backside out to the Mule Derby site pronto. What I saw was petrifying. There before my eyes were five giant earth movers each capable of biting tons of earth in a single load. Several bulldozers and two road graders lined up behind the earthmovers. The fuel bill just getting them to the site from their workshop had probably eaten up a year of my salary. I watched, fascinated. In one day the entire project was completed, including the stringing of a kilometre long cable between fence posts as a track boundary.
I should have been delighted but instead felt an awful sense of foreboding. The extent of work was far beyond anything I had envisaged. Even more mortifying was the fact that I had earlier asked the company for 50 old German prefabricated wooden houses that were in the process of being replaced. We had ideas of building a permanent Mule Derby pavilion with the sections of these houses. The entire thing was now completely out of control.
I howled a cry of anguish when I remembered that the GM was still away on long leave and I had not even broached the subject of this scheme before he left. Early next morning I got my nurse to cancel all my morning's patients.  A much chastened dentist went to the office of the Chief Engineer where I found him checking the proposed plan of the pavilion with the Senior Medical Officer.
"According to public health regulations the SMO says we cannot erect this pavilion without ten female toilets and wash hand basins and the same for males with the addition of two urinals. I cannot justify putting all this valuable plumbing equipment into buildings which have been declared redundant and ready for the scrap heap. That means we'll have to throw concrete slabs on each end of the pavilion and erect a brick toilet block at each end. Oh, and in case we want to use the facility at night we had better plan to have lighting in position."
I just wanted to lie down somewhere quietly and assume the foetal position. What was all of this going to cost and what would the GM say when he heard of this expensive project to which he certainly not given financial approval?
"Let's stop this madness," I said to Hugh.
"Can't," said Hugh. "If I leave the job incomplete I'll get hell for spending so much on your new race track. But don't worry, I'll square the old man" He brimmed with confidence, I was less so. I could visualise the end of my career with CDM.
I have always been a believer in Sod's Law: if a situation can get worse, it will. And so it proved. The GM was scheduled to return to Oranjemund on a Friday but was delayed in Cape Town, only reaching Oranjemund on the Sunday afternoon. The Senior Consultant from De Beers headquarters in Johannesburg - the equivalent in the company hierarchy of, if not God, at least the archangel Gabriel - arrived the very next morning. After initial chat in the office of the GM the consultant suggested they take a "look around the village".
"Right," said the GM. "We'll take a ride around the perimeter then go into the town to look at places of interest."
"Suits me," said the Consultant.
Comfortably ensconced in the GM's new Mercedes Benz they headed north then turned into the last avenue of the village on the edge of the desert where they espied our newly constructed pavilion with workman busily putting the finishing touches to the public toilet blocks. Beyond was the new race track all nicely fenced.
"What's this?" asked the Consultant.
"It's where we used to run our annual charity Mule Derby event. As to this new building I know stuff all about it but I sure as hell intend find out as soon as I get back to the office."
In no time at all the Chief Engineer and I had a command performance on the GM's luxurious carpet. Hugh, more accustomed to the ways of the GM than I, just stood there and took the tirade in his stride. I was quaking in my shoes. When the GM began to run out of steam, Hugh very diplomatically started his explanation to justify his and my actions, something about how the new pavilion would be a valuable asset to CDM and was a good public relations exercise.
"The pair of you have come bloody close to being fired," said the infuriated GM. "You know I encourage initiatives by my senior staff but you cannot go ahead with such major works without informing me about it."
"But you were overseas, Boss" said Hugh.
"I don't care if I was at the frigging North Pole" said the GM.
"Sorry Boss," said Hugh. I added also added a quavering "Sorry, sir", croaked from a very dry throat."
"Get out of here before I change my mind and fire the pair of you," said the still simmering GM.
With hindsight I understood his embarrassment. We had made him look incompetent in the eyes of his immediate superior. It had dented his ego, which was understandable. He liked to give the impression that he always ran a tight ship on the mine and in the town. The over-indulgence on cost of the project which gave me sleepless nights was of secondary importance to him. He was more concerned about the breach of protocol. The matter was soon forgotten and I, unaccustomed to the mega economics of a hugely profitable mine, breathed a long sigh of relief. By the time the next Mule Derby was staged the GM enjoyed himself as much as anybody else. When visitors admired the new facility and the unique race track in the middle of the desert he was not averse to taking the credit. At least he had the grace to give me a wink as the praise came in. Later he would even joke about how his staff had built the entire project without his knowledge.
The next Derby was pure luxury. All the stall holders had custom built stalls. The bar enclosure was a great success. The race commentator could sit up high above the crowd to relay progress of each race with our new public address system. Ronnie's new carousel was a hit with the children and the train worked to total capacity all day long.
The Ovambo jockeys, now skilled riders and resplendent in their jockey caps and racing colours, performed very professionally. All the horses stayed on track and not a single race was cancelled. As we were packing up at the end of the meeting when the last person had left the stands and the bar had tossed out the last drunk the GM came over to me, gave me a shoulder hug and said: "Well done. It was a great day."
"Thank you," I said. Praise indeed!
Two other stories about Derby Day are worth the telling. One concerned the mystery of the missing rum and the other had to do with Ronnie and a loaded coconuts. But first the rum story, no pun intended. One of our best customers at the Mule Derby bar was a rum drinker. I have no recall of him ever betting on a race but his ability to flatten a bottle of his favourite Myers was quite formidable, as was his capacity to handle his liquor. Despite taking on board what could render the normal drinker unconscious he was never seen to fall over and always left at the end of race day with great dignity. To ensure we did not run out of his one and only tipple I personally checked that we always had three bottles in stock, in case he was in the mood to break a record.
Before we had our new pavilion the bar was situated in a tent where stock pilfering was always a problem. Not that it was ever suggested that our amateur barmen were taking the liquor; too many people had access in front and behind the counter. In an attempt to keep this leakage to a minimum I counted the stock as the booze was loaded onto the truck or trucks (we did not mess about those days of our youth). I checked it again into the bar and took a final count at the end of the day. All was always more or less accounted for, except none of the remaining rum ever made it back to the recreation club.
After a number of years of this I was in danger of developing a facial tic from sheer frustration. In the end I was not only doing the stock checks with the aid of three or four professional storemen but I would watch the loading of the returns to the club and would also follow the truck back to the club store to make sure that no bottles were thrown off the truck or handed to an accomplice along the way. Despite my surveillance, the Myers would always vanish somewhere between the pavilion and its return to the Bottle Store. 
            This pattern continued for two consecutive years until I finally had an inspiration. I rushed back to the pavilion and entered the bar as dusk was approaching. I stood behind the bar. All the shelves were bare as I had checked not an hour before. This time my eyes fell on two drawers where the barmen stored their cash boxes, long since being safely deposited in the company safe for later counting and reconciliation. The top drawer was empty but there in the second in all its pristine glory was one unopened virgin vessel of rum and one with a few tots missing. Hallelujah!
            I had to know who the clever thief was that had kept me guessing for so long. A call to our ever cheerful pharmacist produced a powerful non-fatal tasteless purgative in liquid form.
            He asked the name of the recipient. I told him it was a secret between me and the local catholic priest. I was in a quandary about reporting the matter. The offender could have been anybody working behind the bar. We employed a number of Ovambos to wash glasses. If one of them were found to be guilty his contract would be terminated. Worse, he would be refused further employment with the mine as Ovambos were not permitted alcohol, a penalty I thought rather harsh. If it was one of the European workers such a theft would be little more than a blemish on his record.
            I opted to play God and deal out summary justice. I went back to the pavilion and laced the opened bottle of rum with enough of the medicament to create a severe case of the trots to even the most constipated of mankind. The following morning I returned to the pavilion to check the drawer. The bottles were gone.
            The next day, being Monday, while having a mid-morning cup of tea with my medical associates I asked if anyone had come in with a severe case of the trots. Only one such case had been seen, at the morning clinic at the Ovambo hospital. It seemed the patient had shown up so dehydrated he'd been immediately admitted and put on a drip. He told the interpreter that he was washing glasses at the bar at the Mule Derby and must have been given some bad food.
            After tea I went over to the hospital where I found a rather wasted looking patient on a drip. It was our industrious glass washer who had held the position for a number of years. I just smiled at him and wagged my finger. We never lost any hard tack again even though he continued to work in the bar on further contracts.
            One of our most popular stalls at the Derby was the coconut shy. The coconuts had to be ordered from Durban about two months before the day of the Derby. The previous year we'd had a serious run on stock to the extent that before the afternoon was over all the coconuts had been won. Someone it seemed had perfected the art of knocking the nuts out of their metal holders. On the day of the Derby Ronnie came to me with a look of triumph and a coconut in one hand.
            "Doc, this here coconut is going to solve our problem. Feel it."
            I put my hand out and could barely hold it. It weighed about three kilos more than I expected. Ronnie had turned it out of wood, spiked the bottom with a half ingot of lead and glued lots of coconut fibres to the external surface. It appeared to be absolutely real and bigger than any coconut we had ever purchased.
            "That's cheating," I told him.
            "No it's not," said Ronnie. "It's all in the good cause of Cripple Care."
                        Ignoring my protestations, he placed the outsized nut in the central position on the stall. Naturally everybody tried to knock it over but without success. We ended the day with a few nuts in hand. The stall made a nice profit. While we were busy packing up a customer, who had obviously spent most of the afternoon in the bar, came up to me looking very cross indeed.
                        "Listen, mister, I've spent about R100.00 trying to win a frigging coconut today. I reckon you owe me one." I gave him two of the remaining nuts. As he walked away I heard Ronnie say: "You can have this one as well, Mate," and tossed the lead impregnated coco nut to him. The surprised fellow had to drop the nuts he held in each hand to catch the whopper. Its unexpected weight caught him off balance and planted him onto the sand. The laughing Ronnie was the first there to pick him up. The joke was enjoyed by all including the recipient of the weighted nut.

Ah, the mule derby and the coconut shy! From about a week before the event we would run around town selling mule derby programmes (for about 10c I believe), and whoever sold the most would be given a prize. Being rather entrpreneurial in those days, I would "hit' the main town office block on the day that the programmes came out, and was able to lift the prize in '64 and '65! Once it was a brand new camera (A Kodac Instamatic) and the other year's prize escapes me altogether. Each different department of the mine would name the horses and the names were always a source of great amusement.... names like "No work done", by Secretary out of Office! As for the coconut shy, I would save all my pocket money and "hog" the shy until I had enough to fill half a bag, that the nuts had arrived in, and drag them home (I lived over the road in 12th avenue). I don't remember if we ate more than two, but the thrill was what counted! As for the leaden nuts, they did work (and there were more than one), as when you did hit a real nut, more often than not it would crack or break, and you were given a fresh nut, which meant that they would end up with half of the stock "broken"! I also remember that the winning "jockeys" would receive a large bag of sweets, which they would often share with the children admiring their steeds!

Now I wonder where I can get me grubby paws on a Mule Derby Programme?
pls

Recall seeing  one in my memory box , along with  some of the plays I have already posted ...  will look and scan............

Much appreciated!   allgood

From Brian La Trobe's memoir.

