5. Preparing to Travel by Train from Cape Town to Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, 1957

After a few days in Cape Town, we made our way to the railway station, ready to travel over 1700 miles, across South Africa and Bechuanaland, now called Botswana, to Salisbury, capital of Southern Rhodesia, this country where we were all to live from now onwards. What an adventure!

So, we boarded the train, though, truth to tell, I cannot remember our departure itself. I know that my brothers, John, aged seven, Peter, aged three, and I must have been excited to be travelling by train for three days and two nights, such a long time, to our minds.

After all, we had never lived on a train before!

Our family of five had one compartment, which was beautiful, with highly polished wood-covered walls, large windows, and a sliding wooden door entrance, leading off a corridor which ran the whole length of the carriage. Each compartment was tastefully furnished, with two long sofa seats upholstered in a deep green fabric, and with shiny wooden borders round the edges of the windows and seats. There was a little table, covering a small washbasin, with cold water only, underneath the window, between the two sofas. The compartment was not very spacious, but it was spotless.

What to us, was truly amazing, though, was that the seats and their seat backs converted into bunk beds, two on each side. John and Peter would sleep top and tail, each with his head at one end of the bed. We soon found out, on that first day, that, when we left our compartment to go to dinner, an employee would pull down our bunks, and prepare our beds for us, turning down the corners of the crisp white sheets, plumping up the pillows, and smoothing down the blankets. In the mornings, whilst we were at breakfast, an employee would make up our beds with fresh sheets and put away the bunks for the day. This was, indeed, a luxurious service. Just as well that an employee did this for us because any attempt to pull down the bunks on our own, resulted in failure. There was a definite knack involved in the whole procedure. We discovered later that the bunks had to be pulled forward first, to unlatch a hidden fitting, after which the bunks would slide up and down quite easily, despite their heavy weight.

A toilet and a shower were available at both ends of each carriage, too. We used the tiny shower once or twice, I suppose, probably to clean us three children up before we went to bed. I don’t really remember. However, many years later, when I repeated this train journey during the hotter months of the year, I visited that minute shower room several times a day, standing gratefully under the cold water, desperately trying to cool myself down from the all-pervasive, sweltering heat of the train and its compartments.

Fortunately for us, we were travelling in reasonable weather conditions. We were comfortable, fed and found, and all set for living on this train, as it covered almost two thousand miles, heading north, and climbing from sea level to 6000ft. To us children, this was an experience unlike any we had had before.