Journey to Onrust

“I’d love to go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky, I left my vest and socks there, I wonder if they dry.”

Anyone who grew up in the 1950s will remember that cheeky music hall parody of John Masefield’s famous poem, Sea Fever, and in our household, it was practically the official anthem for the first day of the year. For us, the regular rhythm of life didn't reset on New Year’s Eve; it truly began on the morning of the first of January. That was the day my father, Solly, started his annual three weeks of hard-earned leave from the Western Furniture store in Worcester. It signaled the start of our great summer migration, a sacred family ritual that turned its back on the stifling inland heat and pointed our heavily laden Anglia firmly toward the coast.

By the time we were ready to leave, Worcester in January was already baking, and the cicada beetles were filling the heavy air with their relentless, buzzing summer soundtrack. Packing the car was an intricate engineering feat performed by my father. Everything required for three weeks of bliss had to be expertly arranged: beach bats, swimming gear, a Li-Lo, and stacks of comics. I remember proudly clutching my latest prize, an Enid Blyton Five Find-Outers and Dog mystery, ready to read about Fatty Trotteville and his friends the moment we hit the road. Once the roof rack was fully piled with suitcases and secured under a stripped canvas covering, my mother, my brother David, and our loyal dog, Stompie, would pile inside. With a final check of the ties, we set off down Somerset Street, rolling past the grim walls of the old Worcester Gaol and the green expanses of the golf course.

The journey to Onrust—as it was always spelled back then, with that firm, old-fashioned 't' at the end—was roughly seventy-two miles long, a distance that stretched out over two slow, glorious hours. We passed the aerodrome, crossed the long bridge over the Breede River, and shook off the dust of the town. Soon we were whizzing past the Brandvlei Dam, right near the hot springs that gave the area its name. It was here that we hit an old-fashioned section of the road consisting of two parallel strips of concrete with a thick ridge of grass growing merrily between them. To any South African child of that era, this was the classic, unmistakable "middlemannetjie," and the steady, rhythmic sound of the tires on those concrete strips was the true soundtrack of a holiday getting underway.

Heading toward Villiersdorp, the little Anglia had to tackle a long, steep climb to get over the pass. Once we crested the hill and began our descent, we cruised gently through the dorp. There was an amazing corner cafe there that always caught my eye. We never actually stopped there—my father was a man on a mission to reach the sea—but the image of that building, with its distinct advertising signs and vernacular architecture, stayed with me for decades. I often think it planted a seed that heavily influenced the subject matter I would find myself drawn to long after those childhood holidays had passed.

Just past Villiersdorp, the comforting hum of the tar road abruptly came to an end. We hit the dreaded gravel section, which in the dry, baked landscape of January was a formidable adversary. The road surface was a washboard of corrugations and sudden speed bumps. If you were unfortunate enough to end up behind another vehicle, overtaking was completely impossible; the car ahead would throw up a massive, blinding plume of white dust that forced you to drop far back to avoid a flying stone shattering your windscreen. We sat in the back, hot and sticky, watching the yellow patterns and geometric lines of the dry wheat fields slide past the windows, waiting for the landscape to change.

The true turning point of the journey occurred as we approached the crest of a high hill near Caledon, at a celebrated vantage point known to us  as ‘Hawston View’. The atmosphere inside the car would instantly shift from drowsy lethargy to high alert. Every neck in the vehicle would crane forward, eyes straining through the dusty glass. Inevitably, a joyful shout would erupt from whoever first spotted that thin, alluring strip of deep blue cutting across the horizon: “I can see the sea!”. With that cry, the dust and the heat of the gravel road were instantly forgotten; we knew the tar road was coming up and the coast was within our grasp.

Cruising past Bot River, the holiday traffic would slow down to a crawl as we merged with the dense stream of travelers heading out from Cape Town toward Hermanus. The cars of the 1950s were big, heavy, and slow, and because the coastal roads were narrow and winding, trying to pass anyone was a highly hazardous affair. We crept along patiently until we crossed the old steel bridge over the Bot River. That bridge was our gateway. Once across, we knew the final stretch was clicking into place. We ticked off the milestones like old friends: the stretch until we passed Afdak, then the small settlement of Hawston.

Vermont in those days was a completely underdeveloped wilderness of coastal fynbos. The very last outpost of civilization there was Mrs. Goodall’s house, standing lonely against the brush. As we neared our destination along the main road, we would peer out to spot my uncle Theo’s smallholding, a wonderful piece of land fondly named ‘Chick-a-dee,’ followed shortly by Knight’s Dairy. Then, just before the old Onrus garage, my father would signal with his arm out the window and turn right, heading down toward the campsite and the sea. This intersection was the undisputed heart of Onrus.  On our left stood the local butcher shop, and on our right was Mrs. Henn’s general store.   Along the road we passed ‘Glenugie’—a fascinating wooden house built entirely from timber salvaged from the old Strand pavilion.

We rattled past the tiny post office, which sat right next door to the Onrus Hotel, then capably managed by Mr. Fig. From this point onward, the coastal road became incredibly rough and unmade, bordered by empty plots choked with dense, green tangles of the dreaded, invasive ‘Rooikrans’. Finally, as the Anglia rounded the final bend  and passing the Sagovs’ place, the coastal landscape opened up before us. There, standing proudly in the distance overlooking the lagoon, was ‘Rocky Ridge’. My grandfather had built the holiday house during the war, and it had stood as our family’s summer sanctuary until 1966. The anticipation inside the car reached an absolute fever pitch. My father parked the Anglia precisely where the ice cream vendor’s stand is situated today, and we all excitedly tumbled out onto the grass before the engine had even finished idling.

The scent of the sea was thick, salty, and wonderfully intense.  My father would step out of the driver's seat, look out across the shifting waters of the lagoon to Sandbaai and the open sea beyond, stretch his arms out as wide as they could go, take a deep breath of the coastal air, and exclaim with absolute delight: “Smell the ozone!”. The holiday had officially begun.