THE BIRTH OF THE PINK PAN

When we as a family first started exploring our desert surroundings one of the first trips was to the beach - a ten minute trip by car from the town, and a visit to the Pink Pan. This was a quite a sight, some acres of pinkish water protected from the boiling surf of the Atlantic ocean by an extensive mound of dark sand which at first I took to be a natural dune but was later told it was the spoil dragged up from the base of the pan. We marvelled at this huge lake so close to the beach. The residual chemist in me from my General Motors days suggested a predominance of potassium salts leached from the original pan had a part to play in the colour.
Water levels were maintained by the pumping of seawater from a waterhole dug next to the beach. There was a very impressive club house at the southern end of the pan. In front of it was a circular basin to facilitate the launching of sailing dinghies of which there were a fair number of privately owned craft. As yachtsmen were in the majority water skiing was frowned upon. However, the club committee compromised under pressure but set a 25 horse power limit on power boat engines and permitted skiing only between yacht races. This effectively limited the sport to those young enough or skinny enough to balance on one or two water skis behind such a small power source.
This was the Cormorant Yacht Club, the equivalent of the mink and manure set of Tokai in Cape Town. It was originally named the Flamingo Yacht Club but that name had already been taken by a Free State club so the less glamorous fowl was substituted. The club house sported Members Only signs. Life jackets and nautical gear were standard wear and members were expected to know the port and starboard side of their boats. They also kept a knowing expression on their faces when the talk was of a fore and aft rigged vessel and never, ever, laughed at the commodore in his funny hat.
We La Trobe's were yacht club observers. There was generally a yacht race every weekend, over a course marked out by buoys. On rare occasions when I was home early from Sunday morning golf we would park on the high bank alongside the Pan and watch these weekend sailors. They showed surprising skill in battling with each other in freaky winds to gain line honours and silverware. My sport was golf. It being a serious and jealous mistress I had no time for sailing. With hindsight I now realise to my regret that golf is a very selfish sport. My leisure time was spent on God's little green acre a few kilometres further back up the river. Perhaps my wife and children would have had more enjoyment if I had taken more interest in yachting. Hindsight and old age are often a sobering combination.
However, I did later acquire a large fibreglass board with a vertical transom which came complete with a little one horse engine. In between yacht races the boys and I had great fun chugging around the pan. With our combined weight plus the motor the board would float just a fraction below the surface of the water. This created the impression that we were replicating an age old biblical fable, save that we appeared to be sitting instead of walking on the water. The upright chugging outboard motor, however, sort of spoilt the spell of the apparent miracle.
This unlikely fibreglass creation and its funny little Seagull motor had quite a history. I bought them from a club member but only later realised they had once belonged to Bob Molloy, the man notorious for his maniacal attempt to surf the raging Atlantic rollers that battered the coast. Legend has it that he made this attempt in full view of a stone memorial to two young German swimmers who drowned at that spot just prior to the Second World War. 
To put the surf conditions along this coast into perspective, it might help to relate the response of two experienced professional divers commissioned by the company. Their task was to survey underwater conditions as part of a preliminary investigation into the construction of an offshore fuel oil pipe line .Having flown out from England and arrived on site; they took one look at the tumultuous surf and resigned on the spot.
Bob, while well aware of this scenario, claimed he had spent many weekends studying the wave intervals and noted how they varied with certain wind directions. He observed a pattern during offshore winds when for a short interval the waves were not of tsunami standards and the undertow had less suction than a sinking ocean liner. He reasoned that all he had to do was wait for this window of opportunity to show that such seas were indeed surfable.
He didn't leave much to chance. He designed and built the board especially for rough conditions, extra wide for buoyancy, ultra long for speed and fibre-glassed to a mirror finish. This armed, he waited his chance. As luck would have it, all the conditions came together one bright Sunday morning just as he was rigging his boat at the yacht club. And that's about where luck deserted him. Just as he grabbed his board and was about to take off for the nearby beach the club commodore, Doug Solms his best mate, called a scratch race. As club champion for his dinghy class, Bob felt he could hardly refuse but reasoned it would be a "ninety minute jaunt" and then he could get back to the serious business of the day.
That wasn't quite the way it happened. The wind fell during the race and it was almost three hours before the last boat crossed the line. Bob took line honours. Stoked by his victory he went straight to Plan B only to find surf conditions had changed. The wind had reversed and was blowing onshore. That's when he should have called it a day. But, perhaps from a combination of adrenalin still flowing from his race win and ego in the face of the large entourage who had come to watch, he opted to "just paddle out for a look at the back line."
He had barely hit the first break and got a glimpse of what was beyond when he realised that the washing machine conditions heading his way were definitely not surfable, possibly not even swimmable. And that's when he made his second bad call. He would just "grab a shortie" i.e. jump a breaker and try to ride it in instead of taking the safer option and paddling back to shore. He remembers getting up on the board and moving at a helluva lick and then nothing more. Gawkers on the beach reported he wiped out spectacularly and together with his board disappeared in an avalanche of white water and boiling surf. Body and board were eventually dragged out by one of his supporters. He was carted off with haste to the mine hospital where the duty doctor stitched up his throat and scalp. Proof of this legendary exploit was recorded on the surf board itself. There for all to see was an exact outline of his lower jaw and forehead right where his head had smashed a hole in the board.
Barely a week later his wife caught him again studying the sea conditions with a faraway look in his eyes. She promptly put her foot down. The board, she said, had to go. No board, no surfing, she reasoned. They compromised when he added a fibreglass transom to the board and fitted a small outboard engine for his kids to use in puttering around the Pan. And that was the origin of the La Trobe underwater motor board, long since repaired, no longer showing a head-shaped hole but famous in its own right. 
Bob also pioneered skiing on the Pink Pan, except that he took it up before the water was pumped in. The pan was then mainly bright, pink salt with the odd pool of salt water over a bed of stinking mud. As such Bob figured it had excellent sliding qualities. A hitch behind a Landrover proved his point. The Landrover skirted the pan while the skier swung wide over the mud. There was only one rule: never fall. Those who did bounced over the surface with salt breaking off into the skin grazes and when they came to a stop, sank into the mud bed.
It was from one of Bob's former associates that I learnt the history of the yacht club on the Pink Pan. The pan itself might well have been the product of the slow process of geological evolution and weather patterns but the lake and what followed came about by more Machiavellian means. I came across the story after relating to this friend how I had manipulated senior staff and management by fair means and foul to ensure the building of the new Mule Derby track and pavilion.
I have previously mentioned the strict codes of the mine's social ethics ladder. On the one side, the invisible line between so called "daily paid" artisans who did all the construction work and on the other the "management" who made all the plans and supervised their execution. This group festered with all sorts of intrigue and cut-throat manoeuvres, usually carried out with a smile. Even the wives would sweat blood over the promotion of their spouses.
For them, not getting an invitation to what they regarded as an important mine guest house party with high ranking officials from head office was too devastating even to contemplate. And for someone below you in the pecking order to be invited while you were left out in the cold was a ball-grinding tragedy. At times it was known to arrest a wife's ovulation for months.
In this kind of atmosphere most constructive suggestions placed before management by daily paid employees tended to be looked upon with a jaundiced eye. For that reason mine workers with initiative who sat "below the salt" had long since made a creative art of management manipulation.
In those days the pan was really pink, almost startling in its colour and quite small due to the constant evaporation of the sea water. The residue of various salts gave the pan its distinctive colour. At some stage some bright spark had placed a dinghy at one end together with a makeshift jetty, more a joke than a real attempt at making use of such a shallow body of water. The sight always raised a smile so it achieved its purpose.
Then along came a mover and shaker by the name of Julius Katzke. Julius, who held a fairly mid level post in the survey department was an ebullient character, much liked by all and a magnet for women. He was a great host and entertainer who loved theatricals and played leading roles in many of the Oranjemund Players' productions. He proposed a yacht club for the pan, an idea that sounded plain silly at first until he pointed out that with minimal earthworks and a pumping station the pan could be enlarged and the water level deepened.
And here's where the story gets murky. It seems Julius was rebuffed at top level but got a better reception from a few keen artisans, expatriates from the UK who had done some previous sailing. Though he didn't get the nod, Julius understood he had a blind eye from management, a kind of out-of-sight out-of-mind attitude. In short order his artisan friends had "found" and restored an obsolete dragline which appeared one day at the Pink Pan complete with Ovambo crew. For the next few months it nibbled away to create the lake, then dug a waterhole nearby in which a pump appeared, all powered by an overhead line.
Almost overnight it seemed a sizable lake was brimming with seawater. Then, coincidentally with the arrival of the top brass on their regular inspection of the mine, both pump and dragline disappeared. A tour of the mine workings in the area also took in the pan. Legend has it that it was pointed out from a distance by management as "a natural lake that appeared with the recent Spring tides" but such a pity it will disappear just as quickly as it could be such a great water recreation spot. The point was taken up over dinner and by the time the last bottle of the evening was opened it was a done deal. Just put in a pump and keep up the water level, as one diner reported.
It was a piecemeal operation but within a year or so a lot more than that was evident. A purpose-built clubhouse had been constructed, a launching basin and jetty set up and sailing dinghies were being built in various garages. The Cormorant Yacht Club was a reality. The pan, once the home of flamingos, now churned with weekend sailors, water skiers and happily splashing kids.

Mike  here the cover ...  it was in my scans .. will scan the content when I find it .....

Three pics from the Mule Derby this morning, that have relevance to the previous post...

Looking forward to the content Sandy!

I was always under the impression that Stan Devlin built the pan, One can only wonder if this pan will return to it's natural state?

@ Bob, It appears you misled me into believing that you were the quiet kinda guy and not the maverick surfer you actually were....Get on with those memoirs sir!

I wonder  if the pink pan and salt pan were ever one Pan.... and how many more meters one would have to go beneath the pan to reach diamond bearing bedrock?

From Brian La Trobe's memoir

THE CDM GOLF COURSE AND THE GOLF TOURS


The CDM golf course was situated on the northern bank of the estuary of the Orange River, quite close to the mouth. It was, at that time, Namibia's only fully turfed course. Originally it was only nine holes but was later upgraded to the full eighteen. The course was designed and laid out by Grimsdale, a well known golf course architect.
The club house was built on a small elevation that allowed sight of most of the holes from the club house lounge. This pleasing sight had a delightful background of the river estuary against the stark sands of Alexander Bay on the far side in the Republic of South Africa. It was a magnificent oasis in the desert for all the enthusiasts who followed the little white ball. There was plenty of water from the river to irrigate the grass. In fact there were times when there was a surfeit, times when the mighty Orange came down in flood. When this occurred the mouth was usually closed by a colossal sand bar causing the water to flood back upriver and onto the course.
To obviate this CDM would bring in a couple of huge bulldozers from the mine and these would eat away at the bar in an attempt to cause a premature opening of the river mouth. It was a good plan but tricky in its execution. Sometimes the flood waters burst through before the dozers could get out of the way. On one occasion the driver of a massive machine of about 20 tons had to jump for his life as his bulldozer was swept out to sea, never to be seen again.
If the earthmoving was begun too early the sea had time to reclose the bar before the flood waters arrived, causing the very crisis the dozer team had laboured so hard to avoid. In this scenario the golf course would invariably be flooded. The anxious golfers would plead with their mining colleagues to come to the rescue with their heavy duty pumps. About six of these would pump day and night to clear the course and to hell with the expense which would be hidden in some budget or other. No effort was spared to keep God's little acre well manicured and in pristine condition. The course was close enough to town for the real enthusiasts to have a quick nine holes after work, particularly on summer evenings. There were competitions every Saturday afternoon and Sunday mornings with extended hours at the Nineteenth Hole that often caused upsets to domestic bliss. Women, who had their own "Ladies Day" every Tuesday morning, could also play in the Sunday competitions.
If I have made the golf course sound like a utopian dream, let us not forget the wind.
At the height of its power it could drive grown men to tears. In common with our yachting brethren down the track we had similar problems. The golf course had roughly half the holes facing into the prevailing wind and the remainder down wind. The first hole was a downwind par five, over 500 metres long. If you caught your drive "in the meat" the wind would take it on forever, making your approach to the green a mere chip shot. A birdie was in sight coupled with delusions of grandeur. The second was a short hole of just 140 metres. The player would have to choke down a sand wedge to avoid going out of bounds behind the green.
The walk from the second green to the tee of the third hole was protected by a row of trees. If the wind was blowing, local players would stop, gird their loins, tighten jock straps and pith helmets, and only then step into the blast. At such times a ball placed on a tee would not stay in position long enough to be driven. Then a shout for "hose" would go up and players would produce 25mm sections of garden hose as a substitute for a tee. The more savvy players kept three or four different diameters of pipe to be used as the wind dictated, strung together with a piece of fishing line for easier selection. Sometimes the wind would carry this aid some distance behind the tee. It was bad enough looking for loss golf balls. Having to look for lost hose tees was an added trauma.
There are seven hundred and forty eight muscles in the human body. To hit a golf ball straight requires the synchronisation of seven hundred and forty six of these beauties. The view from this wind-blasted tee, seen through slitted eyes, was intimidating. Ahead was the green, some 500 metres away. On the left was the formidable Orange River in which a mud bank some ten metres off the shore line was well positioned to trap any wayward hooked shot. At such times it was frustrating to be able to see the errant ball and not be able to retrieve it. On any windy day the habitual hooker could with great ease contribute four or five balls to the formation of this mud bank before giving up in disgust. He or she would then walk to the green, fuming, having had to concede the hole to a grinning opponent. It is my belief that, over time, that damn mud bank consisted of more golf balls than mud.
For the hacker with a chronic slice there was more purgatory on the right side of the fairway. Here the rough consisted of a sand base covered with bessie bosse or berry bush. This iniquitous botanical misery may well hold a revered place in the annals of botany but it does so heaped with the curses of Oranjemund golfers. A hardy, drought resistant, profusely leafed ball trap it survives in conditions that would stop a Sherman tank. Add to that its attraction for mosquitoes who siesta by the billion under the leaves and hordes of spiders that solidly web the outside of this chest high bush, and you have a recipe for golfer's misery. If a player has the misfortune to land in a bessie bos it is often less traumatic to simply forget it and accept the penalty. Unwary visitors always searched meticulously and, once located, tried to drive the ball from its parking spot in or on the bush. The usual consequence was that the shot seldom dislodged the ball but did disturb a horde of angry mosquitoes the size of small pigeons which attacked in clouds and left lumps that itched for days after.
Even the gifted straight hitter could be defeated by the wind. It was normal to look up after the follow through and see the ball reach the zenith of its trajectory then travel back towards the tee, falling far short of the position it would have achieved on a calm day. This third hole at Oranjemund, played in the wind, was memorable indeed; in golfing parlance it separated the men from the boys.
Another quirk of the course was at holes seven and eight which were located adjacent to each other with little rough in between. Thus a golfer who sliced while driving from the seventh tee was a major hazard to a fellow golfer walking down the eighth fairway. George Glover, a gifted sportsman, had an easy flowing swing but a tendency to slice the ball. On one particular day I was George's partner. His great mate, Bill Fry, was a hole ahead of us walking down the eighth. As George hit his drive it travelled in an arc towards Bill.
"Fore," George shouted.
Bill looked up just as the ball hit him above his right ear. He went down like a pack of cards. His legs gave one spasmodic jerk then he remained still.
"I'd better play a provisional in case I can't find the ball" said George nonchalantly. He played his second drive before ambling over to Bill who by this time was sitting up, loudly profaning over George's doubtful parentage.
"Good morning sonny boy, you must learn to duck a bit quicker when I shout fore," was George's greeting.
"You could have bloody killed me," said Bill.
"Never," said George. "I hit you on the head."
Bill was one of those sportsmen who often seemed to get hurt; what Americans would call a "fall guy". On another occasion we golfers were having a cricket match against the cricketers. As to be expected the golfers lost a number of wickets rapidly. Bill Fry was next to bat. Our team had only three cricket boxes (genital protectors to the uninitiated) and Bill refused to go out to bat without one. The only solution was a hot box. So, when the next wicket fell the batsman pulled out his box and Bill, to the amusement of spectators, slipped it into his pants. Bill walked out to the wicket, took his guard and the speed bowler dispatched him with a delivery right between the eyes. He was carted off to casualty where his wife, Martha, was the nurse on duty that day. Poor old Bill got very little sympathy from Martha who was upset at this further demonstration of her accident-prone husband's tendency to get hurt.

