Guy Rogers reviews "Toasted Marshmallows & Obies – Lower Albany Fireside Stories" by Bartle Logie
What’s the link between Woodridge College and honeymoons, the Blaauwkrantz Bridge Disaster and The Kowie’s status as a tranquil little holiday resort, the olive woodpecker and the wild sage tree?
Well, according to Logie’s fascinating book, Woodridge started as a country hotel called Cadles founded in 1862 by Henry Cadle. It became so popular at one point, especially with honeymooners, it became known as “Cuddles”.
The property changed hands a couple of times before, in 1936, it was transformed into Woodridge Preparatory School by Leslie and Mervynne Carter. But apparently the old hotel building -- with the names of some of those long ago love-besotted guests still visible scratched on panes of glass – continues to exist.
Logie, who once taught at Woodridge, has a knack for digging up these stories and relating them, as the title of the book suggests, in an easy informal style, laced with a generous dollop of humour and enriched by multiple tributary tales, as if he is sitting around a camp fire.
The stories are presented in short chapters that together shine a warm yellow light on the Lower Albany, past and present.
This is an area, he explains, that has less to do with geographical boundaries than with its inhabitants: an eclectic mix of plants and animals and multi-hued human communities, not least English settler stock who speak very s-l-o-w-l-y. It’s a place of milkwoods and churches, love, war and country cricket.
A mass murderer, an early resident of Seven Fountains, makes an appearance, as well as King George VI and King Solomon, tractor driver to Gert van Wyk of Lemoenhoek, who has the last word in the hilarious tale of how the volkies upstaged the dignitaries and possibly changed the course of South African history.
The history in Toasted Marshmallows is offset by colourful anecdotes of the author’s time spent working in the theatre world in London and, more recently, by encounters on the road during his expeditions with his wife Caryl.
Intertwined is a collection of interesting animal anecdotes with Logie’s naturalist’s eye bringing us startling sightings (like the one of the zebra that bagged a poacher with a couple of lightening kicks to the head), interesting connections (as between the distribution of the olive woodpecker and the wild sage tree) and often telling insights.
Considering SouthAfrica’s socio-economic hardships and political challenges despite the dawn of democracy, against the overarching threat of climate change, he looks back at the record of Dutch settler Jan Danckaert, who in 1660 encountered a group of San in the Cape.
They neither fled nor attacked, it seems, but offered his party a gift of honey.
The solution for today’s challenges is to “make a religion of conservation”, Logie writes.
“We must go out and spread the message as did the early missionaries ... Remember the San, that we too may share our honey and show a respect for the land and all it supports.” Toasted Marshmallows & Obies – Lower Albany Fireside Stories by Bartle Logie is published by Write-On Publishing.