The following is Corinne’s story:
“I was born and schooled in Glasgow, Scotland, then studied at the University of Glasgow for a BSc degree. A short period in teaching was followed by a move into the world of pharmaceuticals.
During the Anglo-Boer War (1899 - 1902), Charles Sim, a Scotsman came to South Africa with the British army. After the war, he decided to make Hermanus his home, where he married a local lass, Hester Henn. He was one of the men who drove the first buses from Bot River to Hermanus and with Harry Fay and others, was in charge of the station.
Some nights when he was homesick for Scotland, he played his bagpipes entertaining the townfolk. On those nights, nobody supported the bioscope of Mr Oblowitz who in desperation approached Charles and offered him free haircuts in his barber’s shop if he stopped playing his bagpipes in town.
On a clear, azure autumn day, five men ascended the mountain above Fernkloof. Their route took them from the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley to the summit above the golf course. Ion Williams drove his Jeep and his companions were Fernkloof curator Harry Wood, Cyril Gillespie, Eric Jones and
Early in 2003, the Hermanus Times obtained the telephone number of Mr Lemm late of Lemm’s Corner and asked me to visit him in Cape Town. I arranged a visit and on a sweltering February afternoon, I drive into upper Oranjezicht, Cape Town, and park beneath a shady tree for this special appointment.
From the unpublished diary of Berdine Luyt come both some moving and light-hearted stories of wartime Hermanus and the hospitality trade of those long ago years. She was one of the five daughters of John and Joey Luyt and assisted her mother in running the Marine Hotel after her father’s death. The following extracts are from her diary, edited by the author with permission from Berdine’s niece, Sue Blyth, the owner of various manuscripts. Berdine Luyt was born in Hermanus in 1916, and lived a full and interesting life. Besides the diary, she left an unpublished manuscript on the life of her mother which is for the most part the story of Hermanus. She dedicated the stories to her mother Joey Luyt, that most unusual woman. Berdine died from cancer in Hermanus in 1980. Some of these stories appeared in a special series in the “Hermanus Times” in 2006.
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