And Bill Fry was the man who, in later years, fell off a horse at a Mule Derby!!

It seems Ol' Bill married an appropriate lady!

Hello Bob Molloy.

Reading your great articles from Brian La Trobe's "Oranjemund's first resident dentist"  I do remember that in the back end of the sixties there was some trouble with the dental services in Oranjemund....... I had had  a back molar removed before coming to Oranjemund but the job had been botched and the root had been left in..I had put up with the pain for some time before attempting to see a dentist, and what I remember back then..... I was informed  that we did not have any dentists, this was by one of the doctors there a Scottish gentleman whose name eludes me at this time.... He also told me that two dentists employed by CDM had resigned and that it was himself that would remove the  offending molar or I would have to go to the nearest dental surgery in Springbok. Anyway the point I am making is was Brian La Trobe there in 1969 and does he remember the two dentists that resigned............ Frank.


Brian La Trobe's material on Oranjemund is quite lengthy and may need to be posted in several chapters. His recall of being headhunted by CDM for the post and his first impressions of Omund are hilarious.
But more intriguing and I'm sure of great interest to Bertie is Brian's account of setting up the first fulltime dental surgery in Omund. He offered a very high level of dental care, including maxillo-facial surgery. Most of you who were children in Oranjemund in the Sixties and early Seventies would have been treated by him. At least one of his cases was presented at an international medical conference in Paris as a world first. Indeed a man for all seasons, he was an avid poet and published several booklets including poems on Oranjemund.
He was also a great community activist and among other things was behind the setting up of the Mule Derby and the associated children's playground. After Oranjemund he served several terms as mayor of Grahamstown and went on to international fame as one of the first eco-activists in the waste management field. 
 
This was another piece from Brian La Trobe's article's posted by Bob Molloy, anyone in my age group would shudder if they had experienced a visit to a hospital in the forties and fifties, they would remember this below.

Dr K, seemingly unflappable, was busy spraying ethyl chloride onto a surgical gauze throat pack. He managed to get a mason gag between the gnashing teeth to hold the kid's mouth open and then placed the freezing throat pack at the back of the patient's mouth.

From Brian La Trobe's memoir

GOLF IS NOT A SPORT, IT'S A RELIGION, AND HERE'S WHY

Our grumblings at the vagaries of the local weather and the shortcomings of our golf course generally quietened after an away match at clubs elsewhere in Namaqualand or Namibia. One quickly realised how fortunate we were. The Port Nolloth course was a salt pan close to the village. It substituted as a rugby field, a soccer pitch, an air field, a cricket pitch as well as a golf course. The greens were made of oil and sand. Each green had a scraper provided to scrape a smooth path towards the hole. Local knowledge was a huge advantage. When carving a path to the hole, a slight slant of the hand on the scraper could make a small groove in the oil/sand mixture which would steer the ball directly into the hole. The fairways were delineated by rows of half buried car tyres. The rough looked identical to the fairway. A club byelaw allowed a player to tee up on the fairway but it was difficult to get a normal length tee to remain erect in the sand. The locals used donkey droller (donkey turds), which seemed to be freely available.
At O'Kiep Copper Mine near Springbok the course was named Klipdam (stone dam) and appropriately so. At Stone Dam the tees were concrete with a narrow groove filled with oil and sand for driving the ball. The rest of the course was flintstone. Sparks flew after every stroke. Fearing for my clubs, I tended to freeze at every shot and could never force myself to hit through the ball. The locals were well accustomed to the harsh conditions where golf clubs did not have a long life. This was one course where the divot marks were on the club irons and not on the fairways.
Our baptism of fire was when the Oranjemund club was invited to play in the Namaqualand Championships. This must have been in the early 1960's. We did not fare well as we had a too high a regard for our clubs. Nevertheless the hospitality of the people of O'Kiep Copper Mine was outstanding. As a result the prizegiving was a bit protracted and the Nineteenth Hole well patronised. 
The team had travelled to O'Kiep in three cars. I was allotted a seat in George Glover's car. George, being the social animal that he was, without fail was always the last to leave. We had to reach the gate on the south side of the Orange before it closed at 5pm. After that no excuses permitted entry; if you were late, tough. You either spent the night in your car or retraced your steps nigh on a hundred kilometres back to Port Nolloth - a dismal half-horse harbour town known ironically as Port Jolly - and booked in for the night at the local hotel. 
Despite George's camaraderie we managed to leave Klip Dam with plenty of time to get to the CDM gate but disaster struck at the top of the escarpment just before the Anenoes Pass. The pass was about six kilometres long leading down a winding dirt road to the coastal plain on the way to Port Nolloth. The road was deeply rutted by the heavy trucks that grated up and down it daily. We had a puncture just at the beginning of the pass. Full of the joys of spring and an on-board load of booze we all alighted from the car. George opened the boot and bounced the spare wheel onto the road. The rest of us were busy getting the car jacked up. The wheel bounced once then twice, remained vertical then started to careen down the inclined road.
"Don't worry," said a relaxed George. "It will fall over at the bend."
The problem arose when it did not fall over at that bend but continued, gathering speed as it went. By the time we realised what had happened the bloody wheel had a head start on us of over fifty metres. We all started to run but none of us had a hope in hell of catching up. We found the tyre about two kilometres down the pass in a ditch on the right side of the road. If it had gone off on the left side it would have dropped over a small precipice and been lost in the bush. So I suppose we had to be thankful for small mercies. It was a Sunday afternoon and the road was deserted, not even a Joel's lorry to come to our aid. Getting that damn wheel back to the car was a real pain in the butt. George had long since given up the chase, relying on us young bucks to retrieve it.
At first we tried to roll the bleeding thing back up the road. If you have never tried this, don't.  It's very tough on the hands and you get covered in dust. What's more, it's difficult if not impossible to gain momentum uphill. We ended up with two of us carrying the friggen thing, the third person lapping. It was a toss up as to who would be the first to drop from exhaustion. We finally got back to the car to find George fast asleep. With what little strength we could muster we got the wayward spare bolted back onto the car.
"Don't worry." said George. "I'll get you to the gate on time".
The idea set him off singing the tune made famous by Stanley Holloway in My Fair Lady of "Get me to the church on time." We young bloods were not impressed. We were exhausted, covered in good old Namaqualand dust and just wanted to get home. It was not to be. We nearly made it to the gate, missing it by barely ten minutes. The more sensible option would have been to accept defeat at Port Jolly and book into the Hotel. But no, the failed attempt meant retracing our way back to the old harbour town.
There were no mobile phones in those days. Getting a call to Namibia even from as close as Port Jolly was a mission. When I eventually made contact with Peggy she was relieved to hear we were safe (I think).When I told her our tale of woe over a crackling old fashioned type phone line she listened patiently. When I finished my embroidered and dramatised story there was a pause.
"Yeah, right," said Peggy (or words to that effect which I won't repeat here) and put the phone back on the hook.
After a very indifferent dinner George regained his second wind."Let's have a party to celebrate finding the wheel," said George, He had no takers. We just fell into bed.
Port Nolloth was a dreary little place, often shrouded in mist rolling in from the Atlantic Ocean. When the mist cleared the chances are that the wind will blow. The best view of the village was out to sea. In the days before the advent of Marine Diamond Corporation and its Chairman, Mr Sammy Collins, there were a few fishing boats who concentrated on catching crayfish, a small fish factory, an hotel and Police Station and not much else. There were, however, fourteen general dealer grocery shops. This was out of all proportion to the size of the general population. The reason for this over exuberance of the retail trade was IDB (illicit diamond buying). Most of those shops were fronts for trade in the so called "little stars". One had only to stand at the back of the store and look a bit nervous. Soon someone would sidle up beside you to enquire if you were trying to sell some stertjies (little stars). It would, in addition, help if you had just climbed out of a car with an Alexander Bay or Oranjemund car registration.
There were however two very fascinating inhabitants in the village. The local catholic priest was a fine old American gentleman. He had built a beautiful small church, no doubt with funds from his native land, which seemed to match his own pious serenity. Once the head of his order, this highly qualified and academic priest had spent years travelling the world to visit his priests and nuns in their various houses and convents. After he stepped down as head of the order he would regale his listeners with the detail of the mystery of how he came to be in such a remote spot as Port Nolloth. It seems it happened in response to a question by the new head of his order.
"In all  your travels around the world, Reverend Father, which was the most desolate and lonely of our churches in the entire world, where you would least like to work for the Lord?"
"Port Nolloth, in Namaqualand South Africa," said the good father without hesitation.  And so, when the dust had settled after leaving high office that is exactly where the new Superior of the Order sent the poor Father. And what is more he went, without a murmur. I suppose that's the true meaning of a vow of obedience.
By the time I met him he was physically very infirm and had to sit down to say the Mass but his intellect had not deserted him. For years he had been assisted by a French nun - Sister Madeleine Raphael, an Oblate Sister of St Francis de Sales – who had been sent to Africa as a missionary. She came to Africa in 1900 and died in 1962. A great deal of her missionary life was spent in Port Nolloth doubtless trying to promote Christianity amongst the heathen of the fishing community which must have been an uphill battle. After many years in Port Jolly she still spoke almost no English and certainly no Afrikaans. She was renowned for hitching lifts to Springbok and beyond with the hard-boiled truck drivers of Joel's Transport. As the good father spoke fluent French this old Nun was probably the only person with whom he could have any meaningful conversation. Her passing must have left a great void in his life.
I would always visit the dear old man when I drove to Kleinzee by car. He would invariably invite me to stay for lunch or even over night and would be desperately disappointed when all I would have time for was a cup of tea.
On the few occasions I could have lunch with him I would phone to arrange the date. He would be so appreciative. When we sat down the table would be laid with the top quality linen and cutlery.  Everything was precise and neat. I felt sure he had done it all himself. His choice of wines was always perfect. How he came upon his supply in such a desolate hole as Port Nolloth was always a mystery. The food was magnificent and had the touch and taste of Provence. I suspected the old nun was the chef, though she never appeared. The meal was presented as a splendid buffet. I cannot recall who could have helped him after she died.
For one who lived in such isolation his range of conversation was impressive. He obviously read widely and gained international news from his radio. His academic background was such that there was no subject he could not discuss with precision and insight. To me, the fact that this poor man's only reward for his life-long labour as a priest was to be sent to end his days in a place like Port Nolloth was unforgivable. His successor, a so-called Man of God, was without a doubt a man with a warped mind.  It was always my sincere hope that in the fullness of time he got his comeuppance, and hopefully sooner rather than later. 
The Luderitz Golf Club took the biscuit for attempting to make a golf course in moonscape conditions. The only thing missing was the vacuum. And to the members for even agreeing to play in such shitty circumstances I would have awarded a monthly medal. There were the usual concrete tees and oil and sand greens. The course was situated in between the sand hills outside of town. Tees were often elevated. A pole was implanted into the concrete of the tee. This enabled others in the fourball to hang on in the wind while awaiting their turn to tee off. Every club member had a pair of motor bike goggles in his bag to don when the wind came up.
The sand around Luderitz was micro fine and very abrasive. It could strip the paint off your car and frost the glass of your head lamps in minutes. I only have a memory of one particular shot in one particular round of golf in Luderitz; the reason being that I never played much golf ever again in Luderitz. My drive had landed in the sand on the fairway which was not unusual as the entire course had a sand finish. It was, however, sitting up quite handsomely. The green (and I use the term for want of any other) was across the wadi some distance away. Living dangerously I thought I could reach the pin with my two iron. There was a small complication, a vertical rock needed to be cleared some ten metres ahead. It was directly in line with the far off pin. I called for my two iron.
"Take a seven iron to clear the rock, you can still get there in two shots," said the caddy.
"Two iron," I insisted.
I hit the ball a tremendous blow.  It took off like a rocket. My arms were still high in a perfect follow through when it struck the rock and came straight back at us. Fortunately the caddy was young and had good reflexes. He managed to jump out of the way or the ball would have killed him.
"Where is the ball?" I asked. He pointed a sarcastic thumb up the hill behind us. After that traumatic visit to the Luderitz Club I never again complained of the weather in Oranjemund nor the condition of our wonderful course. After we left CDM and opened a practice in Luderitz I was thrilled to be invited back to Oranjemund to play in a weekend competition.
But the pleasure didn't extend to the CDM security department. Suddenly I was persona non grata and was not permitted to use the direct coastal route from Luderitz to Oranjemund of about 300 kilometres. When still employed by the company I had been entrusted with all the security gate keys to allow me to get to Alexander Bay and back to treat emergencies at night. That went on for a period of five years. At that time Security did not take kindly to being told to get out of their warm beds to accompany me over the river. On any of these occasions I could have taken a fortune's worth of diamonds and deposited them in a safe place to be collected later. The thought never entered my head. So it irked a bit to be trusted for over five years and then to have it switched off like a tap.
The shortest alternative route from Luderitz to CDM was via a lead zinc mine called Rosh Pinah which bordered the De Beers claim. There was an open drift across the Orange River in the vicinity. When I arrived at the drift the dear old Orange was about to come down in flood. I was determined not to miss out on the delight of again playing golf at CDM. I spotted a road grader on the other side of the river and persuaded him to pull me to the other side. The floodwaters were half way up the car doors but I got through. On the way home I was not so lucky. When I returned to Rosh Pinah the river was in full flood. I returned to Luderitz via Port Nolloth, Springbok, Vioolsdrift and Keetmanshoop - a distance of some eight hundred kilometres. A high price to pay for one round of golf on a good course but it was worth it.
Occasionally we would hold competitive matches against firms such as Barlows and Engen who were large suppliers to CDM. Their team would arrive on the Friday afternoon by chartered flight or on their company aircraft. In the beginning visiting teams were allowed to bring their own clubs. Our Security officials would be on hand at the CDM air strip when their flight landed. All their clubs would be held in custody and only returned to the players on the first tee the next morning. Security was again on hand to collect the clubs after each round over the weekend and would only be returned to each player just before the plane took off.  It was a nuisance but accepted by most with good grace in view of the potential for illicit diamond smuggling no matter how remote the possibility.
When a golfer arrived at CDM for employment, his or her clubs would be quarantined for some time. It was said that each club was weighted on a fine balance and stamped with a registration number on the toe of the club. This eliminated the possibility of any of us stuffing a fortune in diamonds into the shaft of the clubs to escape x-ray examination when we went on leave. A couple of days before we left on holiday we would have to hand in our clubs to Security who, no doubt, weighed again to check on any weight difference.
We would occasionally play return matches at the invitation of our visitors. These were great weekends. There was always keen competition to be selected for the CDM team. Our mode of transport from CDM was a Suid Wes Lugdiens (South West Airways) Dakota. The Daks were used for almost daily flights to CDM bringing new indentured Ovambo's to work on the mine and returning with others whose contract had expired.  An incoming Friday flight would be contracted to fly us to Cape Town returning early Monday morning. The entire charter used to cost us R950 .00 which was peanuts. As I recall the old Dak could haul about 38 persons. The numbers in our team would vary from ten to fifteen. To defray the cost the club would sell off the remaining seats to anybody who wanted a cheap weekend in Cape Town. There was always a queue for such seats.
When we did this for the first time no one seems to have told the pilot that in addition to his full complement of passengers and their usual luggage, each of the fifteen golfers had a heavy bag of clubs. In addition we had five cases of Windhoek lager, a gift from Uncle Sam Cohen from Windhoek so that the golfers would not get thirsty on the flight to Cape Town. As the plane trundled like a fat old lady down the runway, as only a Dakota could, some of the golfers were already working their way to the back of the aeroplane. These charter flights didn't run to the luxury of any air hostesses. We did notice while opening a beer that the Dak seemed to labour its way into the air and appeared to skim over the mouth of the Orange River. Suddenly the door from the cockpit flew open.
"Everybody back to his seat – IMMEDIATELY," screamed the co-pilot. We sensed his urgency and complied ASAP. We later learnt that the heavy load of golf clubs and beer at the tail end of the aircraft plus the assembled golfers standing at the back for a premature beer was upsetting both the pilot and the Dak. Even with all the power the two engines could deliver, its tail was dropping and the pilot was having great difficulty getting the old girl to climb. We returned to our seats. We had learnt our lesson. On all future charter flights we stored the beer against the bulkhead which separated the cabin from the cockpit. This solved the problem.
At the end of one such delightful weekend in the Mother City we found ourselves at 6am standing at Cape Town Air Port with our hosts who had kindly got up at that ungodly hour to bid us farewell. We were all more than a little fragile after 72 holes of golf and some intensified labour at the various Nineteenth holes. My first patient at the dental clinic that day was scheduled for 09:30 hrs. It left me just sufficient time after landing for a quick shower and change and a dash to the clinic. I was not looking forward to the day ahead which, considering my condition was not too surprising.

