A Clovelly Childhood #6

We moved to Clovelly in 1958, when I was 2, and have been eternally grateful to Dad for: 1. joining the Navy so that we had to move to Cape Town from East London and 2. choosing to live in Clovelly rather than in Navy housing. When we first arrived, there were probably 20 houses, all with large grounds, many with orchards and streams running through them, fed by the watershed on the Kalk Bay mountains which loom over Clovelly.

We lived (and still do) on the top road which winds round to the Country Club. In front of our house, over the road, is The Homestead, the original farmhouse which was established as the first house in Clovelly in the early nineteenth century, and now a heritage site. The lady who lived there in the 1950s had ducks on a duck pond (fed from an underground spring which we suspect originates in our garage, as there is a permanent flow in winter) and kept chickens. We would walk onto a precarious wooden bridge from the road and climb down the steep ladder-like steps to get down to the garden - a drop of about 2 metres - to go and buy eggs and figs which we picked from the huge old fig trees which are still in the garden today. Mom made fig preserves from the first crop, Dad's favourite with a piece of cheese after dinner. Eventually our own fig tree grew big enough and we didn't have to buy them anymore.

The little rickety bridge played a fortuitous role in yet another of my grandmother's escapades. She drove a DKW (I was always fascinated that the gear lever was on the steering column and thought it was terribly clever and modern), which she parked in the garage opposite the bridge. She sometimes didn't put the handbrake on very securely and she looked out of the window one day to see the DKW with 2 wheels in the road and the rest of it balancing on the bridge! There was much excitement as another vehicle was harnessed to her car and hauled it out of the ditch.

If this had happened today, there is no doubt that a major accident would have been caused by the cars that hurtle round the blind corner just before the spot where all the action was, as they seem oblivious to possibility that residents might be attempting to reverse out of their garages. In the sixties, we could still sit on the warm road enjoying the spectacle, with all the neighbours having an impromptu street party and having a laugh with Granny, knowing that it wouldn't be long before the car rolled out of the garage again!