Port Alfred - Page 23

December 2004 Where the Kowie meets the sea

There's a photograph in the pub of the Port Alfred Skiboat Club of a man kissing another on his bare butt while their mates watch, appreciatively. It's odd, of course, but as most stories in the Eastern Cape are either tragic or hilarious, it was worth my question. Why?

The date of the event, it seems, was 1987 and the butt belonged to the town's mayor at the time, Mike Neave. The kisser was no less than the River and Skiboat Club's commodore, Brian Shelver. This was clearly a high-level affair.

They were all fishing along Cape Padrone, a desolate place backed by a huge dunefield, so the story goes. It's damnably difficult terrain, even for a 4x4. Time to go (and possibly quite a few beers later) and a dispute arose between Mike and Brian about the best way out.

Mike said he knew the route, Brian said he must be off his rocker, and backed it with a comment: "If we get out that way I'll kiss your arse on the town hall steps."
They did get out. But Mike wasn't about to let him off the promise. And someone had a camera.

Boets and swaers
This may seem an odd way to introduce Port Alfred, but it's not inappropriate. The place may look a bit like a town on the French Riviera but - apart from the rich Gautengers who build large houses on the marina - it's a boet and swaer sort of place where people tell really funny stories. Actually, by city standards, they do odd things as well.

Take farmer Dax Wilmot. When he retired to the marina he evidently couldn't bear to be parted with his tractor. So he built it into a kind of pontoon contraption, replaced the drive wheels with paddles and he now ploughs furrows in the canals. As an aside, it's worth mentioning that Dax has already dug his grave, lined it with bricks and filled it in with soft sand "so it will be easy to dig out when the time comes - I don't want to be a bother." His wife is already there, but under a small rock because she was cremated.

Bev Young - who rides a large Harley Davidson, has a huge and incorporative laugh and runs the tourism office - is another matter. She doesn't mind bothering people. She scandalised the town by painting her offices bright orange. She and some friends hired the disused railway line between Port Alfred and Grahamstown. Then they bought some undercarriages, welded three bus bodies onto them and conjured up a diesel loco. The zebra stripes, she claims, were the result of the hot sun and Jack Daniels.

They made a lot of money for the town by carting tourists. Then when the loco died one day its engine was hauled out and the driver tried to ease what was left back down to the station. The brakes failed, the train shot through the station touching maybe 100 kilometres an hour and upended itself in a field beside the N2. Bev sulked for three weeks.

Ron Sutton clears alien vegetation. Actually that's a whopping understatement. Over the years he and one helper have cleared the entire region of rooikrans almost single handed. It doesn't make him rich; he's taken a vow of poverty.

Once returning by car from the West Coast he got out at Darling and walked back to Port Alfred. "It was interesting," he confessed, "especially at night." When he looks at you with his deep blue eyes it's like having a mind scan. If he were Catholic he'd probably eventually be canonised - or maybe martyred.

Church hall soirees
Tiny Steenkamp isn't tiny, he's huge, with a vast beard, Stetson hat and a voice that shakes windows. When he stands up you hope he'll soon sit down again so you don't have to crane your neck. Among many other things, he's a professional singer who gives soirees in the Anglican Church Hall. Tiny's played London's West End, been on BBC and performed on stage, in film and on telly for years. A whale in a small bowl, you might say.

There's nothing particularly odd about Justin de Wet Steyn, unless being enigmatic and extremely wealthy in a small town is unusual. There is about him something of the Lord of the Manor of old, warmly welcoming bypassers in his beautiful house on the marina and working for the good of his villagers. The marina is his creation, as is Sunshine Coast Beach Hikes. He also had a hand in building Canal Walk and the Little Walmer golf estate in Port Elizabeth. Oh, and Kentucky Fried Chicken nationwide. You get the picture? His partner, Annmarie Opperman, plays demon tennis and has been spotted limbering up by having balls tossed to her by a white-gloved butler.

Then there's Keryn van der Walt, who was a fishing boat-captain for two years, runs a dive school and is commodore of the local National Sea Rescue Institute (the only woman commodore in Southern Africa). I asked how she won the respect of an all-male crew. "A smart smack with a barble stick seemed to do the trick," she responded. When the sea's dangerous, the men stand back and let her pilot the rescue boat out the mouth of the Kowie.

If, in reading this, you can't see the place for the people, it's because Port Alfred is like that. They're the sort who don't give a damn if you have the latest BMW 4x4, a silver SLK or gold chains in various places. Just tell a story at the Skiboat Club that has the lads guffawing the heads off their beers, however, and you're in.
It makes Port Alfred ... agreeably comfortable. Just don't, dear god, mention the beach-driving ban.

For mountains of information on almost anything, call Tourism Port Alfred on tel 046-624-1235,
e-mail tourism@ndlambe.co.za or http://www.port-alfred.co.za .

                                        Back to Index                        martin@martins.co.za