My earliest memory of my father’s occupation was during the Second World War. I was born in 1939 and I remember Father leaving in the early hours of the morning to go work. His and the job of many others who failed the medical for the army or who had special skills was to see that the trains taking the soldiers up to the East African theatre of war would get there without mishap.
My father had tried to join the Cape Town Highlanders and I remember photos of him in his kilt. He was turned down because of flat feet. I also remember the air raid sirens that meant we had to gather at a large house on the corner. I still remember that house clearly.
Anyhow the war ended as wars do and I continued to grow up. My parents bought a chicken farm together with their Welsh neighbours but Father continued to work at the Salt River workshop. He had run away from school at the age of 15 to join the railways as a messenger boy. His father was head foreman at Salt River Works but it took years for Father to climb the ranks.
We moved to Fish Hoek when I was ten. I quickly made friends and the three of us ran wild along the sand dunes surrounding Peers Cave. We did not know then of its history and that Bertie Peers had discovered the intact body of what was in those days called a Strandloper (beach walker) although Bertie called him San. Later he became known as The Fish Hoek Man and lived around 12000 years ago.
My friends and I swam and dived for sinkers among the rocks along the famous catwalk and sold them back to the anglers who had lost them! One year we were idling away in still water on rubber car tyres when two dorsal fins approached. We were terrified as they came nearer but they then started leaping and we were relieved to see these porpoises as they were then called. The two became our friends and ultimately began to play among the bathers in the breakers. Their pictures made the press and they were called Fish and Hoek. A few years later they disappeared.
After these adventures I had to join my Mother and sister to endure talking Afrikaans at the evening meal so that my father could become fluent in that language. His teacher, fierce Mrs. Bock, would know if he was not practicing and we would all get a lecture on just how important it was for Father to qualify and progress up the ladder in Salt River Workshop.
The Nationalist Government practiced job reservation for English speakers favouring any Afrikaner above them regardless of skill. Luckily my Grandfather and his father worked under the United Party for they both progressed to become Chief Foreman of the Salt River Works.
As a South African Railways employee Father was entitled to a free pass on the railways. Each school holiday my sister Veronica and I would plan our journeys. As long as we did not travel the same route twice we could wander around South Africa by rail!
Of course this was still the age of steam. Well I remember the train stopping at Laingsburg to take on water and coal and an extra engine to haul the carriages over the Hex River mountains the second highest in South Africa. This chain of mountains is the gateway to the interior and the long flat plains of the Klein (small) and Groot (great) Karoo, a semi desert that extends across southern Africa with the typical kopjes (low flat topped hills) of these plains. The name came from the Khoikhoi word garo (desert)
The first white man to graze his sheep and goats along this incredibly fertile Hex River valley was Roelf Jantz van Hoeting. He kept his flocks under the mountains of the red sand above the rock of the Lions. The valley is now known for its vineyards and fruit orchards.
The mountains were capped with snow in the winter and we were snug in our compartment with its green plastic seats/beds snuggled under our bedrolls. The conductor would check on us regularly and we would be escorted to the dining room for dinner. The linen was heavy damask, the cutlery heavy silver and the crockery embossed with the railways insignia, the head of a springbok, the leaping (Pronking) animal that became the name of the National Rugby team. It was fun watching the countryside whizzing by while we ate wonderful South African dishes.
The engines chuffed chuffed with the effort of pulling up the incline and gave long toots when they achieved it! Merino sheep graze the indigenous Karoo bushes while lonely windmills pump their water. The herbs lend a distinctive flavor to the lamb. Sir Abe Bailey one of the men who made millions from diamonds at Kimber together with Cecil John Rhodes and Barney Banarto would insist that Karoo sheep travelled with him by sea to England and Welsh lamb on thee return voyage such was his regard for the flesh of these sheep.
The climate in the Karoo is one of extreme cold and heat. In later years I would hear the old farmers say “Seven years of drought, seven years of plenty!” The extreme cold kept parasites to a minimum and great stud farms emerged over the years breeding some of the finest thoroughbreds in South Africa. One family, the Birch Brothers, predominated and well I remember that when their yearlings came to the yearling sales in Johanesburg they still had the imprint of the halters put on when they were weaned and turned out in the huge camps.
The Karoo is now world famous for the many fossils discovered here. The sedimentary rocks reveal a picture of African wild life and landscape of around 255 million years ago. The latest find is of a dinosaur that was the largest animal on earth during his lifetime.
My Father continued on his way up the engineering ladder until he became head foreman at the Salt River Works like his father and grandfather before him. Progress was however coming and the age of steam was waning. When I was eighteen my father was already in charge of changing the rail transport system of South Africa to Diesel electric.
I left for the UK in 1958 on one of the famous Union Castle liners with their lavender hulls and red funnels. A bank played “Now is the Hour when we must say goodbye!” on the quay and coloured paper streamers connected passengers and loved ones being left behind, breaking as the tugs moved the liner away from the dockside.
Arriving at Southampton my father was at the station to meet me. There was some trouble with the engine of our train to London and we were delayed. Well I remember him striding off to find out what the trouble was. Not long afterwards he was striding back and the train moving slowly off. He swung with long practice onto the footplate of a carriage and made his way back to me a grin on his face as he told me that he had spotted and fixed the trouble!
We stayed one night in London and the following day took the Flying Scotsman to Glasgow where Father was overseeing the construction of the new diesel electric engines. Of course this train was pulled by a diesel electric engine but it carried me through a white countryside to arrive in Glasgow in a snowstorm! A far cry from sunny South Africa! Father was stationed here to check the components of the diesel engines and did so in Germany and Manchester at famous engineering firms like Metro Vickers.
The original Flying Scotsman was world famous and of course a steam engine. It was built in 1923 at Doncaster Works and its route was London to Edinburgh. The train is now in the National Railway Museum.
Eventually my Father returned home with the great new engines following him by ship. Finally the great day came when South Africa would change from steam to diesel. My father was invited to be on the footplate of the last steam engine to leave Cape Town station. The Cape Times newspaper ran a half page article on the 100 years of service the Goodwin family had given the South African Railways with a magic photo of Father with clouds of steam surrounding him!
What a difference when my friend June and I took the train from Johannesburg to Maputo. The tablecloth was plastic as were the knives and forks and the cook was drunk so dinner was off!
Another very exciting journey was on the Tazara Railway from Kabwe in Zambia to Dar es Salaam but that story will keep for another day!