Goodbye and Hello
Just before we took our leave of Fremantle we did a little bit of mailing, besides letters to the family and pen friends. Knowing we were going to Durban, I sent a postcard to Peter Hurley in Durban to let him know I would be calling there and to tell the rest of the men I drank with when I was there on the King Alexander. I used one of the cards that I had bought in Red China; it was showing Chairman Mao's birthplace. I wrote a very tongue in cheek note , telling him that this photo was of the Glorious Leader’s house as well as the new’s of my impending arrival. The second thing I did ,was to send a request to the Perth FM station requesting a record for our new made friends (the girls who came aboard with the Greek lad)
I said it was from Scouse and Geordie. They p[ayed it O.K. but the DJ mispronounced our nicknames; he called us Skoyuse and Gerrydee.
It was a lazy run across to Durban, the weather was fine for most of the way ,but as we neared the African continent the seas started get more active, there was a swell ,which got heavier with each passing day. We were driving into the waves and the decks were constantly awash with green ‘uns. Just a few days out of Durban the seas got heavier and ,as we forged ahead, the bows were hitting the oncoming waves with such force that it felt like we were hitting a brick wall. There would be a Whumpf! as our bow slammed in the wave and then we shook as she struggled to recover. When you were in your bunk you could feel every movement ,the rise and fall of the pitching meant that you would be forced down into your bunk as the stern came up and then you were almost weightless as the stern plummeted back down. I preferred the pitching to the rolling, when she rolled you could get flung from your bunk. The night before we got into Durban we encountered some really rough weather, we were getting thrown all over the place. When we entered calmer waters the carpenter and the bosun were doing an assessment of damages and found that the windlass on the foc’sle head had been forced backwards by about 3 inches.
It was great to get out of that lot for awhile, and Durban was a nice place to be if you could over look the rigours of apartheid.
I made the Pirates Cove my first call, that was where Peter ,Dick and the rest of the crowd went. It was crowded as usual but I did’nt see any of the lads I knew. Most of our deck crowd were here and we were having a good old time. I spotted one the blokes who drank with me at the Hilton Hotel when I was here last time. I went and shook hands and asked about the rest of that crowd. Dick had moved back to Pietermaritzburg and Peter was confined to house arrest under the 90 day law . He had received mail that came within the list of subversive materials, my Chinese postcard !!! I felt dreadful about it but kept my mouth shut.
Durban was a nice place to be, if you were the right colour. There are beautiful beaches and lot’s of lovely ladies. This was a major holiday resort for whitefolk from Rhodesia and the rest of the Southern African continent. There were some great tourist attractions ,the Slang Park, or Snake Park , was a very popular place. They have most known species of snake there, the attendants were all black,their job was to go into the enclosures and handle the snakes, bring them out of nooks and cranny’s so that the visitors might see them. The attendants were all in uniform and had calf length leather gaiters to protect them from snake bites. The most venomous snakes were kept in glass fronted enclosures, floor to ceiling height. My abiding memory of that part of the park ,is of standing behind a boy of about ten, an enormous cobra was uncoiled and was level with the boy’s face. It’s hood was displayed and it leaned back and then struck the glass ,the poison fron it’s fangs running down the glass. It did this about three times and the hairs on the back of the boy’s head were bristling. I could not help feeling a primitive fear as I looked on.
Next door to the Snake Park is a wonderful aquarium. It looks like a smaller version of the Rotunda in Birmingham. It has an external staircase which winds itself up to the top of the building. You can see all sorts of species there, it is not a place you can view in a rush ,there is so much to see . A diver goes in and feeds them and it is fascinating to watch. Adjacent the tower is a huge pool ,this is where the shark’s are kept. There were great bottom feeding sharks so smooth and sleek ,and there were some mako sharks. These were fed in the most unusual way, there was a catenary across the pool ,and hanging from it was a bosun’s chair. There was a horizontal pulley for pulling it across the pool and an attendant sat in this and threw portions of fish to the sharks below. I can think of better jobs than that one.
Most of the crew made the Pirate’s Cove their drinking hole, it always had lot’s of nice girls there and the music and beer was good too. One night I ended up with an unusual trio. There was a middle aged man, silvery haired an mahogany skin, he was very expensively dressed, at his side sat a beautiful red haired lady .She was wearing an emerald green evening dress which was very low cut. Sat on the other side of him was a small blonde girl, she wore a chiffon dress and looked very like Twiggy. I sauntered over to their table and complimented the gent on his female companions. He was very nice,and told me the red head was his lady and that the blonde was his daughter. I asked him if minded if I asked his daughter for a dance ; he smiled and said “Certainly, I thought nobody would ever ask. When we were dancing the young lady told me that the redhead was her father’s lover,her mother was back home on the farm. I spent the rest of the night there with them and saw them off in their car in the wee small hours.
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Twice though I picked the wrong lady when I was there. One was in her 30’s ,freshly divorced from her professional footballer husband. The evening was going well and I was invited back to her apartment for some “supper “. When we were there ,she poured some drinks and started to tell me of what her likes and dislikes where. The list was long and predictable, it amounted to a paranoid hatred of anything that was’nt pure Aryan. She asked me if I had ever made love to a black woman and I answered in the affirmative. She shrieked and said I was unclean, I gave her the sailors farewell.
The other wrong ‘un was a really beautiful girl, she was sitting on her own in a bar on Water Street , I was sitting with a couple of the lads and our Captain joined us. He remarked on this young lady, expressing surprise that no one had attempted to pull her. The truth was ,we were broke. I asked the skipper if he had any spare cash so that I could attempt to pull her. He pulled a roll of notes out and peeled a few off. “There yar Daley, go and do yer stuff” I went and asked if she would like to meet some of our crew, she looked over at them and nodded yes.
I took her back to the table and introduced her to the skipper and the rest of the crowd, She looked even more beautiful close up and I really fancied her. It was not long before we went back to her flat. Once we entered her living room her whole personality seemed to change. She was worried that people might think she was a black. And in that living room light I could discern that she had some features that looked faintly Negroid; but she worked in a white job ,had been brought up as white ,and looked very white. I spent one exhausting night ,constantly telling her that she was beautiful. In the dawning light, I gave in
Apartheid mucked up an awful lot of lives, when I got back on board the skipper asked how it went ,I could’nt tell him.
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