I Walk Beside You

Rhodesian Garratt forging full steam ahead

I Walk Beside You

In Que Que’s early days before the turn of the twentieth century, travel was by donkey cart, which took three days to cover the forty miles from Que Que to the nearest town, Gwelo.  With the advent of rail between Salisbury and Que Que in 1901 and from Bulawayo in 1902, the trip took four hours, eighteen all the way to Bulawayo.

I Walk Beside You

In the forties, the widow, Bex Baldachin who kept the books for her father’s store, Paul’s Fruitiers, used to go to the station every evening at nine with her children David, Dora (Cissy) and Paula to see the trains from Salisbury and Bulawayo pass through.  It was quite likely there would be somebody on it they knew.

In the fifties, my Dad wanted to rest every Sunday afternoon.  He gave Brian, David and me half a crown to buy sweets from sour Mr. Kluckow at Vernon’s Cafe on Main Street.  We bought Rowntree fruit gums, Wilkinson’s dolly mixture, cigarette sweets, gob stoppers, licorice shoe laces or packets of sherbet.  Then we crossed the street and cut through the shade of the park to the station to wait for the goods trains.  Once they passed, we knew it would be okay leave the shade of the station for the searing uphill slog home for hot tea.  We got a cool reception if we returned early, which didn’t happen often.

Until coal was available when the line reached Wankie from Bulawayo in 1905, the crew sometimes had to stop the train to cut down a few more trees to feed the engine.  They also sometimes stopped to shoot for the pot if they spotted game.  Mrs. Malehan, one of the first women in Que Que, recalled the train once stopped to settle an argument on the spot, before the circuit court began from 1905 (Que Que did not get an assistant magistrate until 1914). The train also stopped to pick up a milk can, a load of meilies (corn), hand over the post, or pick up Natives beside the beacon of a lone acacia tree.

One Christmas Day, the train was all decked out with tree branches from the bush.  It had hardly got up steam outside Que Que when it stopped at the Gaika Mine. The driver got out, climbed through the two strand fence and visited a friend, the newly married Dora Candy’s neighbor.

After downing a few beers, he returned to the engine cab and the train went on its way.

Thanks to Dora Dunkley (Candy), Val Barbour, Bob Atkinson and Ed Goldberg for the research materials, and http://fatfox9.wordpress.com/tag/beyer-garrett-locomotive/ for the photograph.