@Frank: I have a reply from Brian re your query on the Scottish doctor. Will post it shortly.
Regards.
Bob.

As per  usual   interesting reading ..  keep them  flowing ...

Hi Frank,
                The Scottish doctor's name was David McCallum and the two dentists who resigned were Peter Viljoen and Brian La Trobe. Brian's reply, hilariously verbatim, follows.
Regards,
Bob.

"Peter Viljoen and I both left in 1968 so that's the short answer to Frank's question. The Scottish  medic who offered to remove the residual molar roots of his fractured molar was David McCallum. I recall him most vividly. He was a gentleman who did not lack confidence. I can well imagine he would have offered his services to coax the buried roots from their reluctant socket. He came to Oranjemund from being a medical officer at an Anglo mine, probably in Zambia. He came with a reputation as a fanny farmer who did hysterectomies via a vaginal approach, hence no incision or scarring. He turned many an Oranjemund matron into sports models. Non gravid uteri were borne out of local vaginas fast and furious until the novelty worn off. Eventually the local lasses crossed their legs and learnt to say "NO".  I recall even the usually diplomatic Matron Barnes showed her disapproval with an icy murderous scowl.
Anyway equilibrium was reached when the good doctor ran out of willing uteri or he found new interests in other forms of general surgery. I never felt threatened by him for obvious reasons. We played a lot of golf together, he claimed to be a 6 handicap until the coastal gales demoralised him.
I heard later he died of prolonged use of certain analgesic drugs for joint pains. Cause of death Agranularcytosis. What's in a name?"

From Brian La Trobe's memoir

THE ONLY HANDICAP WAS THE POX

Our faithful DC3 stood looking bleak and half asleep on the misty apron. It was parked tail to tail with a RAF comet jet aircraft which was loaded and ready to depart. As the jet engines roared to life I noticed the ailerons of the DC3 start to flap in the jet stream of the comet engines. My immediate impression was not of any concern as in the first place I had to assume that the air port control staff knew what they were doing and secondly the two planes were at least a hundred metres apart. I was about to witness the power of a blast from a jet engine. As the Comet pilot increased the plane's revolutions to roll the Comet forward the flaps of our old bus juddered violently, fractured then took off in the jet stream blast. They ended in a mangled mess at least a hundred metres ahead of the air craft on the concrete apron. We were gobsmacked. Our befuddled perception, at that time of the morning, could hardly appreciate that whatever we thought to be important for us to do that day, was just not going to happen.
Our hosts came to the rescue. They quickly organised a number of their company cars with drivers to transport us back to CDM. Within the hour we were on our way with our hosts communicating with CDM and our families to inform them of our predicament. What none of us knew was the heavens above Namaqualand were about to open. The resulting deluge had not been experienced in that semi-desert territory for many a year; old river beds which before had just been mere dusty dips in the road became raging torrents.
After running the gauntlet of a number of these we arrived in Springbok only to get a message from CDM that the road to Oranjemund via Port Nolloth was impassable. We were instructed to overnight in Springbok then head north and cross the Orange River over the bridge at Vioolsdrift. There a team of four-wheel drive vehicles would transport us back through the Richtersveldt, along the northern bank of the river to Oranjemund. Normally I doubt this kind of treatment would have been offered to a sports team. The fact that two of the mine's senior engineers were part of the golf team might just have helped.
The next morning we set off for Vioolsdrift. I still felt grim but passed it off as possibly the result of consuming some bad ice. When we got to within ten kilometres of this village we came upon a narrow, swift flowing stream about five metres wide. The day before whenever we reached a new stream if it appeared passable one of us would strip off our pants and gingerly walk ahead of the car to check for holes. On this occasion we could see a set of tyre tracks entering the stream and going out the other side. We felt no need for this precaution and told the driver to press on regardless, which was a bad mistake. The car's front wheels dropped into what must a have been about a metre deep cleft gouged out by the storm water. The bonnet of the car disappeared into the water. Am not quite sure how the five of us got out of that car. It had to be through the windows. All I know for certain was that I was sitting in the middle of the back seat but was reputed to be first out. A road grader eventually came to our rescue.
He pulled the car across and out of this nameless spruit. Fortunately the engine was still hot so with a quick drying out of the plugs and distributor it started easily and entered the village under our own steam where we had been instructed to wait the arrival of the convoy from CDM at the local Hotel.  Within the hour they arrived. We bade farewell to our driver host and wished him well for his return trip to Cape Town. Later the same day we finally and thankfully reached Oranjemund. I retired immediately to bed, thinking I had picked up a chill after our exposure to the elements.
The following morning, I awoke to a bout of the shivers and a raging temperature. I put my hand inside of my pyjama jacket to circulate some cool air to by body. I felt as if I was on fire. My skin was rough to the touch. I ripped open my jacket. My entire torso was cover with little red scabs. I awoke Peggy who turned to me still groggy with sleep, slowly opened one eye and was immediately fully awake and rapidly backing off to the edge of the bed.
"What on earth have you picked up in Cape Town? Your face is covered in pock marks," she cried.
"Get me a mirror, quick", I said. 
My sorry image stared back at me as I tried to recall the difference between smallpox and chicken pox. With smallpox the pustules were more concentrated on the face. I checked again in the mirror and compared it to my chest. They looked about the same to me. I grabbed the receiver of my bed side phone and called Dr Johnson.
"Dennis, I feel like shit and am covered in spots," I cried. "Please come and have a look at me to give me a differential diagnosis between smallpox and chicken pox. I think it's probably chicken pox."
"I accept your diagnosis," said Dennis. "I never had it as a child."
"I'd like you to come and check me out," I pleaded.
When the good doctor arrived he stood at the bedroom door.
"Open your pyjama jacket," he said. I did as requested. 
"You are right, it's chicken pox. Let me know when all the scabs fall off."  And then he was gone. A fat lot of comfort I got from that visit.
Within the hour the word spread around the village that I had chicken pox. When a child contracts mumps or chicken pox there is almost an approving air, based on the common wisdom that it's better to get these things while young. However, if an adult is unfortunate to pick up one of these childhood infections it is treated as one hell of a joke. While I was feeling as sick as a dog and cooking from a high temperature the phone would ring and some joker would cackle: "I believe you have a dose of the pox.  Ha ha, how do you feel? Ha, ha, ha.." Eventually I had to take my phone off the hook.
Gradually the fever abated but while full of tiny pustules and infectious I asked Peggy to let the kids come and climb all over me so they could get the malady while still young. They thought it great fun to have Dad at home and in bed during the day but when they started to use the bed as a trampoline I decided it was not such a good idea. In the end it turned out to be an exercise in futility. Not one of them caught the pox from Father.

Hello Bob Molloy.

Thanks for that information Bob and I am sorry to hear that doctor David McCallum has since past away, I tend to forget that its 40 years ago since this all happened and a lot of the people that I have meet in the past are no longer with us. Reading his name (the doctor) I do now remember we discussed his role in 'The Man From UNCLE' ...David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin Russian-born secret agent, in the 1960s. He did say he wished he had his money. He was a very nice gentleman, and I remember going into the surgery and on both sides of the room there were white dust cloths covering the dental instruments. After that experience I was never afraid.........Oops! cannot use that word, err emotional filled with apprehension in visiting the dentists. I do like the description Brian used of Davids passion of were he liked to put his hands, and this was in the days before they slipped on these rubber cloves that they all seem to wear these days.  Its about eight years ago on one of my yearly dental checkups that the dentist asked my how long I had had the titanium plate and I told her the story, and she said "its still OK" but its about time you replaced it. I had not told her he was a doctor not a dentist that did the plate when I reveled this she exclaimed Christ ! I said 'no it was doctor David McCallum'....... Thanks again Bob.............Frank.

