Page 42 - KBHA BULLETIN 4

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Doug Hopwood. Later on in the late 1940s game-fishing for tunny began accidentally when Dad

and Nobbie Alcock happened to catch small tunny in Fish Hoek bay of all places.

Post-War Teenage Life

The war finished and the post-war happiness spilt over into our teenage life. The pools and the
adjacent seas weren’t just social centres they were also the source of high adventure. If you sit

looking out from the balcony of the Brass Bell at a high spring tide you will see the largest

waves surging over the wall into the big pool. You might think, wouldn’t it be exciting to wait on
the wall until a wave was receding then do a flat racing dive onto it as it moved out over the

shell-fish studded shallow reef behind the pool. You could then bide your time diving under

ordinary waves until the right, powerful one approached. If you swam hard just in front of the
wall it would catch you and lift you just before you smacked into the barnacle covered barrier.

Suddenly you were going over the broad wall top into the safety of the calm pool.

In the late 1940s this Hall was the SAWAS hall and was used as a social centre for parties,
dancing lessons etc. Arthur Stanley ran popular Ballroom Dancing classes.

One of the features of being in the great outdoors of the Peninsula was that many of us had to
catch the train to go ‘up the line’ to school. Alison McKinnel would embark at St. James and

Ingrid Jonker at Plumstead. Ingrid had a short and tragic life but left behind a brilliant heritage of
poetry in a sombre vein so far from the care-free life we teenagers enjoyed.

In these post-war years a Belgian family, Keyzer, built a lovely home ‘Nieuwpoort’ in

Quarterdeck road. Their youngest daughter Micheline, better known as Micky sends this

message from France:

“I was 13 when we came to live in Kalk Bay in 1947, in ‘Beaufort Cottage’ on Main Road, while
my parents were building ‘Nieuwpoort’. It belonged to the Williams Freemans, I think. (Wasn’t it

one of the oldest houses and does it still exist?). I have such wonderful memories of my youth in

Kalk Bay. Whole holidays lazing on the beach with ‘the crowd’. I can still feel the warmth of the

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