Dicks Page
It takes a lot of wine to look like this and believe me, over the years I have tried.
It takes a lot of wine to look like this and believe me, over the years I have tried.
The following photo was taken {by a good friend Casper who passed on some time ago} whilst we were camping at Luphuthana on the Transkei Wild Coast. This was a special time in that we camped at Luphuthana on the thick grass about 50 feet from the beach . Nature at its best. We would wake up in the morning and walk maybe a 100 yards or so and catch our breakfast direct from the sea . Shad or as the Afrikaans people call them "Elf" is a real tasty treat and with it being so fresh you could not ask for a better breakfast. It would still quiver when you put it in the pan. We would also dive amongst the rocks so that we could have fresh Natal Crayfish for supper together with some lovely wine. What more could you want?
During the day we walked from our campsite to what is known now as Waterfall Bluff. This was quite a walk along the cliffs crossing lots of little streams and at that point Marilyn was 6 months pregnant with my son Lance. At one point we found some other campers showering au natural under one of the numerous little waterfalls. When we talked to them we found out that they had came down with only a minivan and a load of beer as they were spending their time living off the land-sea (In other words) fishing. Anyway needless to say that you could quite easily do so in those days as life on the coast was prolific in all forms.
You can find Waterfall Bluff and Luphuthana on Google Earth however where we camped there is now some houses and a Campsite however it still seems to be dirt Roads to get there.
You would hear stories of farmers going fishing and taking a "Gilly" with them when they went and fished on the Transkei or "Wild Coast" as the area was called. A "Gilly" was a young African man say sixteen or so. The farmers would cast in and then the "Gilly" would sit and hold the fishing rod and when a fish was hooked he would shout and the farmer would come and reel the fish in. In between times the farmer would sit and drink beer and so forth.
Today I believe the area has been totally ruined with recreational vehicles tearing up the vegetation as well as holiday cottages having been built along the coast. I would not like to see that and I hope the authorities get their act together to protect the beauty of the area.
The Following is a picture of Casper taken at Vetches pier on one of the numerous days we went diving together. (He is the person who took the above picture of me at Luphuthana.)
The above photo was taken {by a good friend Casper who passed on some time ago} whilst we were camping at Luphuthana on the Transkei Wild Coast. The picture on the right is of Casper taken at Vetches pier on one of the numerous days we went diving together. (He is the person who took the picture of me at Luphuthana.)
This was a special time in that we camped at Luphuthana on the thick grass about 50 feet from the beach . Nature at its best. We would wake up in the morning and walk maybe a 100 yards or so and catch our breakfast direct from the sea . Shad or as the Afrikaans people call them "Elf" is a real tasty treat and with it being so fresh you could not ask for a better breakfast. It would still quiver when you put it in the pan. We would also dive amongst the rocks so that we could have fresh Natal Crayfish for supper together with some lovely wine. What more could you want?
During the day we walked from our campsite to what is known now as Waterfall Bluff. This was quite a walk along the cliffs crossing lots of little streams and at that point Marilyn was 6 months pregnant with my son Lance. At one point we found some other campers showering au natural under one of the numerous little waterfalls. When we talked to them we found out that they had came down with only a minivan and a load of beer as they were spending their time living off the land-sea (In other words) fishing. Anyway needless to say that you could quite easily do so in those days as life on the coast was prolific in all forms.
You can find Waterfall Bluff and Luphuthana on Google Earth however where we camped there is now some houses and a Campsite however it still seems to be dirt Roads to get there.
You would hear stories of farmers going fishing and taking a "Gilly" with them when they went and fished on the Transkei or "Wild Coast" as the area was known. A "Gilly" was a young African man say sixteen or so. The farmers would cast in and then the "Gilly" would sit and hold the fishing rod and when a fish was hooked he would shout and the farmer would come and reel the fish in. In between times the farmer would sit and drink beer and so forth.
Today I believe the area has been totally ruined with recreational vehicles tearing up the vegetation as well as holiday cottages having been built along the coast. I would not like to see that and I hope the authorities get their act together to protect the beauty of the area.
André Dickson sent this picture to me, it was taken in 1971 with Mike Lang on the left and André on the right on the beach at vetches. This area would be unrecognisable by today's standards!
The following on the was taken on a specimen collecting trip for the Indian University in Durban at the entrance of the Reunion Canal which I believe was dug during the depression for 2/- shillings a day.
In those days there used to be many Cowry shells and sea life there as well as in the rock pools and we used to collect live marine fish for the University. This picture was probably taken around 1966.
