When the Journey's Over
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WHEN THE JOURNEY’S OVER An incorrigible old wanderer’s memories of travel in the Cape and far beyond the Cape; life in cities and solitudes; rare, strange and curious experiences. BY LAWRENCE G. GREEN Clay lies still, but blood’s a rover.; Breath’s a ware that will not keep. Up, lad; when the journey’s over There’ll be time enough for sleep. A. E. HOUSMAN HOWARD TIMMINS CAPE TOWN 1972 CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Foreword 1. Gates to the Glorious "Touleier" with span of oxen 2. On the Branch Lines North-West Cape scene 3. Journey into the Past Klaas Muller of Klipfontein 4. Mushroom Travellers Table loaded with dishes S. The Wagon Life Langebaan Lagoon with Frank Wightman 6. Frontier Country Old Table Bay waterfront 7. What Lies Beyond 8. A Mysterious Traveller 9. Loud Runs the Roaring Tide 10. Pilots of the Purple Twilight 11. A Thousand Precious Thoughts 12. Adventures in Eating 13. Meals at Sea 14. Third Time in Hamburg 15. Diamond Harbour 16. Return to the Ramblas 17. Six Days in Trieste 18. Lagoon 19. Table Bay Index FOREWORD This is the last book by Lawrence Green ... surely an author whose name will live long after most are forgotten, because he had the ability to present historical fact and describe unusual characters in a way that appealed to the ordinary man. He obtained a great amount of his material from the British Museum, usually going overseas once a year and spending weeks going through unknown books and old documents to present in his inimitable fashion the stories that have delighted so many thousands of readers. Laurie, unlike most people, shunned publicity. He was a shy, retiring man but would go out of his way to help aspiring authors. He has helped many of them without expecting a reward. I have lost an author but far more important, a friend. I don’t think we will ever know a second Lawrence Green ... a man who restored one’s faith in human nature. Howard Timmins. C HAPTER O NE G ATES T O T HE G LORIOUS CHAPTER 1 great mountain passes, the fruit and grapes and GATES TO THE GLORIOUS then at last the white dunes and the salt tang of the ocean. Yes, it was over, the long ribbon of Railway termini are our gates platform was beside us and the Kimberley train to the glorious and the unknown. had come to rest. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, When they tore down the old Cape Town alas! we return. station they destroyed the scene of my fond E. M. FORSTER early memories and also one of my gateways to experience and adventure throughout most Past red and green lamps and the glow of signal of my life. I am haunted by wistful memories cabins, past the dark Castle walls our brown tram of that great hall of iron and glass, the sights clicked and jolted at six o’clock on a winter and the sounds. Steam gave the old Cape Town morning early this century. Slowly we came station its greatest music. You could sense along the wet rails to the end of the Kimberley Dvorak in the departure of an express train for run. An imaginative child never forgets a railway the north; the hissing and clanking of coup- journey. I stared at the people under the lights on lings and buffers; the rhythm of the wheels and the Cape Town platform but I was still thinking shrilling of the whistle. Locomotives have of the six hundred and fifty miles of track that numbers nowadays and many are electric, but lay behind us out there in the darkness. this station saw the first steam engines with Six hundred and fifty miles ... the blue ground names: Argus and Fire Horse and Sir George and the pepper trees of Kimberley; the scrub- Grey. Steam power plays a great part in the covered battlefields where I had seen empty railway scene in South Africa for there are still cartridge-cases still lying under the sun; volcanic eighty types of steam locomotives at work. koppies and the high bridge over the Orange; Only a few years ago I saw a locomotive built windmills of De Aar and the ageless Karoo; in 1896 in use as a shunting engine at Table Bay Docks. This was the engine selected not mezzo-soprano of a Pacific, the moan of a long ago to haul a train composed of side-door Grand Mogul; the shrieks of tank locos. On a coaches (built in the eighteen-eighties) from branch line farmers recognise the call of the Cape Town to Fransch Hoek. It was run 19D, one of the finest locomotives ever specially for two hundred railway enthusiasts, designed; a 19D coming round a curve on a the first vintage train journey ever organised fine evening with its line of freight cars. But it by the South African Railways. Every coach is at night that the romance of the iron road was polished like a royal carriage. Special becomes as powerful as the steamy breath of a menus were printed for the dining-car, the great engine. Then the old train is transformed, veteran 1924 Wembley exhibition diner. then it has a thundering beauty of its own. No Special tickets were issued as souvenirs. wonder the drivers say that an engine is a Interested crowds met the train at every stop. living thing. It comes up from the silence of All felt a deep pleasure that is hard to analyse. the veld horizon, snorting at times like a horse, the note of the whistle deepening with the Steam dies hard. Diesels are replacing steam approach, fire-box flaring and casting its light engines in South Africa; no more "iron horses" over the train, brighter than all the lighted are being ordered and by the year two thousand windows. The traveller sits rigid in his motor- the last locomotive furnace will have thrown car at a crossing, thrilling to the fortissimo of its red glare over the veld. Make the most of the passing drama. Only when the tail-light has these last three decades! It is the whistle, I vanished can he drive on along his own road. think, that holds much of the nostalgic appeal of the steam-driven train. Your railway Once an engine driver told me that he felt aficionado hears Sibelius in the note of a lonely on the track. He could have talked to his Pacific engine racing across the Karoo. He fireman but I gathered that drivers and firemen knows all those locomotive whistles, some do not talk much unless something unusual mellow, others sounding like lost souls; the occurs. It is noisy on the footplate; too noisy for chatter. Better to stare ahead at the signal to music (and returning always to Rietfontein) lights with a glance at the water gauge, the then you hold the secret of the magic to be found pressure gauge; with other senses keyed up and in a timetable. Read the timetable and you are on ready to detect a hot bearing or the failure of a the move. You are safe in your coupé, free from moving part. The driver becomes one with his the interruptions of the city. Once the ticket- great machine. He has covered his line so often examiner has called, and the friendly chief that he knows every section by its own sounds; steward with his promise of an appetising menu, he knows it in clear weather and in the fog that no one will invade your privacy. You can read, he dreads. He knows when to shut off steam, sleep or meditate as comfortably as though you when to apply his brakes; but this is experience were at sea. But here the country-side flows past and he cannot tell you how he does it. Down your windows. Stations may be indistinguishable the years he sets the time of day for people on blurs; or you may read a name here and there in remote farms as he sounds his whistle at the flowers grown by some devoted railway crossings. That is the call of steam, the railway gardener. The timetable shows the halts where, call, the familiar train whistle in the darkness in the official phrase, "there are no resident staff of the night. To my mind there is only one on duty". These names are in italics and comparison, the deep note of a ship’s siren as travellers must signal to the driver if they want she clears for open sea. the train to stop. I realise with a shock that I have never stopped a train in my life. Will the chance I paid thirty cents some time ago for the S.A.R. occur? timetable. Just names and figures, most of it, but the book inspired such a panorama that the pages Though I have planned more than thirty books in might have been filled with pictures. I my time I could never compile a railway remembered some of the names with a shudder; timetable. Those wizards must understand the others were like a song. If you heard Robert needs of fishermen and factory girls, business Kirby’s stream of South African place names set men and women shoppers, school children and mail boat passengers bound for the Rand. These that always reminds me of an anonymous verse I are dramatic calculations. I picture them with noted long ago: graphs and computers.