ARRIVIDERCI ORANJEMUND

We arrived in Oranjemund in 1960. In the beginning Peggy and I both thought our CDM sojourn would be for a limited period while I was perfecting my surgical skills and widening my experience. Firstly there was the exhilaration of the design and equipping of all the surgeries with only the best that was available and with no bar on cost. An added attraction was that the treatment I would render to patients would not be governed by price. All that was required would be permission of the patient.
I could also keep abreast of new dental technology by attending post graduate courses at company expense. And if that were not sufficient inducement there was also a company car for myself and family in Oranjemund, a furnished house with water, power and phone, and education for our children at primary school level.
In case I became bored with just treating the local people in Oranjemund there were the further opportunities of flying some 180km south to the company mine at Kleinzee to serve a different community and the chance to make some extra income at the State diamond mine just across the Orange River at Alexander Bay which would supply the premises and equipment needed. For the leisure hours all types of sporting activities were adequately catered for. It all seemed like utopia.
In many ways it was; the fact that it all centred in the middle of nowhere in a desert area where rain was as scarce as hen's teeth seem to be adequately compensated. My feeling of personal euphoria of having made the correct decision was often boosted by the reaction of fellow dentists labouring in private practice in the rest of the country who so often expressed envy of my working situation. Their day to day problems of increasing costs of material and staff were something I never had to face.
Our domestic life style was great. Peggy could garden to her heart's content. The rich loamy soil deposited by the Orange River would grow just about anything if given sufficient water of which there was a plentiful supply. Our children were safe on their bicycles in the streets. Cars drivers were instructed by management to drive with extreme care in town. Children had the right of way. Crime was non-existent. After a while of growing accustomed to Oranjemund living, we never locked a door. To the extent when after five years when we were preparing to travel to England on long leave we battled to find keys for our front and back doors.
When we first arrived in the community our neigbours and people generally were particularly kind. Many friendships we made in those early days have lasted a life time. Once we had settled in to life in the village Peggy and I both entered into the social swing of things. I joined various sports clubs as well as the photographic society and took a hand in fund-raising for Cripple Care through the Mule Derby.  In a very short while we were totally assimilated into the community and enjoying every vestige of our participation.
On a personal note I soon became acquainted with Stan Devlin, the general manager, and this later evolved into a family friendship. The relationship started because of a hobby the GM followed with great enthusiasm. He was an amateur gemmologist and maker of costume jewellery. When the La Trobe's arrived at CDM he was struggling to perfect the art of electroplating gold and vitreous enamelling onto copper and brass.
I had these skills from my industrial chemist days at General Motors in Port Elizabeth before I returned to university to study Dentistry and Stan had a very elaborate and well-equipped workshop attached to his garage.
He had no interest in any particular sport but played bowls sporadically. His workshop was his means of relaxation and he would retire there after work most evenings and over weekends if he had no other social commitment. When I was showing him the fundamentals of electroplating and vitreous enamelling I spent a great deal of time in his workshop in the evenings and over weekends when I was not playing golf. Thus my car was often parked outside of the general manager's house. At one state his almost constant call on my leisure time was eroding my quality time with my family. This became a bone of contention with Peggy and our boys but eventually sorted itself out as Stan became more skilled in what I had taught him. We nevertheless remained firm friends even after he retired to Port Alfred and I had opened a practice in nearby Grahamstown.
I mention this episode only because it bears reference to subsequent events in my relationship with top management just prior to and after Stan's retirement. It was not the only reason that determined our time in Oranjemund was coming to a close but it was however part of the motivation that initiated the rather sad feeling that it was time for us to move on.
The time I spent with Stan did not go unnoticed but I was blissfully unaware of the implications of my behaviour in the eyes of the mining community, particularly one such as Oranjemund which was riddled with class distinction based on seniority. Most of the staff put a lot of effort into polishing their own marble with higher placed officials in order to foster their own promotional prospects. 
Such a concept never entered my head but many senior officials busily engaged in climbing up the hierarchy thought otherwise. To them I could only be scheming to benefit myself. For that reason they felt it necessary to bring me down a peg or two. This was totally bizarre. I had been appointed as a dentist. I had no ambitions to be a mining superintendent, a general manager or an Anglo American Consultant. But there were obviously senior staff who actually thought I was invading their rightful space and their plain jealousy was giving them ulcers.
Being oblivious to this kind of hierarchical thinking it took some time to intrude on my consciousness. However it was driven home strongly on one occasion while Stan Devlin was away in Cape Town I was called into the office of a senior mine official and questioned me about some deal that the GM was busy negotiating. He implied the deal was not above board. I told this rather scheming character, not too politely either, that I would not be party to talking about the GM behind his back. If he wished to repeat the accusation he should at least have the guts to make such remarks to the GM to his face. This didn't exactly endear me or make me any friends in top management.
After Stan Devlin retired the nit-picking worsened. On one occasion my expense account for a trip to Cape Town was challenged. The complaint: that I had oysters for dinner on one evening while on CDM business.
I switched him off by pointing out that I had not charged for alcoholic drinks and if oysters were such a problem he should give me that in writing. I heard no more on that score as any such move on his part would have thrown a bomb into all other expense accounts including his own.
Most embarrassing was an incident involving the Golf Club. The club often invited certain companies who did business with CDM to participate in golf competitions in Oranjemund. They usually flew into town in their company aircraft or chartered planes. The chosen players all came at the expense of their individual companies.  When members of the Oranjemund Club flew to Cape Town or elsewhere to reciprocate, our individual members chartered the plane at their own expense.

One of these companies was Barlows. Peggy and I had become quite friendly with Peter Barlow and his wife Pam. Peter was co-owner of the company with his brother. They owned a wine estate just outside Stellenbosch called Rustenberg which today is run by their son, Peter. Our Andrew and Peter were at the same school, St Andrew's in Grahamstown so there was quite a connection between the families.
At a social evening after a round of golf Peter Barlow asked if CDM picked up the tab when we brought a golf team to Cape Town and was quite surprised to find it didn't. No more was said until our next Cape Town match with Barlows. A particularly pleasant aspect of these visits was that no matter how early the hour when we flew back home after such a weekend Peter was always at the airport with his golfers to bade us farewell. What a wonderful gentleman he was.
On this occasion he called me aside and gave me a sealed envelope "to read later". While we were in the air heading north towards the Orange River I opened the envelope to find it contained his private cheque for the total cost of the charter of the plane for the weekend and a short note which read:  "Have fun, Peter."
As CDM had a new General Manager at this stage I made an appointment to see him to explain the circumstances of receiving of the cheque and to gain his advice as to whether I should reimburse individual members who had represented CDM against Barlows or simply deposit it into club funds.
"Send it back," he said.
"I'm sorry; I am not prepared to do that". I said. "Mr Barlow gave me that cheque in good faith to benefit our members, I am positive there was no ulterior motive."
"If you don't like my suggestion you can use my second alternative," said the GM. "Tear the friggin' cheque up and send it back to him".
I was more than a little upset. "With your permission I will take a few days leave to go to Cape Town and personally return the cheque to Peter Barlow and express my extreme embarrassment."
"Suit yourself," said the GM, which is what I eventually did.
When I arrived in Cape Town and explained the reason for my visit, Peter was full of apologies for causing such hassles.  He received back the cheque with such charm and not a tinge of annoyance which he had every reason to feel. He was such a great gentleman. The incident sat heavily on my mind for some considerable time.
The thought of making plans to leave CDM again came close to the surface of my thoughts.
Some years later after Peggy and I had returned from long leave, Peter Viljoen informed me  he was considering  leaving as he was about to marry. Our working association had been so perfect I was deeply disappointed and enquired if the decision was in any way personal. He assured me he just felt it was time to move on,
Peter's intention to resign made Peggy and I begin to think about our own situation. I was approaching the age of forty. It was a good time to take stock of our own lives. We were still wrapped up with our Oranjemund life style. I was still very comfortable with my work environment.  We had to admit we were both totally spoilt by our unusual living conditions. We never had to lift a finger. My company car was automatically replaced every two years. It was fetched from my hospital parking bay once a month for a service and returned with no effort on my part. Our household carpets were renewed after five years as well as the lounge furniture, necessary or not. A gang of men from the parks and gardens department came to our house once a week to mow the lawns. Our waste bin was renewed without our asking. Company records determined it was time to replace, so it was replaced.

Even if a simple light bulb failed to operate did I have to get up on a ladder to replace it? No. A call the Town Management office would have someone come running to change the offending light fitting. While this company modus operandi was spoiling us rotten, we were very conscious of the fact, if one day we were to return to the big wide world, we would definitely be like fish out of water. The longer we waited the more difficult it would become to adapt to living in the real world.
The other factor was that our eldest son Christopher was coming to the end of his primary school days. Was this not a wise time to make the giant leap forward to return to the big wide world? With this in mind we would periodically take some leave to visit towns or villages to ascertain the work potential for me, possible schools and the housing market. We realise now having been so spoilt by our CDM environment, we were terribly hard to please. If one is transferred to a particular town by your employer you just go there. One has to accept the positives and negatives of your new surroundings. We nit picked over the slightest disadvantage. Too much wind or the summers were too warm. We were looking for the standards of another Oranjemund.
So we lingered on. Chris ultimately went off to Boarding school in Grahamstown. Then a series minor pin pricks occurred in the work place. The final straw that pushed us over the edge came after a particular dinner party which Peggy had organised. The new General Manager and his wife were amongst the invited guests.  Oranjemund dinner parties were a throwback from the old colonial days which were still perpetuated in places like Oranjemund where the hoi polloi had nothing better to do.
The head of the Parks and Gardens department, a wonderful fellow by the name of Bertie Hawkins, of his own volition once a week used to deliver to the wives of all senior officials and any others who had been helpful to his department, a large bunch of flowers that were in bloom. Peggy was always one of his favourites. She was constantly giving him plant cuttings she had cultured and passing onto him magazines on special topics of landscaping etc.
As Sod's Law would have it, on the day of the dinner party Bertie presented her with a large bunch of white chrysanthemums. With these lovely blooms, Peggy arranged a delightful floral arrangement for our entrance hall on that evening. Nothing untoward happened in the course of the evening except the GM and his wife left a tad early. The following morning a circular was issued by the office of the General Manager, addressed to all senior management personnel of the mine. It read:
WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT RE COMPANY FLOWERS DELIVERED TO WIVES OF SENIOR STAFF: ONLY THE WIFE OF THE GENERAL MANAGER WILL BE ELIGIBLE TO RECEIVE WHITE CHRYSANTHEMUMS.
By order of the general manager.
I simply could not believe what I was reading. At lunch time I took the notice home to Peggy. After she read the notice her mouth dropped open in amazement. Before she could say a word I said to her "Well, my love, I think our time in Oranjemund has come to an end."
The next day I handed in my resignation. Although my contract only called for a thirty day period of notice, I informed management I was prepared to remain at my post for ninety days to assist in finding my replacement.
We had still not decided where we would go, post Oranjemund. For a long time the fishing factories in Luderitz had pleaded with me to open a practice in the town. The factories were losing hundreds of man hours involved in visits to the dentists in Windhoek, at least six hundred kilometres to the North. The factory managers contacted me to offer large retaining fees as an encouragement to come to Luderitz. Even the local ban manager rang to assure me of a very reasonable living with an offer to find suitable accommodation as a home and for the surgery.
Our family bond with this great friend, who is now retired and living quietly in the Western Cape, has endured for decades. We meet every time we go to the Cape and we swap stories of our lives and friends of our Luderitz days. While the retaining fees were a great enticement I also received numerous phone calls from complete strangers all encouraging me to come and settle in their little historic town.
Peggy had her doubts. After the luxury of living in Oranjemund, Luderitz would certainly not be a walk in the park. In addition it did not solve the question of the boys' education. There were hardly any English speaking inhabitants, most being either German or Afrikaans speaking people. As we had nowhere else to go, it would be an interim solution which should be rewarding as far as financial gain was concerned.
Accordingly I signed contracts with all the fishing companies which, each month, assured me of a very handsome income without my lifting a finger. The shipping companies an assured clientele among crews of passing and docking ships. One shipping agency said they were so pleased to hear I was opening a surgery in Luderitz that for any patient they sent to me I could think of a fat fee for my services rendered, then multiply it by five and they would still be happy. Much encouragement indeed. One fishing company leased us a well built seaside house with three bedrooms for a rental which was next to nothing. It gave us a great view over the harbour.
Even with all the unpleasantness towards the end of our Oranjemund stay we would not have missed the experience for anything in the world. From a work point of view I had had the privilege of using my surgical skills amidst a population base of Ovambos who offered a wide range of pathological experience. They came from Ovamboland with all sorts of maladies and grossness never before seen, even in text books.  You learn fast when you have no one to turn to and when Peter Viljoen came to join me; he was always a great comfort to have around.
I revelled in my sport of golf and squash. I even dabbled in bowls and cricket. The Photographic Club was a great pleasure to me but our greatest joy was the people of Oranjemund from the entire spectrum. That included my mates at the golf club with whom I often got into much domestic double trouble, my Herculean partners at squash such as the indomitable Ronny Jew, the fun we had in preparing for the Mule Derby, the angst I brought on my own head by building the new Mule Derby track and pavilion without permission of the local deity, the patients who often broke my heart then, in turn, brought me great joy (young Edward holds this accolade) and my loyal hospital staff.
There were also the many people who graced our home from all walks of life who came to talk of art and poetry, the making of amateur movies with sound, those who came just to listen to classical music, or just to have a drink and talk a lot of nonsense. I often sit back and I remember you. In my mind's eye none of you have grown old as I have. I remember you as if time has stood still. Youth has never left your side. Bless you all, for the privilege of a marvellous companionship and a fulfilling experience which will accompany me to my last sigh.

Peggy & Brian La Trobe. Oranjemund residents 1960 to 1968.

Thanks  for that  tribute  for the  folk that enriched your life in Oranjemund  Brian ,, as for the nitpicking , the politics of  promotion , well it  was  the underbelly  of such a place , best left forgotten , what stood out as the crowning  of it was ...

WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT RE COMPANY FLOWERS DELIVERED TO WIVES OF SENIOR STAFF: ONLY THE WIFE OF THE GENERAL MANAGER WILL BE ELIGIBLE TO RECEIVE WHITE CHRYSANTHEMUMS

that  folk could be so  shallow and  so easily effronted  boggles the mind ,, I recall my Mom  regularly talking to my father ,,,  with me  subtly overhearing  of such incidents ... they remain  imprinted as a lesson to never ever  be like that ...

Brian has added a further chapter to his biography. I've posted it here because I feel Oranjemunders would be interested in reading what happened afterwards to the La Trobe family.

