My early life…
Growing up in Welkom was a breeze. I had the advantage of having good parents who loved each other and their three children.
Welkom, a small mining town in the Free State, had the distinction of being the only city in South Africa where the traffic flow was controlled by a number of very large circles and had no robots. Accidents seldom happened there, but when they did it was because some visitor did not understand that right of way was always given to whoever was in the circle first.
Another interesting fact about Welkom was that, during the weekend, the Olympic sized swimming pool was only opened after the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Church came out each Sunday. And if this was not enough to ensure one’s path to Greater Things, it was a sin to wear a costume that showed one’s belly button, and the distance between sunbathers was measured by the length of a normal school ruler.
Sea gulls also seemed to like living in Welkom. These birds, found 375 km’s from the nearest ocean, were apparently brought into Welkom by some of the first miners. The water pumped up from underground formed salt pans, and this made the sea gulls feel right at home.
Surprisingly enough, flamingo, with their beautiful pink under wings were also found around these pans and the largest pan of all was called the “Flamingo Park Yacht Club” where the sea scouts would meet each week.
A Sunday pastime was to spend the afternoon riding around the largest circle, known as the “Horse Shoe” and stopping off at the ice cream shop to buy a soft serve cone with a Flakey in the middle and then, after eating it, watch one of the restaurant owners feed the Sea gulls with scraps brought out in a bucket.
Various young men raced their suped up Cortina’s round and round the horse shoe – bright fluff covering their dashboards and oranges firmly planted on their aerials. I recall that most of the cars had “GT stickers” on them and we laughingly called them “Ge-tuned” cars.
Being a gold mining town the earth below Welkom was criss-crossed with stopes, shafts and tunnels. As one area was mined, raped and abandoned, the shoring of the walls would become unstable and the weight and movement from both above and below the level would cause cave ins.
These tremors that originated miles below the surface caused earth tremors to take place above ground. They took place almost daily.
It was not unusual to wake up in the middle of the night with all the china plates on the racks rattling and shaking. At times it was so severe that ornaments would actually be dashed to the floor.
The houses bore testimony to this phenomenon. Lying in my bath I was able to look through a crack in the wall that was wide enough to see through to the outside. We would stuff the crack with paper.
Each apple that was bought from the local market in those days, was delicately wrapped in a fine tissue paper that was ideal for the job of stuffing cracks.
(Those that were not used for stuffing cracks made excellent toilet paper – a saving when there were seven people in the house.)
On 8 December 1976 the most severe earth tremor took place to date. It measured 5.5 on the Richter scale and caused a block of flats to concertina in such a way that the entire building ended up supported like a pile of playing cards on top of the underground garage section. Fortunately no injuries occurred at the time.
