From
there, it was back to the Design office in Pretoria, where I worked on a type
design for siphons. By the end of my first year of service, I was transferred
as Assistant Resident Engineer to the Ebenezer Dam, then under construction on
the Letaba River near Haenertsburg, taking over from Mauritz Selibowitz. When
my wife and I arrived at the turn-off to the dam site from the road
Haenertsburg to Tzaneen via Magoebaskloof, it rained heavily and my Beetle
barely managed to stay on the road. Later it turned out that Elias, who became
my survey assistant, and whom I took along to my next job, had been posted to
warn me that we should take a later turnoff, but he missed us! I think it is
only a four-wheel vehicle and a VW Beetle that would manage to get through!
When we arrived at the house which was allocated to us, we stopped at the
split-pole garage, when my wife thought that this is where we would live, and
burst into tears. The house itself was constructed of asbestos-cement. We had a
kitchen with a coal stove and electricity, generated at the site, was only
available until 10 at night! My neighbour was the Resident Engineer, Hamilton (Ham)
Barry, the finest man and engineer I had the privilege to serve under! I have
no doubt that he would have become the Head of the Department if he had not
been killed in a helicopter accident when reconnoitring a dam site near what
later became the Hazelmere Dam in Natal. With him on the aircraft died another
great friend: Dolf de Villiers, also an engineer and Dr Truter, a geologist
from the Geological Survey. A great loss for their families and for me
personally. Ham patiently showed me everything I had to know about my duties:
setting out the embankment with its various zones, the morning glory spillway,
the stilling basin etc. I also had to survey the monthly quantities of
materials placed. Also specific tasks delegated to me. So was there the very
first pre-stressed construction ever done in Water Affairs. The upper part of
the spillway structure was reinforced with post-stressed cables. Also the
access bridge to the spillway structure, which consisted of three spans of
precast, post-stressed beams. There was nobody on site who knew anything about
this and I was entrusted with the task of studying the issue and direct the
post-stressing operation. To this end, I trained one of the brightest
carpenters, Koen Kuipers, who worked directly under my instructions. This
relationship caused me problems with the general foreman, Corry Riekert, who
did not like the set-up. However, to this day I think that it would have been
too difficult to follow the normal order of command. I had the best possible
relations with the other key staff on site, such as Kallie van Loggerenberg,
the Mechanical Workshop foreman, Piet Marais, in charge of the Stores, (Danie?)
van Vuuren in charge of the materials laboratory. The dimensions of the bridge
beams were such that they had to be transported hanging, because they would
break under their own weight when tilted beyond a certain number of degrees.
The beams were cast near the bridge head and, after stressing, were launched with
the front end hanging from a mast with a ball and knuckle joint at the bottom,
standing halfway between the piers. The back ends of the beams were carried
hanging in a cradle on a wheeled carriage travelling on a railway track. The
top of the mast was pulled by means of a winch on top of the spillway
structure. When the first beam was launched, it was noticed that the rail track
was not able to carry the weight of the beam and had to be re-laid. In the
meantime it had been decided to use the tracked excavator as a crane to lift
the back-end of the beam and bring it forward as the mast was being pulled
towards the pier. At the time, Ham Barry was in hospital for an operation and I
was in charge of the works. Because the operation was very slow, I went home
for breakfast. Returning after a while, I saw that the operator of the
excavator was watching the tracks while moving forward and did not notice that
the hoist rope was getting slacker and slacker. I shouted to him, but my voice
was drowned by the noise of the engine and he did not hear me. To my horror, I
saw the beam touching the ground, slowly tilting and break in half with a loud
crack! The mast swayed, but fortunately, the man who was manning the hoist rope
in a cage hanging from the mast, remained safe. I thought that this was the end
of my career with Water Affairs. But after reporting the incident to
head-office and recasting a beam, everything ended fine. The embankment
consisted of a clay core and semi-permeable outer zones of weathered granite
soil. Downstream of the clay core, there
was a thin reverse filter zone consisting of crushed rock flanked by sand. For
the first time in Water Affairs, pore pressure probes were installed. One of my
duties was to read these regularly. Earth materials were placed by
“Tournapulls”, scraper loaders. The earth embankment was protected from erosion
on the upstream site by dumped quarried rock and on the downstream side by
neatly packed selected rocks. The quarry was downstream of the site but in the
immediate vicinity. Ham and I could watch the blasts from the office
overlooking the dam site, but had to watch out for flying rocks coming in our
direction. One day a note arrived from Mr Jackson, a neighbour living behind
the hill where the quarry was situated. Accompanying the note there was a
largish stone, with the note saying: this missed my wife by less than a foot.