I shot the Garrick on the right off Brighton Beach on the Bluff in Durban in 1965. One was 57 Lbs and the other 62 Lbs I seem to remember. On the day I probably could have shot more if it had not been for the fact that I had ridden my bicycle to the Bluff and when I shot the first fish it managed to bend my spear into an S shape. The spear was 3/8"(10mm) thick! So I had to do take the funicular to the Top of the Bluff. (Incidentally this funicular is no longer.) It used to be run by the owners of the Harcourt Hotel which was at the top of the bluff directly above the Brighton beach pool area-(the Hotel is now a housing complex or retirement home) A friend of mine "George Hay" used to live a block or two away from the Hotel so I went to his house and managed to straighten out the spear. I then went back down and swam out once again to behind the breakers to shoot the second fish. On this day I remember chasing a wily "Daga" Salmon for about an hour as it was hiding in the caves in the rocks and you actually had to play a game of hide and seek with the fish. When I finally got out the water I found this Salmon already on the beach as it was shot by another diver. (Nelson Calender). It weighed over ninety pounds.
After all these years as I sit and write this, I can smell the sea and the wet sea sand and in my mind I can see the banded mongoose running across the road near to where we were diving. It is sad sometimes to go back when you remember how good things were. I even remember one day diving off the whaling station and finding sinkers stuck in the sandstone which had been encapsulated, and they were eroded by the swirling sand so that you could see sinkers worn flat and shiny stuck in the rock as if they had been there for millions of years fossilised into the rock.
After the foregoing episode I really had a big problem as I had a full catch of Crayfish, eighteen in those days as well as about 50 pounds of lead sinkers, two huge fish and I was still there on a bicycle. Fortunately George Hay came to the rescue and loaded me bicycle and all on his truck and he drove me home. If I remember rightly I sold one of the fish for about R25.00 to a friends mother. In those days R25 was considered a lot of money and I used to sell my Crayfish for .45C per pound. If I could, I would go back in time and buy all my own crayfish!
Strangely enough the lady who bought the fish was a Mrs Morkel the mother of a School friend who was one of the ladies who nursed my father on the night he passed away at the "Addington Hospital". They had performed a lumbar punch and found that he had a large quantity of blood in his spinal column due to the massive Cerebral Haemorrhage he had suffered and was instrumental in informing my Mother that the prognosis was very bad and that they did not expect him to survive. He died the next morning.
This was a special time in that we camped at Luphuthana on the thick grass about 50 feet from the beach . Nature at its best. We would wake up in the morning and walk maybe a 100 yards or so and catch our breakfast direct from the sea . Shad or as the Afrikaans people call them "Elf" is a real tasty treat and with it being so fresh you could not ask for a better breakfast. It would still quiver when you put it in the pan. We would also dive amongst the rocks so that we could have fresh Natal Crayfish for supper together with some lovely wine. What more could you want?
During the day we walked from our campsite to what is known now as Waterfall Bluff. This was quite a walk along the cliffs crossing lots of little streams and at that point Marilyn was 6 months pregnant with my son Lance. At one point we found some other campers showering au natural under one of the numerous little waterfalls. When we talked to them we found out that they had came down with only a minivan and a load of beer as they were spending their time living off the land-sea (In other words) fishing. Anyway needless to say that you could quite easily do so in those days as life on the coast was prolific in all forms.
You can find Waterfall Bluff and Luphuthana on Google Earth however where we camped there is now some houses and a Campsite however it still seems to be dirt Roads to get there.
You would hear stories of farmers going fishing and taking a "Gilly" with them when they went and fished on the Transkei or "Wild Coast" as the area was known. A "Gilly" was a young African man say sixteen or so. The farmers would cast in and then the "Gilly" would sit and hold the fishing rod and when a fish was hooked he would shout and the farmer would come and reel the fish in. In between times the farmer would sit and drink beer and so forth.
Today I believe the area has been totally ruined with recreational vehicles tearing up the vegetation as well as holiday cottages having been built along the coast. I would not like to see that and I hope the authorities get their act together to protect the beauty of the area.
André Dickson sent this picture to me, it was taken in 1971 with Mike Lang on the left and André on the right on the beach at vetches. This area would be unrecognisable by today's standards!
The following on the was taken on a specimen collecting trip for the Indian University in Durban at the entrance of the Reunion Canal which I believe was dug during the depression for 2/- shillings a day.
In those days there used to be many Cowry shells and sea life there as well as in the rock pools and we used to collect live marine fish for the University. This picture was probably taken around 1966.
