Oranjemund's first resident dentist

[Bob Molloy]

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.

[toonfandangl]

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.

[Bob Molloy]

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.

[SandyB]

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 ...

[Bob Molloy]

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 . 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.

[SandyB]

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 ....   

[Michael Alexander]

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...

[Bob Molloy]

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.
                                                         #                                 

[Julian Laubser]

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

[Michael Alexander]

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"

[Robert Bruce]

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?!