AS of January 1 I am officially retired so, soon after seeing in the new year Bill, already on pension, and I realised there was nothing to stop us from following a whim and wandering north for a few days.
We climbed into our always-ready camper van and headed to Richards Bay where my elder son and his family were busy messing around with boats. With their yacht, ‘Irene’, moored at the Zululand Yacht Club in Richards Bay they spend quite a bit of time in that green and pretty city. We often follow them there and, when fair winds blow, hitch a sail with them on ‘Irene’.
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We have grown rather fond of Richards Bay, a modern city of waterways, wetlands, shady trees and green spaces built on the extensive Mhlatuze River Lagoon.
It started out life as a makeshift harbour during the Anglo-Boer War. The commodore of the Cape, Sir Frederick Richards, was responsible for this project and it is after him that the city is named.
In 1935 the Richards Bay Game Sanctuary was set up to protect the natural environment around the beautiful lagoon and this was later expanded into the Richards Bay Park.
The beginnings of the town were laid out of the shores of the lagoon way back in 1954 but the town of Richards Bay was only proclaimed in 1969.
Its first suburb was Meerensee, established in 1970. This was followed by the development of Arboretum in 1975, the same year that the town saw a massive developmental boost, the converting of its lagoon into a deep water harbour. It is now one of the biggest harbours in South Africa and is the largest coal export facility in the world.
The city, one of South Africa’s most rapidly growing urban areas, boasts many industrial ventures, including two aluminium smelters, a fertiliser plant and mining operations in the surrounding dune.
As much as it is one of South Africa’s industrial power houses, Richards Bay’s sound town planning ensures that the peaceful leafy residential suburbs and recreational areas are far removed from all the industrial hustle and bustle.
We’ve often stayed on ‘Irene’ with our family when visiting them at Richard’s Bay but this time round we left them in peace and set up temporary home in our camper in the yacht club’s shady camping area.
There was plenty of activity aboard ‘Irene’ when we arrived, with all sorts of repairs and maintenance work underway, so we took our two grandchildren for a swim at the yacht club pool then hosted a hamburger braai supper for them and their busy, boat-fixing parents.
We really are early rises – not a bad habit in Richards Bay where you need to be out and about soon after sunrise to beat the heat. We’ve done the Richards Bay parkrun before and decided to do part of the route as our daily run (in my case walk/run). It really is such a lovely route, through the area adjoining an extensive waterway – the hangout of an amazing number of yellow-billed kites and woolly-necked storks – then onto Pelican Island before following a path through a gorgeous piece of fairly pristine coastal forest.
Sadly, with the New Years’ Eve festivities having attracted huge crowds, a big clean-up operation was underway to clear the horrific amount of after-party litter polluting this green and pleasant part of town. It was a reminder of how carelessly we damage the earth with our excesses, so often not even trying to mitigate the damage we do by cleaning up after ourselves. We so need to stop littering and to stop generating unnecessary waste by recycling and reusing wherever possible.
Our family was busy that afternoon so after spending a bit of boat time with them in the morning, we retired to our camper and did some leisurely reading until it was cool enough to go for another walk. The forest area intrigued us. While we’d run along the path that morning it had been full of bird song so we grabbed our binoculars and set off on a deliberately slow stroll to explore the forest more fully.
It was well worth the effort as we spent a leisurely hour or so doing some successful and enjoyable birding and tree hugging.
Then it was time to return to camp to while away the evening watching a potjie simmer. After all the exercise we were more than ready for supper with our family by the time the potjie was ready.
By the next day most of the boat maintenance was completed and the weather was perfect for a gentle sail so we spent all day with our family aboard Irene, sailing the wide blue ocean – well a little corner of it. What a memorable day it was.
Richards Bay is wonderfully situated for nature lovers who have so many wild places, including Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Game Reserve and the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, right on their doorstep.
We planned to leave our family in peace next day to do a day trip to one of these nearby magic places, iSimangaliso’s Eastern Shores area and Cape Vidal. But more about that next week.
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