I shot the Garrick on the right off Brighton Beach on the Bluff in Durban in 1965. One was 57 Lbs and the other 62 Lbs I seem to remember. On the day I probably could have shot more if it had not been for the fact that I had ridden my bicycle to the Bluff and when I shot the first fish it managed to bend my spear into an S shape. The spear was 3/8"(10mm) thick! So I had to do take the funicular to the Top of the Bluff. (Incidentally this funicular is no longer.) It used to be run by the owners of the Harcourt Hotel which was at the top of the bluff directly above the Brighton beach pool area-(the Hotel is now a housing complex or retirement home) A friend of mine "George Hay" used to live a block or two away from the Hotel so I went to his house and managed to straighten out the spear. I then went back down and swam out once again to behind the breakers to shoot the second fish. On this day I remember chasing a wily "Daga" Salmon for about an hour as it was hiding in the caves in the rocks and you actually had to play a game of hide and seek with the fish. When I finally got out the water I found this Salmon already on the beach as it was shot by another diver. (Nelson Calender). It weighed over ninety pounds.
After all these years as I sit and write this, I can smell the sea and the wet sea sand and in my mind I can see the banded mongoose running across the road near to where we were diving. It is sad sometimes to go back when you remember how good things were. I even remember one day diving off the whaling station and finding sinkers stuck in the sandstone which had been encapsulated, and they were eroded by the swirling sand so that you could see sinkers worn flat and shiny stuck in the rock as if they had been there for millions of years fossilised into the rock.
After the foregoing episode I really had a big problem as I had a full catch of Crayfish, eighteen in those days as well as about 50 pounds of lead sinkers, two huge fish and I was still there on a bicycle. Fortunately George Hay came to the rescue and loaded me bicycle and all on his truck and he drove me home. If I remember rightly I sold one of the fish for about R25.00 to a friends mother. In those days R25 was considered a lot of money and I used to sell my Crayfish for .45C per pound. If I could, I would go back in time and buy all my own crayfish!
Strangely enough the lady who bought the fish was a Mrs Morkel the mother of a School friend who was one of the ladies who nursed my father on the night he passed away at the "Addington Hospital". They had performed a lumbar punch and found that he had a large quantity of blood in his spinal column due to the massive Cerebral Haemorrhage he had suffered and was instrumental in informing my Mother that the prognosis was very bad and that they did not expect him to survive. He died the next morning.
A couple of years prior to shooting these fish at this spot about 300 yards down the beach a friend of mine (Frankie Van Den Berg pictured below) and I camped on a Grassy knoll next to the Road leading to Brighton Beach For several days. We some-how got hold of an old tent and spent our time fishing and caught many a shad. Nowadays you could not do this and apart from the fact it would be suicide to try it and it would not be allowed!
An incident I would never forget about this was one morning when we had run out of bait, a fisherman that was fishing a short way from where we were sitting had a full tray of sardine bait. Frankie and I decided that the only thing to do was to try and get hold of some of these, so he slowly moved closer sitting surreptitiously surveying the surroundings. Every time the fellow was not looking, he would move a little closer. After what seemed like forever the fisherman seemingly fully aware of what was going on slowly walked up the beach packed up his fishing gear, took the tray of sardines and walked over to Frankie and gave him the box! It could have turned out to be a big mistake?? Another memory this camping trip evokes is that it drizzled many of the days we were there and we spent many a night being cold and miserable and Frankie being an asthmatic ended up getting really ill so when we returned home he had to spend some time in bed!
In my later years I arranged many a fishing trip for the office and friends and on occasion we had a lots of fun going out to to sea and apart from consuming lots of beer and sandwiches and the like we also caught fish in various quantities. Here is a Picture with a of me with a Tunny which gave a wonderful fight as soon as I hooked it, it went straight down or "sounded" as the expression goes! I seem to remember it weighed 36 Lbs? In the background of this picture is Max Hurwitz my late sister in Law's husband.
On the right another shot of a Wahoo
In 2010 we went back to South Africa for my Mom's funeral and and we took a drive to Brighton beach. There was great excitement all around Durban because of the world cup soccer but not at Brighton beach during a week day. It was sad to see the buildings looking so old and in such a bad state of repair. It makes me think of my childhood days just after the war when every thing was also drab and unkempt.
In those days many did not have power mowers and lawns etc were often not cut. I remember my dad paying an African gardener to cut the grass in our back yard with a hand clippers and panga (machete). This was after we arrived in Durban the first time. It was only a couple of years later when he bought our first push mower to do the grass and we could only afford this as my sister worked at the suppliers. Even though we did not have a large garden at least we could now mow the lawn.
Whilst the sea and the beaches are still there (if you are not on a main beach) the areas are filthy and unkempt. The area pictured on the right used to be well kept lawns and in the past and we used to spend hours with our children playing on the lawn and in the pools but now while there are garbage bins no one seems to give a hoot. There are evidence of fires having been made everywhere and the places are littered with cigarette buts paper plates and the like. The beaches are littered with plastic and paper and if it wasn't for nature struggling to break down the filth and washing and blowing it away I can't imagine what it would be like.
