IT’S not often that you meet someone who is sitting on a gold mine. The precious commodity in this case is in the figurative sense, not the literal one. It’s a quiet day at the Northglen News offices (a rare occasion I assure you) when a call comes in from an octogenarian who says she has rare photos of Durban from 1903, ‘Would we be interested was the question?’ The answer was a resounding yes.

The winter sun is low as I drive down a narrow driveway, the wind bringing an easterly chill. Lesley Collins (84) sits in the courtyard of her retirement home, her face wrapped in concentration listening to her friends talking around her.

I introduce myself and she asks where my peculiar accent is from, I respond saying I’m Irish. ‘Well laddie I’m a Collins’ (like the revolutionary Irish leader Michael Collins) she says conspiratorially with a wink. I can see we’re going to get on famously.
She begins with her life history, then her family, and then her love for sport.

She explains the photos were taken by her great grandmother and were passed on to her grandmother, who in turn passed it on to Lesley’s mother, before the gems were handed to her.

Lesley was born and raised in the town of Ladysmith in 1930. “I was a real tomboy growing up so much so my mother would dress me in khaki shorts. My brother and I knew every nook and cranny in the hills surrounding our home. We spent our days living carefree, swimming in the river, cycling around town. It was a most wonderful childhood.”

She only moved to Durban in 1956 and used to love visiting her grandparents in uMhlanga.

“During the school holidays we would visit them. They had a huge property. Their house was surrounded by sugar cane fields and the wildlife was just magnificent.

“Bush pigs, nagapies, and black mambas roamed freely. There was a solitary shop at the top of the hill and we were told not to walk through the cane fields to get there, naturally we did what all children would do and walked through it anyway,” she said with reminiscent joviality.

Before we get onto the subject of the photos, Lesley explains her love for sport.

“I’m slowly losing my eyesight and whenever there’s rugby, I listen to the match commentary and yes I’m a Bok supporter.”
Lesley then delicately takes out 15 sepia toned photos from a brown envelope.

Looking at the historical photographs feeds her nostalgia and my wonder.

Durban was a much different place to the one I’d grown up in. A photo of West Street looks like it belongs in a mid-western American town. The City Hall still has its recognisable façade, the large clock is still a fixture. Durban’s harbour is barely recognisable.

The 84-year-old seems pleased at my amazement and strangely happy in sharing something nostalgic with a complete stranger. The interview ended an hour ago and we talk about family and the future of South Africa. She succinctly sums up her patriotism for South Africa.

“I’ll never leave this beautiful country, not even if you paid me a million rand.” ‘You know Lesley I couldn’t agree more was my reply’.