Going on holiday was always very exciting, simply because financial constraints dictated that we went away very infrequently. One particular holiday to Cape Town stands out vividly in my memory for a variety of reasons.
My father decided that we would travel straight through to Cape Town, without a over night stop, and this meant that we would have to leave extremely early in the morning. I can remember hearing the hissing of the paraffin lamp as my father walked down the passage to our room. It was three o'clock in the morning! We had hardly been able to get to sleep at all with the anticipation of the planned journey, but now we were definitely wide awake.
Shivering, partly from excitement and partly the early morning chill, we piled into the maroon car, our breakfast securely positioned in a square tin on the shelf behind us. Snuggled up together under a blanket, we settled down at the back of the car to complete our interrupted sleep, while my father expertly negotiated the hundred or so kilometres of dirt road which led to the tarred National road.
The journey was very long and very boring. There was hardly a car on the road, so one couldn't count cars to while away the time and there were just so many telephone poles one could count before succumbing to car sickness. Being the height of Summer, it was also extremely hot, especially driving through the Karoo. We really didn't know what to do with ourselves in this steaming hot car. I can remember my middle sister and I stripping down to our knickers and pouring water all over our bodies from the canvas water bag, which usually hung outside at the front of the car. My mother developed a massive headache from the heat and ended up draping a wet towel around her head and neck. My father, much to his credit kept on going, with only a few short spells of terrible driving from my mother to relieve him. He almost single-handedly drove the sixteen hundred kilometres from our farm to Cape Town, finally reaching our destination at nine thirty that night. What a trip!!
On our return journey two weeks later, it was decided that we would leave in the afternoon so that when my father had had enough driving, we could stop somewhere at the side of the road, to enable him to get a few hours sleep. At about eleven that night, we pulled off the road so my father could assemble the stretcher bed under a tree. My big sister slept in the front with her head on my mother's shoulder and my middle sister and I lay on the back seat, mostly squabbling. I must have been very annoying because she grabbed my foot and bit my little toe. In retaliation I smacked her and she stormed out of the car with her blanket and lay in the middle of the National road. My mother screamed which woke up my father, who angrily packed up his bed and got back into the car. It was many hours before we had the courage to speak again.
The rest of the journey was uneventful, apart from the fact that for about four hundred kilometres, we alternately played follow the leader with a hearse. Needless to say, there wasn't too much talking at this juncture either.
