I learnt with sadness of the passing of an old and longstanding school House buddy on 4 August.
Rob (Oupa) and I walked up the School House stairs as new boys in 1955 and were in the Latin class until end of Form II when I gave up the Latin story because it had the better of me.
An incident I do remember very clearly, was that at one stage we decided thatwe would rig up a zip line from one of the big gum trees in the koppie, justbehind Mr Abernethy’s tennis court. So we stole some 10 gauge wire andtied it high up in the tree, and stretched it out to another tree some distanceaway to which we secured the other end. Oupa decided that he would take firstride and so he climbed up the tree and grabbed hold of the pipe that was thesliding mechanism, and then let rip. But when the time came to let go of thepipe and hit the brakes, he went into a tailspin and slammed into the tree atthe bottom. We all rushed to his assistance and when we got to him, we foundthat he was unconscious but at least breathing. Someone rushed back the SchoolHouse and fetched a blanket into which we loaded poor Rob and made an improvisedstretcher in which to carry him back to matron. On arrival back at matron’s office of course nobody knew what had happened except to say that he had fallen off a rock on the koppie. An ambo was summoned and he was rushed to the Andrew McCollum Hospital down the road, from wherehe made a full recovery.
Kind regards,
Allan Stilwell