LIFE AFTER ORANJEMUND

Life after Consolidated Diamond Mines where everything was assisted apart from the physical art of breathing was always going to be a period of adjustment. Returning to the big wide world was more difficult for some than others. Whatever the degree of difficulty I have never met anyone who does not admit their sojourn in Oranjemund was the experience of a lifetime.
Living there was a hundredfold more interesting than could be described in all the pages of any work of fiction. Beneath its benevolent air lurked more sins than beatitudes. Illicit love, lust, deceit, greed, jealousy and at times even hate roamed the outrageously rich sands. Big Brother was ever present looking over your shoulder. When the boss said jump, everybody jumped except the few isolated rebels who had the audacity and moral fibre to ridicule such commands. The result was a veritable pressure cooker, a human stew that now and then bubbled up with below the blanket tales that set the town agog until the next scandal came along.
The company matched this with an outrageous approach to costs, throwing fortunes at mining projects, seemingly on the principle of why spend one dollar when ten dollars would do it faster. Massive earthmoving equipment, workshop machinery, marine pipelines and even aeroplanes were purchased as if they were ten a penny. The town was built in a hurry; the houses were comfortable but with little thought given to aesthetics. With hindsight, I think the policy was that when the earth had been ravaged of its riches the town would be expendable, another ghost town of the future to add to Kolmanskop, Elizabeth Bay, Pomona and the other crumbling remains of a previous era. 
The only asset remaining would be the fresh water of the Orange River while the desert would be scarred for years, possibly centuries. It was a deeply ingrained almost kneejerk mentality that had dominated the mining industry in South Africa since its inception. Accustomed to abrogating their responsibility to the environment once their shareholders had been so richly rewarded, successive managements particularly in the gold mining sector shrugged off the acid rain and the toxic leachate from slimes dams and mine dumps; colossal heaps of tailings seen at their most visible around Johannesburg. Some are now being reworked to squeeze out extra profit. Perhaps plans should be developed to return this toxic waste back where it belongs, deep in the bowels of the Earth. I believe this was the original requirement of the law but somehow over the generations that got set aside. Perhaps if mixed with cement it could be used to block the flow of toxic waste water to the surface. Mere mention of such actions is enough to send mining companies running for cover, eager to dodge any environmental blame.
Luderitz was  different but at the same time surprisingly similar in certain ways. While Consolidated Diamond Mines was rapidly extracting diamonds as fast as possible there were five fishing factories in Luderitz. Each of these operated large fleets of trawlers all equipped with sonar technology that could hunt the shoals of pelagic fish with precision. In our time in the town trawlers would go just a few miles off shore to soon return laden with fish. The town thrived. I, indeed, also benefited from the retainers paid me by the factories.
All business in that town grew rich on the scales of the mackerel. The Luderitz Apotheke sold an impressive range of French perfumes, way beyond the  average for a town of its size. It would appear the female factory workers who gutted the fish used Chanel to dull the fish odours that soap and water could not obliterate. They called it Channel No 5. Today those factories are now defunct, the fish hunted to extinction and the industry as a whole near moribund.  Despite moves to sustainability it was all too little and too late.
The port of Luderitiz was carved out of a moonscape, an outcrop of rock jutting from the surrounding sands of the Namib. The houses were built mainly on a single slab of rock. It was said you always knew when someone had died in Luderitz when you heard the cemetery manager blasting a hole for the new grave. In comparison, Oranjemund was a garden city but Luderitz certainly scored with its amazing architecture. Its German pioneers strove to recreate their homeland, building houses of their dreams that would have blended into the Bavarian hills and the riverbanks of the Rhine but in Luderitz stood out in startling contrast. Even half a century after the German occupation the European feel of the town was strong. The names of stores such as Metje und Ziegler, Krabbenhof und Lampe, Kapps Hotel and the Rommlerhof made it clear you were not strolling down a boulevard in England.
Luderitz was already an established town and harbour before diamonds were discovered at Kolmanskop. It blossomed during the diamond era and like many a frontier town it thrived on the big spenders who made fortunes overnight and and lost them almost as quickly. No expense was spared in their entertainment, bars and hotels mushroomed overnight complete with dancing girls and the best in German hooch and French wine. Quality German goods also flooded in to meet demand.
Interestingly, when the La Trobes arrived two of the survivors of those dancing girl days of 1910 still hung on even if in geriatric decline. It was difficult to imagine this pair of haughty old ducks performing the Can-can and high kicking on the long bar of the Kapps Hotel while being ogled by a bunch of drunken miners and pelted with uncut diamonds. This might have been the initial source of some of their wealth. However, both married well to men who made fortunes quickly and died young. They lived in some grandeur in adjoining houses. For reasons long forgotten they could not stand the sight of each other and continually fought legal battles over the most petty things. For years their disputes provided the major income of a local attorney and a legal firm in the nearest town of Keetmanshoop some four hundred kilometres to the east.
The news of the town when we arrived was that Frau Offen had just been awarded the sum of R15,000.00 from Frau Maura. The cause of the dispute: Frau Maura had erected a brick wall dividing their two houses in order to block out the mere sight of Frau Offen. Frau Offen engaged the services of a land survey to measure the position of the disputed wall. It was found to encroach just short of a half a metre onto the property of Frau Offen. Frau Offen was not satisfied with the ruling of the local magistrate and appealed to the High Court in Windhoek where she won her case and was awarded damages of R15,000.00. In response, Frau Maura sent over a cheque with her Ovambo servant which Frau Offen took to be the final insult. Frau Offen tore up the cheque and sent it back with a vitriolic message in German, stating she would not lower herself to touch the filthy money of a low life such as Frau Maura. Crazy but true.
Though less than 200 kilometres north of Oranjemund with nothing between but a few deserted ghost towns, Luderitz was a totally different world.  CDM still retained an office in the town but it did not have a controlling influence on the municipality or its inhabitants. It had an unusual European flavour with a distinct leaning towards its historic German past. German and Afrikaans were the languages of choice with English running an insignificant third. There was a fascinating underlying blend, not only people of European cultures and language but also some intriguing mysterious political persuasions, a throwback from World War Two.
For instance there was a small colony of mature German men who did little else except sit in the sun drinking coffee or beer. I discovered they were ex-farmers of the district who had left the country to travel to Germany to join Hitler's army in the late 1930's. On departure they had transferred their farms into the names of their wives to avoid war time confiscation. Those who survived the war returned, some after extended imprisonment in Russia, well after the armistice. To their additional misery they discovered their wives had not only expertly managed the farms at a profit for many years but had also taken on lovers or extramarital partners to assist them. Their legal partners were thus superfluous. They now lived at the mercy and discretion of their wives in small Luderitz apartments on pitiful stipends. They had, indeed, lost the war.
There were the legendary stories of how Herr Krabbenhof of Krabbenhof und Lampe had defiantly flown the Swastika flag outside of the store at the start of hostilities, only to be interned for the duration for his efforts. Others were employed out in the middle of nowhere in the Namib desert, attending to water pumps which sucked water from underground rivers to supply to the town. Their visits to dubious civilisation in Luderitz were infrequent and of very short duration. We were not to reason why but  most of us had some reasonable educated guesses as to why they had chosen the lives of hermits. A few who could not forget their army officer training of the past would come to the surgery for an appointment, greeting me with a heel click and Guten Morgen, Herr Doktor. Wie gets? Some were ex-naval men, survivors of the German pocket battleship Graf Spee which was sunk at the battle of the River Plate off the coast of Argentine in the first year of the war. Many worked as shipping agents for marine companies whose ships delivered German good to ports along the west coast of Africa.
There was also the deeply religious and happy go lucky Portuguese community, some of whom passed their skills on to Peggy in the making of wonderful Portuguese breads and fish-cooking Portuguese style. They came mainly from St Helena and the Canary Islands and were the backbone of the fishing trawler crews. Few of them spoke English. As a consequence our sons Mark and Gavin, in kindergarten and lower primary school years sat with Portugese lads who were approaching eighteen years old. It was a situation fraught with social tensions exacerbated by the fact that their English teacher could not speak English. As a result our boys left home early, aged eight or nine, to attend boarding school in Grahamstown on the other side of the continent., Although I enjoyed the challenge and pioneering atmosphere of practice in the area it was not sustainable from a family point of view, nor was it a situation  Peggy would have tolerated for any length of time.
The installation of the new dental equipment was procured from South Africa with the intention it would only there for a limited period. Once we had decided on a permanent home it had to be easily transported to its final destination. Monthly retainers hopefully would cover this cost. Surgery hours catering for this polyglot population were full, hectic and at times exhausting. But there was plenty of humour to leaven the experience but it was the town characters who cast a more indelible imprint on my memory.
There was Klaus Kloster the baker who laboured while most of us still slept. He produced the most irresistible bruchen and baguettes each day to be ready for sale as the sun rose. Klaus's motto was that no bread was fit to eat if it had been out of the oven for more than twenty minutes.
Count Moroskofsky was a grumpy old devil who had a finger in every pie in town, including possibly IDB. He was the only source of fresh milk from cows kept under appalling conditions and fed on dried hay and grass from God knows where. I never touched the stuff. Young Andrew, who drank milk in Oranjemund by the gallon, took one sip of the Moroskofsky product and kicked the habit with immediate effect.
A reputed Polish Countess, whose name escapes me, daily  performed her revealing calisithenics in front of her house then took a shower with a short garden hose standing next to her favourite bougainvillaea plant in order to benefit the plant from her wash-down effluent. This daily public ablution was on the list of must see things to do on a tour of the town. Doubtless her motivation for this public show of nudity and intimate ablution was the horrendous cost of water in Luderitz .
It was more expensive than the local beer. Before the discovery of an underground river some seventy kilometres east of the town, the only source of water was the distillation of sea water. This inadequate plant was situated at the power station. The only other source of aqua vita was transported from Cape Town to Luderitz in the mouldy tanks of small steamers who plied their trade along the West coast. It tasted distinctly of bilge with a mild taint of paraffin or similar petroleum derivatives. It was still the days before international con artists initiated their greatest deceit of marketing tap water as if it originated from gushing  mountain streams or from springs full of vitality  that would awake the dead. Cannot recall how we hydrated the children. Until the underground river supply came on stream we probably gave them distilled water supplemented with trace element tablets. I found it safer to stick to light white wine and the odd beer.
While on the subject of water I need to recall the subject of our septic tank. I would never be forgiven by our sons for not recording their total abomination of how they were press-ganged into my idea of utilising the final effluent of this septic system. Peggy, who yearned for her green, green Oranjemund garden was determined to have a bit of lawn to  approach  her front door with at least one flower bed. This was a challenge. It had never been done before in Luderitz. Our house which stood on the edge of the bay was built on a slab of basalt rock, Even the septic tank stood above ground next to the house for all to see. Not only was geology against her but any plant germinated by her tender loving care could be burnt to a frazzle by the mica-laden wind if left unprotected.
Undeterred, she found a mess of crayfish heads and tail shells which cluttered the side of a canning factory. Even aerated by God's fresh air they did not smell good which was a bit of an understatement. She employed an Ovambo to crush this putrescence with a sledge hammer. Within hours the poor Ovambo was not nice to be near and the putrid pile of his labour was attracting every fly in Christendom.Having mixed the vile load with sea sand I was commanded to transport this crayfish cocktail to the house, depositing the same on the rock surface within our boundary wall.
I had acquired a robust old Morris Oxford bakkie from Jackie Weiss, the local entrepreneur and owner of Kapps Hotel. The bodywork was held together by multi-layers of thick green paint. It had a powerful engine but a little shy on brakes which was fine as long as one did not forget this fact. The boys decorated the entire body surface with beer, wine, schnapps and sport stickers which gave it unusual appearance, if not exactly attractive. I used this vehicle to attend the surgery. If sand storms roughened up the paint work it was expendable.
I laboured a full day to give the rock an adequate covering of this lively mixture of sand, bacteria, maggots and a myriad of unidentified creepy crawlies . It took a further day to cover this unholy organic conglomerate with more sea sand to keep the flies at bay. By this time I was in the same category as the Ovambo. Nevertheless once the grass seeds germinated and sent out feeble roots down to the substrate, they sprang to life with vengeance. The first lawn in Luderitz had arrived. Lawns need water to survive. Our only supply of available water at zero cost was the effluent from our septic tank. With the horrendous cost of the local water, having the opportunity to use it twice had a certain amount of appeal. The fact that septic tank effluent is loaded with nutrients of nitrate and phosphates which is good fertiliser for grass was an added attraction. A hand pump was installed to pump out the effluent onto the avaricious grass.
In order to have some participation in the spirit of home building I organised a weekly roster for Mark and Gavin to take turns at the pump. They hated this task with a passion and would think of any excuse to evade the call of duty. I insisted they keep a strict timetable. The suggestion that it was good for character building met with black looks.  Chris who was at boarding school had to do extra duty during the holidays, much to his disgust. He was not impressed by my assurance it would do wonders for his developing biceps. Young Andrew, who could not reach the pump handle, was relieved of this duty. The boys, to comply with their mother's dream and father's instruction, were between a rock and a hard place. When the wind did not blow the odour was appalling and all encompassing. When it did blow there was no smell but the exposed position on the top of the tank required one arm to pump and one to hang on to avoid being blown away. 
On the private practice side we had a tastefully furnished waiting room and reception area with three surgeries in a row and a communicating  passage at the rear. Leading off  the passage was another door which led to another surgery and waiting room with a separate side entrance. The front of house private practice rooms were quiet, dignified and supplied with a regular flow of patients who arrived by appointment. The other door off the passage lead to chaos. Entry to these back rooms was akin to crossing the Rubicon from gentility to mayhem.
In this back area I earned my monthly retainer treating factory workers from the five fish meal and canning factories. Apart from the retainer I was allowed to charge a fee for the treatment rendered to each individual worker. A final account, sent to the factory at the end of each month, was always settled without any fuss or complaint. I never determined the exact total of the work force of the five factories but they numbered in their thousands. I was never proud of this side of the practice. When the doors opened in the morning the waiting room would immediately fill with a load of humanity all driven in by pain. Some held throbbing jaws, others wrapped their painful woes in winter scarves, lips thickened with the pus from burrowing abscesses or just the ordinary pain of dental caries eating away at sensitive dental pulps. This level of humanity never seeks conservative dental treatment. Only severe and acute pain drives them to the dentist's door. Their only wish is for relief from the maddening pain that has held and demanded their attention for however long.  All they want is to be rid of the offending fang or fangs. To the dental surgeon trained and accustomed to conservation of teeth this constant smash and grab type of treatment is extremely frustrating, a bit like throwing crap at a passing Boeing.
At every spare moment of the day I would pass into this Dante's Inferno, inject local anaesthetic into petrified jaws and perform extractions and drain abscesses left right and centre. Yet no matter how many left through the exit the number of anguished souls in the waiting room never seemed to show any signs of diminishing. As some left, others took their place.  The final few of these pitiful individuals would only be cleared at the end of an exhausting day. At least there was the satisfaction that they would not suffer the pain of another sleepless night.
