How to make things work

Knysna can show other imploding towns and cities how to reverse that situation.

- Brendan Seery

Johannesburg, it seemed, didn’t want to let us out of its clutches, if our last night as permanent residents in the city was anything to go by.

The movers arrived at 5.30pm, more than three hours late.

So we only left our house in our little two-car convoy, just before 9pm, facing a one-hour drive to our overnight stop in Parys. It was bucketing down, the N1 highway was unlit and to add to the drama, our two dogs in the back of my car were traumatised.

It could only have gotten better after that. And it did, although leaving the City of Gold for Knysna, the City of Drought, has had some of our friends questioning our sanity.

Yet, just a few weeks in our new home have shown us that Knysna can show other imploding towns and cities how to reverse that situation.

We decided to move here so my wife could be with her family and, with most of mine having left Joburg, there wasn’t much in the way of emotional ties for me.