Ham jokingly remarked that he would reply saying: next time we shall do better!
One rather boring task was to set out the purchase line – i.e. the boundary
between the area to be acquired and the remainder of the affected farms. Most
of that area was planted with pine trees and I had to wait to proceed until a
tree on the purchase line was cut down! The outlet works of the dam consisted
of two steel pipelines laid in a conduit on top of the cut-and-cover conduit of
the spillway beneath the embankment. The discharge was controlled by valves
discharging in the spillway stilling basin. Cut-off valves upstream allowed
work on these valves. The intake consisted of vertical bell- mouths, protected
by a trash-rack structure. These bell-mouths could be closed by a conical
device which could be lowered from the spillway structure, so that the cut-off
valves could be repaired if necessary. After the reservoir had filled to a
metre or so, this device was tested, but it was found that there was an
obstruction preventing it from seating. I volunteered to dive down in the trash
rack and established that a piece of timber was lying across the bell-mouth,
after which it could be removed. I found it a somewhat scary experience!
The
social life on site centred on the recreation hall and the tennis courts. All
Water Affairs resident engineers in those days managed to by-pass regulations
to provide this kind of facilities for the staff. Some week-ends films were
shown in the hall. I was sometimes asked by the RE to show a promotion film
which Shell had made in the compound. One scene showed a labourer carrying an
oil can walking towards a machine. When he noticed the camera, he started
running. His mates in the compound found this so funny that they rolled in the
aisles laughing. I had to repeat that scene over and over! Some of the local
farmers (mostly foresters and English speaking) and the local medic,
Crewe-Brown also made use of the tennis courts. There was lively social contact
between them and the site management. One of these farmers was an ex Italian
prisoner of war named Secondo Rech, who stayed on and made it big. When the
reservoir started filling up, he acquired a house boat on which to party. It
happened that, when a fire broke out in one of the pine plantations, we were
asked to come and assist with some of the labour. At one such occasion, the
fire jumped the firebreak and we had to run for our lives!
While
at Ebenezer, my two eldest daughters, Hilde and Ria were born. The Barry family
became great friends and in those days consisted of Ham, his wife Christine and
children Mary, Marc and Deneys. Christine was a Scotchwoman, whose father was
stationed at the Vaalharts workshop during the war and briefly afterwards,
where she met Ham, who was sent there after his military service in Europe. Later,
but elsewhere, they had two further daughters: Helen, who is my godchild and
Kate. Christine was tragically murdered in a retirement village near Silvermine
in the Cape and Mary died young.
Towards
the end of 1959, Ham Barry was appointed resident of the Wagendrift Dam, to be
constructed on the Bushman’s River near Estcourt. (At a different site than the
one mentioned earlier.) I was left in charge of a skeleton staff to finish the
work. At the same time, I was instructed to take over the finishing of the work
at the Mapochsgronden State Water Scheme near Roossenekal. The RE, Jean du
Plessis, had been transferred to the Olifants River (Klaver) and had little
interest in briefing me properly. The foreman in charge there was Mr van
Staden, whom I met later again at Stompdrift. On my way there and back, I
sometimes stopped at the Loskop Scheme, where Johan du Plessis had in the
meantime been appointed Administration Engineer.
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