Harrismith to Johannesburg, S. Africa 14 - 15 Mar 08

Diary of Eustace St. Clair Hill

Our guard at Harrismith with the toothy smile teased us that our plane had disappeared, but quickly put us right that, due to the wind and rain, he had decided to push it into a hangar. It is just as well that Lanseria has an instrument approach, as weather along the whole route was IFR (1:39). We were put on hold for 15 minutes due to traffic. It was the largest and busiest airport we had visited since Luanda (Angola).
Our main reason for stopping at Jo’burg was to visit St John's College where we spent several hours with the librarian studying Eustace St Clair Hill's Boer war diary and other letters related to him. Eustace was the headmaster there 1922-30. He was a brother to Angela's great-grandfather James Pennell Hill who married her South African great-grandmother Ina Florence Currie. He did not approve of contraception, and converted to Catholicism in 1938 becoming a monk in 1939. Angela’s mother Pam has four children, and he used to award her with 5 pounds every time a child was born.

15 March 2008. Another rainy day but we had planned, anyway, to do Internet duties at our hotel (the Quatermain) where we had a WiFi connection from our room. We had chosen the Quatermain for its proximity to Lanseria and St John’s College, easy Internet access and, last but not least, a good in-house restaurant. We had lunch there with bush-pilot Brigitte Cross who had been kind enough to help us with our Okavango Delta bookings on our way to South Africa. Brigitte gave valuable advice on how to proceed IFR/VFR to Djuma (IFR approach into either Hoedspruit or Skukuza) the following day as the weather was forecast to be IFR along most of the route. Later we dined there with Dave and Lesley Tweedley who flew a Beech Baron from the U.S. to South Africa last year.
Unfortunately, the opticians in Grahamstown didn’t send Angela’s glasses by special courier service as she’d requested and the glasses didn’t arrive in time. She left instructions for the hotel to forward them to Reunion where we’ll be staying in April. The president of the Aéroclub in St Pierre kindly provided us with an address to which we could have mail forwarded, such as the aeronautical charts for the Middle East.

Thanks to:

Jenni Milward (librarian at St John’s College), Brigitte Cross,

Dave and Lesley Tweedley