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Train may not be the most upmarket way to travel – unless you go by South Africa’s famous Blue Train or one of the boutique steam train services – but you sure get closer to the continent and its landscape travelling that way.  I’m glad we did that trip, although my memories of it are definitely influenced by the state my health was in.

Even the harbour of Cape Town with its beautiful views of Table Mountain couldn’t restore to me the full excitement of travelling – I felt too rotten.  My mom and I sat in the lobby of a hotel somewhere in Adderley Street while my dad did some shopping – and that was as much as I saw of Cape Town.

I was having trouble keeping down food.  People on the train got used to the sight of me careering down the passageway from the dining-car to the toilet after meals. They got out of my way real quick. Aside from that, I think I gradually began to feel a bit better, and I know I took photos of the Africans who seemed to materialise from nowhere whenever the train stopped, carrying wooden carvings and other artwork for sale.

The great plains of Africa, dotted with mopani trees that paraded past the windows seemingly interminably made a huge impression on me.  I had never seen so much wide open space in my life before and it was that impact of the vastness and space of the veldt that stayed with me inwardly, so that when I was finally introduced to the outdoors of New Zealand, it was the wide open spaces that got closest to my heart.

There were no overnight stops in South Africa.  We were in a tourist class coach and our cabin had 4 bunks, with the top 2 folding away to give seating room during the day.  The slow, rhythmic “click-clack, click-clack” of the swaying train as it ate up the miles of this epic journey was actually soothing by day and quite restful at night.

Our last night on the train started off in Bulawayo.  I can’t remember if we stayed on the same train for the final leg to Salisbury, or whether we changed trains.  Something far more important happened. Sitting in the dining-car in Bulawayo station before the train resumed our journey, I felt hungrier than I had for days.  I tucked into a plateful of tomato sandwiches, and can still remember my mom warning me not to eat too many.  I did of course - AND they stayed down!

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Our first stop was Madeira. We were already rejoicing in the warmth and sunshine. As we continued southwards,  the African continent appeared on the port side, with its long, featureless flat coastline fringed for mile after mile with vegetation – it looked hot.  Small boats came out to meet us, with young boys diving for coins in the clear, turquoise waters. It was like a dream.

It turned out to be an ill-fated trip, though. The same flu that I’d had earlier was circulating on board and we’d taken on bad water at Madeira. Dysentery struck the ship. Once we crossed the line barely a quarter of the passengers made it to meals at any given time. I succumbed – flu for the second time in a month and dysentery as well. I was running both ends at once and the ship’s doctor doubted I’d be well enough to get off the ship at Cape Town.

Our train journey from Cape Town into the interior of the mighty continent was already booked.  We had no option.  So the doctor by his own admission threw the book of antibiotics at me.

It was a very groggy girl who disembarked to a new future at Cape Town, and the extent of that new future didn’t become apparent for a year or two. I won’t go into details – suffice to say that for 20 years the medical profession had no answer to my digestive problems and weariness.  It was all in my head, they said.  I carried on with my life as best I could, watching very carefully what I ate, and was finally diagnosed with systemic candida from that massive dose of antibiotics.  I’m actually still dealing with it.

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Right in the middle of it all I came down with a bad bout of flu. My clearest memory is of lying in my parents’ bed in the big front bedroom of the Desswood Place flat while they packed up stuff around me, ready to leave.

My schoolmates were sceptical, having heard me talk about Canada, but they soon came to realise that this was for real. As for me, I was too excited to think about missing Aberdeen – though I look back on it fondly now.  The prospect of journeying to an exotic continent like Africa was exhilarating.

A few days before we left, my parents’ application for permission to build the house they had planned earlier came up for hearing before the Council.  Aberdeen is very fussy about granting planning permissions – the Granite City has strict rules about building materials to start with. After the hearing was over, the tribunal did in fact grant planning permission and then my father had to tell them we were leaving the country.  One of the planners commented what a pity that was because we had such a very nice set of plans.  Typically, my father dropped the plans on his desk and shook him by the hand.  I imagine that house got built – I just wish I could remember where the piece of land was!

The blur of activity finally focussed itself.  On a late October evening we boarded the famous Flying Scotsman at Aberdeen station, surrounded by friends and my father’s colleagues – and there was a surprise – a lone piper in full kit who as the train prepared to pull away, played “Ye’re No Awa’ Tae Bide Awa’” – you may be going but you’re not going to stay away. What a moment of mixed emotions!

As it happened, we did stay away.  But that doesn’t stop me having a high priority to return for a visit. 

The first time I found the Aberdeen City Council’s Webcams – it was around Christmas a few years ago – I spent some days with them permanently open on my desktop, just alternating between the Castlegate and Union Street views. Thank you, Aberdeen City.  Your town gave me my best childhood memories, an education second to none at Harlaw Academy, and a wonderful appreciation of all things Scottish.

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My parents were even planning to buy or build our own home, preferably somewhere along the Old Deeside Road that we’d come to love, and I can still remember a variety of locations we looked at with the land agents: a lovely old high-walled garden, a disused stable complex, a new subdivision. I think that was at Murtle, but there was trouble with the laird over putting in a water supply.

My schooling was well settled and for the first time in my life I had one or two really close school friends.  My best friend, a doctor’s daughter, lived on the corner of Baillieswells Road, Bieldside not far back along the Old Deeside Road.  In winter we used to sledge down a narrow path to the bottom of their steep garden.  I can tell from Google maps that it’s all still there…..

I was still pursuing art, if only on the sidelines, and it was about this time that I entered a small marquetry plaque in the Aberdeen Marquetry Club’s first annual exhibition held in the foyer of the Odeon cinema in Justice Mill Lane.  It was exciting because I gained a mention, along with a couple of other top exhibits, in “The Press and Journal” newspaper. The plaque depicted a Common Snipe (Gallinago gallinago) coming in to land, inspired by a painting on the cover of a Scottish Field Magazine. It was a detailed work, every piece of veneer carefully chosen for its color and markings, and I still have it.  I had done one marquetry piece previous to this – a store-bought kitset scene.  Though the work was all mine, I know the success of this do-it-fom-scratch job owed a lot to my dad’s insistence that I select my veneers carefully.

But there were winds of change blowing in the British Army, and they began to rattle the tent flaps of our comfort zone. Word had it that men with long service would be the first to feel the axe. My father had served the Army for 24 years. So there we were – looking to settle but living in uncertainty.

In the midst of all this, for some reason that I can no longer remember, the Army moved us again – back into Aberdeen. We moved into an upstairs apartment of a terrace house in Desswood Place not far from my school, but we expected that this would be only temporary accommodation.

My parents were also looking into the possibility of emigrating to Canada. My dad knew that scope for employment for ex-servicemen in the UK was limited.  The idea of getting away to a country with more freedom to prove oneself on merit appealed to him.  Then one of the officers from the University Training Corps resigned and went to take up a post in Zimbabwe – Southern Rhodesia as it was then. Before long, he wrote to my father saying he had a job for him if he wanted to come.

We were emigrating to Africa!

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