There was nostalgia in the air when Dr Bill Hobbs and his wife, Estelle, re-aquatinted themselves with a town they last lived in almost 60 years ago.

The couple, who now live in Durban, were given a surprise trip to Dundee by their three children to mark their 60th wedding anniversary.
Bill recalls fondly how he arrived in Dundee in January 1953 and ‘did not know a soul’. “I was about 26 years old then and had just qualified from Onderstepoort Veterinary College. My hometown is Machadadorp in the then Eastern Transvaal so I was not at all familiar with Northern Natal.”

 
“The first person I met was the pharmacist Bunny Elliott. I did not even know where I was going to stay on my first night in Dundee so I moved in the Elliott family on Bulwer Street and lived there for sometime,” Bill told the Courier.
He opened the town’s first private veterinary practice on Gladstone Street, behind, which is now the Dundee Book Exchange.
It was the Elliotts who introduced Bill to Dundee High School teacher, Estelle Saville, who was a Vryheid girl by birth. She remembers living at the old High School hostel on McKenzie Street – now the police barracks.

 
Two years later, Bill moved to the Wasbank valley to tend to the Kilty factory’s jersey herd. In 1955 the Hobbs moved to Vryheid where Bill worked for the state vet.
Later, he moved to Durban and has lived there ever since.
Estelle remembers being a bridesmaid at the wedding of Yvonne and Glyn Durham in Dundee and talked fondly of the people she remembered in the town.
While he is now 85, Bill is a picture of health and no wonder: he has 17 Comrades Marathons under his belt.
His son, Steve and daughter Judy also live in Durban while his other daughter, Megan, and her family now live in the UK.
No doubt this was a trip down memory lane for the Hobbs family!

Dr Bill Hobbs and Estelle outside what is now the Dundee Book Exchange where Bill opened the first private veterinary practice in Dundee in 1953.