During the fishing season Luderitz was jam packed with these simple folk who called a spade a frigging shovel and were prone to fight particularly when crazed with alcohol. As the surgery was right opposite the Rummler Hotel, their home from home while in port, we had a ringside seat during their frequent furniture breaking upheavals. It was a constant war zone which could erupt in a seconds when the trawlers were in port. Differences of opinion were settled with a broken bottle or a bar stool or whatever came to hand. I would only venture into the public bar with the manager as my guardian.
The manager was Ugo Matzi, a street fighter from the slums of Naples where he learnt to use himself with fist or knife and had several facial scars to show for it  His  wife who bore Ugo's children constantly was a big breasted   southern Italian catholic who believed in miracles and was pathologically jealous . Her main conversation piece, when on the verge of inebriation, was her slurred tale of the fact she had witnessed the annual liquefaction of Christ's blood in a bottle on the altar of the cathedral in Naples.
During the fishing season Rummlers was as busy as a hornet nest but when the season was over it was quiet as a morgue. The average citizen of Luderitz would not be seen dead in that dump. In an attempt to improve the hotel's image and to foster new business Ugo decided to invest in a newly decorated ladies bar with the importation from Johannesburg of an attractive barmaid. All went well for a couple of months. Business at first was slow but soon improved. However one fine weekday morning, I arrived at the surgery to find all hell breaking loose in Rummlers and both my nurse and receptionist trying to console  the half-naked and tearful barmaid from across the road. Pauline and Sandra explained that Ugo's wife had found him in bed with the barmaid. Luckily the bar maid had just managed to escape before Mrs Matzi had the opportunity to get a knife between her ribs. The cacophony of breaking crockery and bar glasses, together with Ugo's cries of repentance and his wife's threat to "keel heem" brought the town to a standstill. 
The whole of Bismarck Strasse  watched in awe as this diminutive female ball of fury vented her ire on her erring husband. Soon suitcases were flung out onto the pavement. The Hotel's minivan drew up, the cases were loaded while Ugo down on his knees with tears flooding down his battered cheeks pleaded before a gathering crowd : "Donna go 'ome to ya Momma. On the blood of Christ hi swear before  the Papa en alla de saintas, ha weel nevaar do it hagain. Mea maxima culpa. PLeeza balieva me 'oney."
Mrs Matzi ignoring all this painful rhetoric was busy supervising all the last minute personal packages including a canary in a gilded cage into the van. Having loaded up all the kids, without so much as a bye-bye or a glance at the near demented Ugo she took off in the direction of the air strip. A local business man had a twin-engined aeroplane which he kept in Luderitz for charter. We guessed Mrs Matzi had chartered the plane to Windhoek on her way home to Momma in Italy. Ugo soon burst out of the alley next to the hotel in his bottle store delivery vehicle in hot pursuit. People jumped into their cars determined to witness the end of this melodrama. Soon an entire convoy of inquisitive bystanders followed Ugo. With all this drama unfolding we reckoned that sure as hell nobody was going to turn up for their dental appointment. Sandra, Pauline and I jumped into the ailing Morris Oxford as the last in line of some twenty cars. The old Morris was not the fastest thing on four wheels but we arrived in time to witness Ugo again on his knees next to the plane. All the bags had been loaded. The pilot was holding the canary in its cage and Ugo's kids all bawling their eyes out were clustered next to the door of the aircraft screaming for their Father.
What Ugo said or promised we never knew nor did he later ever reveal. But suddenly there was a change of heart ; a reconciliation which resulted in some very personal hugs and slobbering kisses. The kids were snatched from the plane and into the van which left in a cloud of dust in the direction of the town. Ugo seemingly forgot he had rushed out in the delivery van and Mrs Matzi suffered a total amnesia about her luggage. I have this lasting memory of this chaotic scene with the confused pilot holding the singing caged canary shouting out: " Bitte, bitte. Sie habt  das  gemukklika vogel vergessen?" But no one cared, least of all the reconciled Italian love birds. The terrified bar maid was offered temporary asylum in the home of Sandra Brown until the weekly passenger train arrived to take her off to her rail connection at Keetmanshoop. We can only hope the Matzi's lived happily ever after. Nobody knows, for shortly after Ugo came to see me to ask if I would accept his sea side shack with its paraffin refrigerator plus his fibre-glass fishing boat with outboard motor as full and final settlement for some fancy crown and bridge work I had carried out for him. I had little option but to accept. I had suspected something was amiss as stock in his bottle store was not being replaced.  I had already taken a large supply of wines, beers and whiskey from his bottle store on account as a form of insurance. The next morning the town was agog. Creditors were in running around in ever-decreasing circles. Rummlers was deserted, the Matzi's had flown the coop, probably back to Naples. Nobody knew for certain.                                                                         A German bowling alley is vastly different from American ten pin bowling. In the German version the bowling strip is just under a metre wide and twenty metres long. There are two strips. The active strip or kegel barn is cambered. In order to have the maximum effect of felling all seven pins the wooden bowling ball needs to be directed down the cambered path so that it gyrates from side to side. A ball that goes down the middle of the concaved timber will only take out the middle couple of pins. Schiesse is the word the Germans used to describe such a bowl, or more usually: "Das ist ein schiesse haus". In the simplest form of the game each player has three throws at the pins for a maximum of twenty one points. As only two players can kegel at the same time the rest of the club members occupy themselves by playing dice at tables behind the kegellers. This dice game never varied. It was a  game of aces. The player who throws the seventh ace nominates the type of schnapps, the fourteenth ace pays for it and the thrower of the twentyfirst ace drinks it. While all this hilarity is proceeding with a great deal of laughter and the clatter of dice the serious part of the game is being conducted on the barn. If in the course of his three throws a kegeller's bowling attempt wanders off the prescribed barn it is technically known as ein pudel(a poodle). If on an off night a kegeller happens to have three of these in a row (drei pudel) the game comes to an immediate halt.                                                                                                                                                    The drei pudeller calls and pays for the round of schnapps. When the drinks are ready (in special thick shot glasses) in his honour or embarrassment all the club members stand on their chairs while the unfortunate remains seated. The Club Chairman makes a speech intimating what a fine fellow he is but a lousy kegeller. The chairman then raises his glass, shouts out the toast of dreimals gut, throws back the schnapps in one shot and drops the glass down on the table. The members all mimic the procedure. If any member's glass rolls off the table that member immediately suffers the same penalty of a "round". It's a game for the young, the strong and the bloody stupid; not for the faint-hearted or the possessor of a delicate liver.
Luderitz had three or four kegel clubs, each with about twenty five members which met on different nights of the week. The kegel barn was part of the Kapps Hotel complex. I was introduced to the Wednesday club by our bank manager, Henk Berschell. Proceedings would commence at 7pm. At about 1am a late supper of steak tartare or chicken peri peri would be served with hot bread to act as blotting paper for all the schnapps that had punished our  digestive systems during the course of the evening. On a good evening I would throw many a seventh ace or even the fourteenth with no drei poedels. On a bad night I would have no right of nomination, pay for nothing and drink everything with a couple of 'out of bounds throws' to add insult to injury. On such evenings one needed a friend as a backup for a safe journey home. Henk was my team mate. It was the start of a friendship that lasted a life time.  Although we always lived poles apart, sometimes even on different continents, we have always managed to meet at least once a year for a good lunch and to talk of our swashbuckling Luderitz days.
One evening I received a call from the Harbour Master's Office which had a permanently manned radio station for ships in distress. The skipper of an Israeli fishing trawler some five hundred kilometre west of Luderitz had radioed a request for advice from a dentist. Some ten or more Israeli trawlers operated in the South Atlantic at that time. Their identity call was "Asscat" followed by the ship's number. When I arrived at the harbour radio shack the local radio technician proceeded to call up the trawler. To my amusement he called out over the ether: "Arsekat Free, Arsekat Free. Kom in Arsekat Free".
Within minutes contact was established. The Captain of the trawler needed advice. He had a seaman with a swollen jaw who had difficulty opening his mouth, with a fair amount of pain and running a high temperature.  I realised they were dealing with an acute condition where the unfortunate fisherman had an erupted upper third molar tooth where the lower tooth had not yet erupted, probably due to impaction. The overlying gum of the impacted tooth was swelling. Every time the poor chap bit into anything he was biting on this swollen gum. The more he closed his mouth the worse the condition became. The lockjaw was a clinical sign of a severe spasm of the main muscle of the jaw due to the surrounding  trauma and infection. The first aid measure was to extract the top molar tooth to prevent any further tissue damage and later to deal with the lower impacted tooth. I explained this to the skipper.
"I'm in amongst a shoal of  fish and there is no way that I'm steaming five miles to Luderitz. He should have got this fixed before we sailed.He will just have to take his chances. If the bastard dies its his own damn fault."
"Captain," I pleaded. "If you have some antibiotics in your medicine chest, throw the book at him and instruct him to rinse his mouth out with some hot sea water.
"We've got plenty of that. Over and Out,"  was his sarcastic reply.
I went home with the hope the poor chap made it back to a port to get some attention.
Four days later on enjoying my first cup of coffee gazing out over the Luderitz Bay I noticed a trawler steaming towards the harbour towing another. I thought nothing of it until I reached the surgery. Pauline and Mother Brown were in all in a tither because the local shipping agent had called to say two trawlers were approaching the harbour.
One seaman had an acute dental problem and the Captain was insisting that the crews of both trawlers be examined to ascertain if they were dentally  in good nick. In addition, each seaman was to have a medical examination The agent estimated it was a total of thirty two skulls.
It transpired one of the trawlers of the Israeli pod had damaged its engine and "Arsekat Free" had been delegated to tow the stalled vessel to Luderitz. The hard-boiled Captain had taken advantage of the break to have a complete medical check of all crew to ensure he didn't have a repeat of the emergency call.
Thirty two extra patients on top of an already full list of appointments presented quite a challenge. Consultations on behalf of the shipping companies were classified as VIP patients. When one presented the account to the agent the amount was not his problem, he merely paid then debited his head office. In these circumstances one tended to think of a number, multiply it by five, double I and submit the account.
Mother Brown was on the phone postponing all the morning appointments. Within the hour the horde of seamen descended on the surgery. The gent with the acute condition was seen first and sorted. The waiting room overflowed with a bunch of noisy urchins who had a fishy odour and an oversupply of testosterone busting up their arteries. Mother Brown was having a hard time, feeling uncomfortable being undressed by a hundred and twenty odd  bloodshot  eyes with the occasional bottom tweak when she was not looking. Poor girl. 
I was flitting from surgery to surgery offering  succour for any visible first aid dental problems while Pauline was shunting new patients into surgeries as I finished and arranging a fresh supply of sterilised instruments. In order to assist with my diagnosis she would ask each patient some searching questions as to the source of their problem and relate the relevant answers to me as I was transferring to the next patient. This worked well for a while until she rushed passed me blushing profusely. I entered the surgery to find a fisherman with his fly open showing his crown jewels bleeding a few beads of pus. He was seeking treatment for a dose of the clap and had ended up in the wrong line. Even months later as a tease, a reminder of the episode would elicit a deep blush in her cheeks.
Once a month a Farrell Lines ship would arrive to fill its holds with tons of frozen crayfish tails, destined to titillate the palates of our American cousins from across the pond. The draught of these vessels would be too deep to enter the harbour and they would lie off in the bay. Lighters with their precious cargo of frozen tails would be ferried out to the ship by sooty tugs. On one such voyage the ship's agent made an appointment for me to examine a cadet officer. All four of his wisdom teeth were impacted and heavily infected. An operation was contra-indicated for about seven days until the infection had been cleared with antibiotics. The ship was sailing the next day.
The cadet requested a course of antibiotics and to delay the operation on his return to the USA. I felt this was not in his interest. It was a fifteen day voyage to the States and if the infection recurred while still at sea dire complications could follow. I went out to the ship with the cadet to discuss the problem with his Captain. As I climbed up the Jacob's Ladder to ship's deck I looked back to the shore. It was a scene of sheer desolation. Sand and rock as far as the eye could see with just a smattering of insignificant houses shimmering on the horizon that was Luderitz. No wonder the poor young man did not want to be left ashore when the ship sailed. More importantly he was ill at ease at being left to the tender mercy of a surgeon who practiced in such a dump. He was too nice a boy to express these concerns but his face said it all.
Once I gave the Captain the facts, and doubtless mindful of the litigious nature of his countrymen, he made arrangements to put the boy ashore in the hands of their agent and myself. The lad was crestfallen but kept a stiff upper lip. My heart went out to him. I tried to soften the blow by assuring him I would never undertake a surgical procedure if I felt I was not capable of a successful outcome. If this was the case I would send him off the Cape Town or to Johannesburg. I had in fact I had carried out many similar surgical cases. Instead of booking him into Kapps Hotel I obtained the agent's permission to take him to our home to sample some of Peggy's tender loving care. There was a tense moment when he watched his ship sail from the balcony of our house. We took him out to dinner that evening with Pauline and Sandra who were pleased to fuss over this very handsome young lad in his naval uniform.
Once the operation was complete he convalesced in our home. Over weekends we spent time fishing from our in my newly acquired seaside shack and boat. On other occasions we took him inland to farms to view game and to sample farmer's hospitality and showed him the old diamond ghost towns of days gone by. Pauline and Sandra competed for his attention which did wonders for his ego. When the next Farrell Line ship entered the bay to return him to the US I felt he left with some regrets. I later received long letters of appreciation from  him and his parents; yet  another experience of life in Luderitz.
Over our second Easter weekend in Luderitz  Peggy and the boys journeyed to Grahamstown by train to be with Chris during his Easter break. I followed later by car arriving in the City of Saints late on the Good Friday afternoon. The following day we attended the school swimming gala where we met a very old family friend, Pat Mullins, who was an estate agent. Pat was aware we were looking for a new place to settle and had often tried to entice me to settle in Grahamstown which had great need of a new dental practice.
"I've  got a magnificent house to show you," was her opening gambit. The owners were away for Easter so it came about that we went to look at Brook House at Number 10, Henry Street. There are only a very few occasions in life when one enters a house and immediately realises it is what you have always wanted. It stood on three acres of ground, it had a swimming pool, a tennis court, a practice cricket pitch, extensive lawns and plenty of land for Peggy to garden to her heart's delight.
The house had plenty of bedrooms and bathrooms with more reception rooms than we could ever use. It was an old house, built to a Settler design in 1870 of dressed stone with high ceilings and yellowwood floors with nine magnificent fire places  Because of the sloping site it was a split-level construction. The downstairs area contained a lounge, eighty feet long. Off this room was a magnificent bar and extensive cellars for my already growing collection of red wines. All the upstairs room had high ceilings with large sash windows and yellowwood floors. I did not have to ask Peggy if it was the home she wanted. Her look of pleasure told me all I needed to know.
"How much?" I said to Pat. We closed the deal the next day with a six months' grace period for the present owners to get the hell out of my house.
Every thing was just right. Christopher and Mark were already established at St Aidan's College. The other two were to follow. There was plenty of work in Grahamstown and the district to give me a living. We had found the house of our dreams. What more could we ask.
We had just bought the most expensive possession of our lives to date without any in-depth investigation. I had to leave the next day to return to far off Luderitz. We could not even recollect the shape or size of any of the light fittings. We had not measured any windows for curtains nor the floors for rug but we knew we had made the right decision. I had a relatively short period to wind down the Luderitz practice The thought fired up feelings of remorse and regret for I was still exhilarated with the pioneering spirit of the area and the type of practice I had created. There were many patients I felt I would be deserting, the practice was very lucrative but in the long term I felt sure it was in the interest of our children and our family life to make the change. And so it came to pass.