It has now been found that all this litter and plastic breaks down but does not disappear altogether it makes it's way into the food chain as microscopic particles which gets ingested by shrimps and the like and so moves up into the food chain as these are consumed by predatory fish and eventually into the food we consume! This does not only apply to plastic on the beaches but also to micro fibres that are created by washing our cloths and are then drained into the oceans and once again entering the food chain. We are polluting our environment in every conceivable way which does not bode well for the planet as a whole?
Durban is not just a new soccer stadium or harbour entrance and until the whole attitude changes it seems that things are not as rosy as some would want to believe even though I was impressed by the apparent improvement in relations between the races. ( This now in 2019 seems to have changed once again for the worse as there is an upsurge of Xenophobia and violence against foreign workers amongst the black population)
This is not "a beauty spot" and as we traveled all over Durban it certainly was sad to see that as soon as you went off the beaten track or on to a secondary road you would find these beauty spots degraded with apparent total disregard to all the norms that were in place in years gone by?
I was also totally shaken by the amount of litter on the beaches. Apart from the normal litter in the form of paper but also a huge amount of plastic in the form of bottles, bottle tops, ice cream containers etc. The foregoing seemed to be everywhere.
Looking the other way which I suppose is what you have to do is a picture of the paddling pools and the beach wave pool in the background where I spent many hours in my youth. The wave pool used to really be fun especially at high spring tides when huge waves would smash into the walls sending sprays of water up ten or twenty feet into the air and causing waves in the pool. I had somewhere got hold of a large tractor tire and my cousin Robert and I used to walk all the way from his house to the beach and get into the pool at spring tides when the water was rough and spend wonderful carefree days in the pool. Naturally with all the sun and no sun block in those days we were so brown you would have thought we were natives.
On the right about a hundred to two hundred meters behind the waves was where I shot the two Garrick in the earlier picture.
Looking the opposite way across the parking area is the restaurant which goes back years which in my day used to be mainly for beach goers nowadays 2017 this has become a well frequented good restaurant which is apparently quite popular. So maybe my earlier observations have been proved wrong?? My brother Harry was saying that he went there last week (Mar 2017) and had a Lord & legends salad (which is the name of the Restaurant) with Avocado and greens and a wonderful dressing with Fried Hake filet for lunch with a friend and Paid +- R 140 which in Canadian money would be only a mere $14 for a lunch or $7 per person------Crazee? Especially if you consider the menu.
Years ago my Uncle Robert Graham who used to live on the Bluff and who was almost blind as a result of a cataract operation where they merely removed the lenses so he had to wear thick magnifying type lenses in his glasses to be able to see but somehow he still managed to drive around the Bluff area. Anyway he was driving and demolished a photographers very expensive Camera which was standing on its stand in the parking area (that you can see in the picture above) whilst the photographer was directing the models that he was going to photograph. This led to a heated argument wherein my Uncle was quite adamant that the photographer should not leave objects standing in the middle of the road?? He definitely should not have been driving his beach buggy due to his condition!! It is not the same today as a cataract op is an everyday procedure and only takes about an hour and a day or two to recover leaving the recipient with good eyesight, mine left me with 20/20 vision except for reading when I need glasses!
The following picture was taken on a beach Safari when we were collecting specimens for the Indian University and at this stage I was fishing for the pot at Ponto Do Ouro. With me was Geraldine Smith and on this dive we were buzzed by a shark. I was amused as when swimming with her I looked back and she had her fingers in the wounds on the fish so that I had shot to stop the bleeding so the sharks would not smell it!
The picture on the left is us going out! Tony at the back decided not to go and this all happened in 1965 long before there was any development at the point. On the right is us back on the beach with a some fish.
The one on the left was a rock Salmon I shot for the pot at Kosi bay when we went on a beach Safari to collect specimens for the Indian University which at that stage was on Salisbury Island in Old Military buildings. It is now one of the campuses of the University of Kwa Zulu Natal known as UDW, and is situated in Westville. When this University was constructed at Westville striations were discovered on the rocks on the surface of the grounds relating back to the last ice age as a glacier had passed over.
And the one on the right my friend Lawrie Williams diving on North Pier.
The above were taken when Jacques Cousteau's Calypso came to Durban dry-dock around 1970's for some repairs the picture with Andre Balman showing us the Diving saucer.
The picture on the right showing the viewing port at the base of the bow.
While I used to spearfish and dive and collect fish and shells my brother Harry had built a Ski-boat and used to go fishing. Following is a bad picture of my brothers boat in the course of construction and me in my mom's garage.
Here he is with a Mussel Cracker and some Spanish Mackerel that he caught on his boat.
