Here’s another great picture from Mary McCann’s photo album mentioned in a previous post. Nothing is really known about the picture or Bernie and Mabs except the approximate date of 1925 and that they must have been visiting friends or family of the McCanns.
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There is a page on the site about Durban’s transport history including the electric trolley buses that ran there for a number of years. I recently received this great picture from Trevor Jones and couldn’t resist posting it.
Trevor wrote:
I came across this old slide in a box of family pics. It was taken by my father, I would suspect in 1962 or 1963 (not after that, as we left Durban end-1963). It shows the City Centre, with the Cenotaph in front of the City Hall, and several of the characteristic Trolley Buses or “trackless trams” that graced the Durban transport scene till the mid/late-sixties. They were superb – quiet, powerful and non-polluting, but limited by the “overhead wires” as they were termed. The street in front is West Street, and the corner of the portico of the City Hall is just visible on the left.
I have to say that the picture did have me confused at first because I couldn’t work out its orientation. A close examination of the street signs revealed that the yellow bus is actually in Church Street which I didn’t remember being open to traffic. I checked on Google Maps and I was dismayed to find Church Street is about the only one in that area that hasn’t been renamed.
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Karen Swanepoel wrote in recently to say that she’d been going through her grandmother’s photo album and discovered some really nice pictures of those early days. Karen is not sure that all the pictures show Durban scenes and the ones that we aren’t sure about are marked. Please let me know if you spot anything you recognise.
Karen wrote:
Share this:My grandmother was Mary Florence McCann (nee Bouchier) born 1903. Her brother died in action in 1915 at Gallipoli at the age of 19. The family decided to start life afresh and moved to Johannesburg where she met my Grandfather Edward St. Pierre McCann. They got married and moved to Durban in the 1930s. Their son, Edward George, my father, went to Durban High.
We would like to apologise for any interruption in FAD’s normal smiling service which has been experienced in the past few days. We undertook some badly needed database maintenance and we fear that some comments may have been lost while all that was going on. The bad news is that if your comment has not appeared on the post where you left it, it has been lost.
The good news is that the database has had all its accumulated rubbish deleted and been backed-up in several places to help ensure that the site will survive any disaster. Catastrophic computer glitches were however, not the only thing threatening FAD’s future because the costs of hosting it on the Internet over the years were using up money I thought might be better spent on holidays back in Africa. Read More
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A longstanding friend of mine, over 60 years now, knowing of my interest in Durban, has given me a very interesting book about Old Durban.  The book is called “Landmarks of Old Durban” and consists of a series of documentary programmes broadcast from the Durban Studios of the South African Broadcasting Corporation. The book was compiled by H. Edmund Dawes who gathered the factual material and then wove the facts into scripts which were broadcast from the Durban Studios in Aliwal Street starting July 4th 1944. The foreword of the book written by Franklin Rooke, City Librarian, is dated October 1945 and the book was printed in 1948 by E. P. & Commercial Printing Company of Smith Street, Durban. Included in the book are some very interesting photos of Old Durban which Mr Dawes put together. I would assume the book is long out of print.
The scripts are not long and the various parts of the people named in the scripts were played by local Durbanites.  I do not recognise the names of these people but in addition to them, well known Durban personalities who could make comment on the subject were also involved.
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Hi There
I have recently received three delightful photos of an old Durban House Boat from Sue Wessels.
Sue answered a request from Derek Austin regarding his paternal grandmother’s family and in her note indicated she had a photo of the houseboat with Jim Meredith Miller standing nearby. Read More
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A friend from Cape Town sent me some postcards/ pictures of Durban which are not dated but which are interesting in my point of view if one looks at the background. The postcards sent to me are in the main sourced from Wade Kidwell’s collection that he posted here on FAD some years ago. Obviously these are copied and do the rounds in emails. I am going to show some of them here and comment where I can which perhaps will jolt some memories. If anyone can date them please do so. Also any comments to add. Click on pictures to enlarge. Read More
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Syd Oram asked for information on several Durban topics. In order to “thin the herd” as such I am going to put the Coronation Brick and Tile topic as a separate post as that company goes back many years in Durban’s history. Read More
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Two more requests for information from the FAD colloquium.
Graham Read wrote:
Mikhail Peppas sent in this scan of an article he wrote in 2009 on the Electric Cinema, Durban’s first cinema. Mikahil lectures in journalism and is an historian interested in cinema. Click the thumbnail below to view an enlargement.
