I'll never forget our arrival at Alexander Bay airport on Friday 20th November 1981. We were met by a young student employed by the Personnel Dept, on a temp basis, whilst on his seasonal university leave. This young man welcomed us to Oranjemund and introduced himself as Stirling McBride, eldest son of Jack and Dorothy McBride.
Well, after all these years guess who turns up last night and spent the evening with us, none other than the same Stirling and his wife Lilia. Son in law Mike A, came home from work and announced that he was having a braai in the evening, (nothing unusual) and that he had invited Stirling over for this braai. The both of them are taking a short break touring the area and Stirling wanted to show Lilia the place where he was born and lived. Unfortunately they left this morning, off to Luderitz, but a good evening was had by all, talking about old times etc.
It just shows how this small oasis in the desert has become such an influence in all of the people that has had some contact with it. I know it has been said many times before but once an Oranjemunder, always an Oranjemunder
Hello Mike,Jack was the Power Station foreman when I worked there,It sure is a small world.
It's a smaller world, as that is where I started working for CDM.
By this time though, Jack had moved onto the mine being stationed at Uubvley I think
Jack McBride was the Planning Foreman of the Earthmoving fleet, based at Ubvley when I worked at CDM in '85,'86 and '87. I was the "beancounter" for the Engineering Department. Jack later moved to the Town Garage.
Those days Les Johns was the Engineering Manager, John Amis the Div Eng, Section Engineers were Ken Simpson, Mario Dickson and David Alderson-Smith to mention but a few.
Earthmoving Foremen included Bobby Pelton, Dave Hockney, Ben Havenga, Frans Schneider. I also recall George Epstein, Billy Summers, Gilbert Kermis being part of Jack's Earthmoving Planning Team. I recall the fine lunches we enjoyed at the Uubvley Mess. those were heydays of CDM and money was pletifull. The Mine could afford to experiment with projects such as the Holland Loader. The fleet was predominantly Caterpillar with the odd Komatsu D64 dozer. Those workshops could do complete re-builds of D9 dozers, 769 haultrucks etc. I wonder if they are still there and do they still have the skilled maintenance workforce?
The rumour being they want to shut Uubvley down....... becoming an empty engineering complex.... Seem's a complete waste when you consider that they could manufacture just about anything up there except for synthetic diamonds.....
mmmh!