The Train To Willowmore

Growing up in the Eastern Cape, Deon Strydom would board a train in the school holidays and travel to his aunt and uncle’s farm in the distant Willowmore district.

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I enjoyed my schooling in Port Elizabeth, but of course holidays were better. On the Friday at the end of each term, I’d be bundled onto the night train to Willowmore. My father would help me with my suitcase and my mother would order the conductor to keep an eye on me and to wake me up in time for my stop.

My mother had six sisters, one of whom was called Betta. She and her husband Danie lived on a farm called Krugerspoort outside Willowmore and they had no children of their own. I was three years old when I was first left in their care. I loved it on the farm and ended up staying with them as often as possible.

In 1963, when I was in Sub A, I took the next step and was allowed to travel alone on the train to Willowmore. Imagine putting a six-year-old on a night train these days – alone!

It was a steam train and it chugged away from the PE station at 8 pm. I hung out of the window and waved to my parents. This was okay because my head was turned backwards so no soot blew into my eyes. It was a different story the following morning, when I eagerly poked out my head to see if I could spot my aunt and uncle on the platform in Willowmore and ended up with a face full of soot. For this reason, my mother always tried to book me into a carriage near the back of the train, where the soot wasn’t as bad.

I did this trip many times and shared my cabin with many interesting people over the years. One time, a man and his son travelled with me. I must have been about 14; the boy was no older than 5. Next door to our cabin, a woman was travelling on her own. The man and the woman struck up a friendship and later that night he came to tell me and the little boy that she was “afraid of the dark” and that he’d “go sit with her for a while”. He asked me to keep an eye on his son.