It was with great excitement that I began my Std 4 year in 1960 at the new prefab building of the new Kloof Secondary School in Dan Pienaar Road.
The parents in Kloof had gone to a lot of administrative trouble with the Dept of Education to get Kloof High School off the ground. Mr Grant Loudon was one of them. He was one of the Three Wise Men from the quiz show on Springbok radio and lived in Dan Pienaar Road and his daughter was in my class.
I think that this was the first year that a Std 6 class was started but it could have been the following year.
Mr Goodwin was the headmaster or maybe that was the next headmaster’s name. Mr Blake was the deputy.
Mrs Williams was our class teacher. She had a strong Canadian accent and I liked her very much as she was a good teacher.
I remember an incident when one of the boys in the class let off a foul smelly stink bomb and the teacher teaching us told us to close all the windows as it was sulphur coming from the railway station!!
Well, that little joke backfired!
One thing that will be forever etched in my memory was the bucket toilets with the potent smelling disinfectant which smelled like Jeyes Fluid and in the hot summer months, it was extra strong! None of us loitered in the toilet area.
As some of us traveled with the South African Railways Pullman bus from Botha’s Hill & Hillcrest to and from school we had to be at the bus stop by 14h30 so school closed at 14h15 so that we could quickly walk up Emolweni Hill road to reach the bus stop in time. We certainly couldn’t dilly dally otherwise we would miss the bus and have to take a much later one only arriving home at about 16h30.
On breakup days we had to catch the train from Kloof station and that trip took over an hour.
The next year, 1961, Std 5, Mrs Eastes was our class teacher and a very good one too. There were 33 in our class that year.
In 1962 our year entered into our “high school” years, was now called Form 2 and Mrs von Puttkamer was our class teacher. She was also our Latin teacher. I thoroughly enjoyed Latin. Big drop in numbers this year as there were only 20 in the class. Many pupils left for other high schools of long-standing as their parents preferred not to take a chance with a high school still in the making. I can’t remember if we started playing hockey this year or the next year.
In 1963 our Form 3 class had 21 pupils and our class teacher was Miss Verona Milton – not too sure of her surname. She was another really good teacher and I enjoyed this year very much. Miss Milton also took us for Hockey at the field where the new school was being built.
It felt like the building of the new high school was taking forever. But I think that it was only started in 1962 once it was certain that there would be sufficient numbers to create a High School.
Initially, for P.E. classes, we used to play rounders on the rough grass field next to the Prefabs on the corner of Dan Pienaar, Emolweni and Beryldene Roads.
A bus ferried us up to the now Junior School for Domestic Science and Woodwork Lessons.
As far as I can recall a netball court was only built the following year in 1961.
Assembly was held in the open on the gravel area in front of the headmaster’s office and staff room building. We all had Hymn books that had to be taken to assembly every day and punishment could be meted out if you forgot your Hymnbook.
In 1961 on 41st May South Africa became a Republic and shortly after that South Africa adopted the Metric system of measurement and our currency changed to Rands and Cents. What a relief – no more complicated weights and measurement calculations to work out!
Netball was played on the netball court in the playground.
Tennis lessons were given at the Kloof Municipal Courts until tennis courts were built.
Class plays were performed in the Kloof Town Hall.
A bus ferried us to Lahee Park swimming pool in Pinetown for swimming lessons.
Finally, after four and half years on 21st June 1964 trucks arrived to move the desks and furniture to the new school building and we had carried our chairs to our new classrooms.
There was no hall so once again daily assembly was held outside the headmaster’s office on the grass area where the bell now stands. I don’t recall the bell being installed before I left in 1966. But maybe I’m wrong.
I do recall the great excitement of receiving the donation of the bell and that it had to be repaired before being installed
In 1964 – Form 4 – our Junior Certificate year – we were the second last class to write this exam and then it was stopped.
Mr Donald Butt taught us Arithmetic as it was called in those days.
At the end of Form 3 we had to choose our subjects for Matric. As the school was still growing and the numbers very few we didn’t have much choice and A stream pupils had to take academic subjects.
Mr Nixon was our class and History teacher from Form 4 to Form 6 and he managed to inspire me with a love of History.
The girls continued to have Domestic Science lessons and the boys, woodwork lessons, as well as art lessons and religious instruction given by Mrs Williams, and music/singing lessons right up to Matric but they were not exam subjects.
Miss Aitken taught the girls – don’t think the boys were involved in this – how to read music and sing which was a novel experience for me.
Miss Hoatsen took over the Hockey coaching and we became competent teams. Our training was to try to daily run 6 times around the top field – 2 hockey fields side by side – in one of our breaks.
Kloof school was very proud of the fact that we had genuine Afrikaans speaking teachers all of whom were very good.
But as Kloof was a very English suburb Afrikaans was not our strong point. Probably only the Kloof Station Master and his family spoke Afrikaans in those days.
Mrs Arnold retired soon after the school became a Secondary school and was replaced by Mr Eppi Jacobs who was a good rugby coach as well as our Afrikaans teacher. He taught us to drive a car in Afrikaans which was useful and how to play Rugby in Afrikaans which was not as useful to me.
My Jacobs left was replaced by Mr Visagie – I think his name was – and I remember his always using the expression “alle magistraat” when he got exasperated.
I took his advice and took to reading Afrikaans books to improve my Afrikaans which helped, as the Inspector who took me for my Matric Oral exam was impressed with my Afrikaans and asked me if we spoke Afrikaans at home or if we had Afrikaans friends, which we didn’t.
Thanks to Mrs Patterson, our Biology teacher’s enthusiasm and good teaching, I managed to obtain an A for matric which stood me in good stead for studying nursing at Greys Hospital and then Midwifery at Sandford Maternity Hospital in Port Elizabeth.
Finally, in 1965, a proud milestone was reached, the first Matric year. Kloof Secondary School now officially became Kloof High School.
I think that Dr Jackson, who taught us English, joined the school before we moved into the new building and was acting Principal before Mr Dudley Barton arrived and then he became the Deputy Principal.
Kloof High School has much to thank Mr Dudley Barton, who was also an excellent Maths teacher, and those founding year’s dedicated teachers as they certainly knew how to ‘whip’ and motivate us all into shape and in spite of our many deprivations of history and tradition, inspired us with many reasons to be proud to say that we are founder members of Kloof High School and helped make us who we are today.
On 1st January 1967, I started my nursing career at Greys Hospital in Pietermaritzburg and as the New nurse’s home had not yet been built, we were housed in the dormitories in the old Merchison boarding school building opposite the hospital.
After writing finals I then worked at Settlers hospital in Grahamstown while waiting for my results and thereafter on to Frere Hospital in East London while waiting to start Midwifery in Port Elizabeth. After that, I moved to Addington where I met my husband, who happened to be a Doctor, so then I worked in his practice in Pinetown doing mainly administrative work until he retired.