Great reading ...  thanks  Bob  for  putting it on site , and  thanks  to Brian  La Trobe  for his   rich descriptions  in the stories ,, one  can form pictures in ones mind  while reading ....    bravo

Thanks Bob..... in all honesty I find it sad, all those German folk, long since gone, I hear that there are no too many Germans left in the town...

With Brian La Trobe's permission I'm posting the last chapter of his biography. It takes him from the desert town of Luderitz to a practice in green and pleasant Grahamstown, from there to high office as Mayor of the city and member of Rhodes University council, and ends with his departure for international fame with his work in sustainable energy and environmentally safe sanitation systems. 
Bob.


                             EPILOGUE

Moving house is always traumatic be it across the road, across the continent or beyond. Packing up all one's worldly goods is bad enough. It is even worse when people are involved.  I had brought a public service to Luderitz which experience had shown was sorely needed. Now after just a relatively short period of two years I was walking away. I had failed to find anyone who was prepared to take over the practice, let alone buy it even on the day of our departure when the final container door was closed. The empty house echoed its disapproval with our departure and an incident occurred which did not help my troubled conscience.
We left during the infamous east wind season of the year which, incongruous as it may sound, is a hot wind which blows only in winter. The Kung Bushmen called it the Wirraweema (wind that smokes) because of the way it raised the sand in plumes above the Namib dunes. It is an angry destructive blast which can strip your car paint down to bare metal and sand the windscreen to frosted glass in a remarkably short time. For that reason I feared for my brand new Volvo. I had tried without success to delay delivery until we reached Grahamstown so it remained in the safety of our garage for the last two months of our stay. Much to the family's disgust I continued to use our near moribund old Morris as our only means of transport. Like the practice it had scant resale value. I eventually gave it to a surprised, passing factory worker.
In the winter months one always phoned the police station at Aus, some 120 kilometres east across the Namib desert,  to make sure there was no "east wind"  arising before making a journey. If the answer was positive it could be hazardous to venture out across this unforgiving waste land where even the sand dunes had legs. That fateful morning of our departure I phoned Aus.
"Come as quickly as you can," said the officer on duty. An easterly blow was imminent.
As we left the town and just as we were passing the Krabenhoft and Lampe store a solitary soul waved us farewell, or so I thought until he jumped in our path. He had desperate toothache and pleaded for me to help. I could do nothing for him in the street so I went into the store and asked Frau Lampe if I could use the store's restroom to examine him. No wonder he was in pain, a badly decayed lower molar had a fractured crown. No doubt the pulp cavity was heavily infected. He should have visited the surgery months before but this was not the time for recriminations. I had to half unpack the car boot to find my emergency bag and get the tools to extract the offending tooth. We lost an hour. Ten kilometres short of Aus as we climbed up the escarpment's dirt road the East wind struck. Though I crawled into the village of Aus the pristine paintwork on the front of my brand new car was abraded down to its primer coat and the headlight glass covers were sand blasted. The angered gods of Luderitz had bidden us farewell.
Our destination was Grahamstown, the City of Saints, so named because it had more churches than a dog has fleas. Though I never counted I was assured the total was sixty four. The city's population was a polyglot of the pious, the poor, the sharp, the shifty, the sinful and the sincere. In that city was a mess of advocates and lofty Supreme Court judges, a twitter of university academics cloistered apart in the ivory towers of academia and a clutter of dedicated teachers to browbeating the youth. This fascinating human amalgamation was encapsulated with a surround of the upper and lower Albany farmers all tainted with the tradition of the 1820 Settler stock where characters were two a penny. Unfortunately to tell their tale would take another book.
Into this interesting maelstrom of personalities the unsuspecting La Trobes entered to set up home and practice at Brook House. The property was large enough to cut off a wedge to house my business. After my hard earned dental apprenticeship at Oranjemund and the cut and thrust of Luderitz  I had hoped that in my fast-approaching mature years I would have a quiet family type dental practice. I was in for a rude awakening. From day one my appointment book was filled and the size of the waiting list just grew and grew. In the beginning I assumed my popularity was due to the fact I had brought modern and up to date dental equipment to the City whereas my local dental associates were all on the verge of retirement and had surgery equipment of the same vintage as that of my student days.
Within a short space of time my waiting list extended to a six months, a quite ridiculous period. No patient should be expected to suffer this long for treatment of an acute dental problem. I started to treat emergencies two nights a week from 7-10pm but clearly this could not be sustained indefinitely. I flew to England to try to find a partner and met a young graduate who agreed to join me if I paid all his transfer costs to South Africa. I agreed to this condition plus a free partnership into the practice after a probationary period of twelve months. After the trial period he returned to the UK saying dentists in the RSA worked too hard.
Americans who have never even heard of the Plymouth Brethren claim to have relatives who came across the pond on the good ship Mayflower, which seemed to give them a sense of one-upmanship on the rest of the great unwashed.  Similarly some inhabitants of the Eastern Cape of South Africa claim ancestry among the 1820 English Settlers and thus consider themselves upper crust. Lesser mortals are frowned upon. I was grudgingly given extra status when I was able to point out that my ancestor Christian Ignatius La Trobe came to South Africa to visit the Moravian mission station at Genadendal in 1815 and also went to the Grahamstown area when it was still just a military station before the town was established. That placed him five years before the arrival of the 1820 settlers.
It must have done the trick because Peggy and I were soon integrated into the local community. Because of her botanical interests Peggy became a member of the Horticultural Society and served as its secretary for many years. Later she assumed the more arduous task of secretary to the Settlers Old Age Home. Within a couple of years I found myself on a number of private school councils and the Hospital Board. Later I was invited to join the Rhodes University Council, a position I held for over twenty years, retiring as deputy chairman  when we departed Grahamstown to pursue my new environmental career.
In 1980 I was elected to a seat on the Grahamstown City Council. I served two years as the city's deputy Mayor and eventually served two terms as its Mayor. Peggy as the city's Mayoress made a very valuable contribution. She was a wonderful help in attending social functions where I couldn't attend and did superb work in co-ordinating my daily schedule with the secretary. After eleven years service on the Council I was elevated to the rank of Alderman of the city.
A turning point in my life occurred when I joined the city Council and found the municipal landfill site in an appalling condition. I harassed my fellow Councillors until they agreed to let me to design a new site. Since my days as an industrial chemist with General Motors I had never lost my fascination with organic material and was constantly staggered of how much of value mankind throws away. From time immemorial we have placed our waste in holes in the ground in the hope it would just disappear. Few realise that a landfill site is a giant bioreactor of great complexity, the chemistry of which we still do not completely understand.  In setting up Grahamstown's new landfill site I had the opportunity to establish the first of what I hoped would become a country-wide energy from waste programme. 
Having good contact with Rhodes University was of significant assistance in the establishment of this project. I liaised with the head of the chemistry department, Professor Prof Letcher, who organised some funding for the research which otherwise would not have been available to me. With this help I was able to demonstrate that a landfill site was one of mankind's few sources of renewable energy. In the decade-long research phase of this project the municipal staff that lived adjacent to the site had free energy for cooking, lighting and hot water. It all came from methane gas generated within the landfill. In addition the gas was used to power a four cylinder engine that turned a turbine to produce electricity. This in turn provided the power to heat the staff office, bake ceramic bricks and run a large cooking facility. With my queer sense of humour I would delight in inviting local and visiting dignitaries to lunch on the landfill site to show that when properly managed it need not be an obnoxious spot.
This research with waste products led to a commission by the South African Research Council to look for a means of  treating human body waste without the use of large quantities of water in a way that could be managed by workers with few technical skills. It struck me that all communities rich and poor had two basic waste streams, garbage and body waste. If one could blend and stabilise these two noxious streams there would be many advantages.  I experimented with a process that had been pioneered in the USA but rejected as useless. A colleague and I managed to tweak the technology to produce a successful outcome. The process was called Forced Aeration Composting. Without going into complex detail, the two waste streams were blended together in large static piles then blasted with compressed air. The American researchers had used a continuous blast of air which gave only mediocre results. I decided to pulsate the air flow into the biomass in the hope it would excite the aerobic bacteria in the waste to greater activity and thus produce more biological heat.
The bugs went mad. Within 24 hours we reached temperatures of 65C and more. This achieved two aims: it destroyed all the pathogenic bacteria and multiplied the non-pathogens which in turn consumed all the available organic waste in the sewage/garbage mix, turning it into a high class compost free of toxic material. Instead of the normal duration of three or four months required by Mother Nature to turn out compost my hungry bugs did the job in just 21 days.
I published a paper on the research and was invited to read it at the annual meeting of the World Pollution Control Federation in Toronto, Canada, in 1991. It was the beginning of a long line of research detailed in some 40 published scientific papers. The list appears as an addendum to this book. Finally, the technology of forced aeration composting was designed to operate in a box. In this way we developed the dry sanitation system known as the Enviro Loo which is manufactured in South Africa and exported to some fourteen countries. It eventually received accreditation in the USA which allowed us to sell it to the US Federal Government.
All of this activity meant that my professional life developed huge work overload and massive conflicts of interest which were slowly killing me.  Thirty years of dentistry had left me jaded. It was time to pack up my probes, mirrors and forceps and follow my new mistress, the environment.
                                                         #                                 

It was a real honour to have been blessed with a relationship with the La Trobe family. Who would have known. Chris was quite an inspirational chappie way back then as well. He taught me how to really swot for exams and in Std 2 I achieved a 92% passmark. A real unbelievable family.By the time we left in Std 5 I must have read all the Secret Seven , Famous five and Hardy boy novels.He was a great influence ! Go well Chris ! Julian

I sent Brian a copy of Malcolm's book, Diamonds and Dust, to which he has sent us a poem entitled Cats on the Sand.....

"CATS ON THE SAND.

Modern concrete cave dwelling cats,
have but one place to call their own.
Where kitty is king,
a box of sand.

In a far away desert cat's paradise,
There are mutated cats bigger than rats
that ravage the dunes in a frenzy of hole digging.

Yellow black and acrid breathed
Headlamp eyes, a grill of a nose
rubber black claws, compressed air muscles,
bowels of iron.
Some with the tails of five hundred horses,
others siamese with an Irish sting.
All with the guttural purr of a mess of caterpillars,
munching cocoons of aluminium foil.

In the light of a salt tanged seaweed swirling
mist encrusted dawn,
They squat, proud, huge and heavy,
casting might on the early unforgiving sand.

Over fed lions with geological hangovers,
bellies pot scoured clean with a constant diet
of roughage and sand gluttony.
A circus team of docile cats,
yet untamed and rebellious.

Trained by avaricious man to seek glistening stones
Gigantic guide dogs with a nose for a fortune
and black masters.

The masters climb the backs of these monstrous cats.
Prod them awake. With a disgruntled growl they begin to move.
Swinging their noses this way and that.
Still half asleep with the dreams of the night,
fresh oil, that new bulldozer with the big bosom
and scintilating scoop.

Then off behind the dunes where no one can see,
for cats are sensitive creatures,
they dig dirty great holes in the sand.

Brian La Trobe. Oranjemund 1966"

Wow! That's all I can say about Brian's memoirs.

I liked that Yacht Club members are referred to as the mink and manure set! Not too shabby eh Bob?!