pic to come.

Liz Beckford (nee Robertson) writes:


As a former employee of Anglo’s Chartered Exploration, I’ve been asked to write a short piece reminiscing about my time there.

Perhaps I should start by saying that I’m an Aussie, had spent many years in the U.K.. and then, like most Aussies, I got itchy feet and travelled in Europe, America, Mexico and the Caribbean and eventually landed in Africa – Lusaka to be precise – in September 1966.

I worked for a short while in the typing pool with Anglo American and  was then offered the Secretarial job at Chartered Ex in January 1967.

I took over the job from Glenda Jager and discovered I had to operate the Radio Calls to the geologists out in the bush – all a bit nerve wracking at first but something I grew to enjoy.  I also enjoyed the great camaraderie amongst the Chartered Ex employees and felt fortunate to work amongst such a friendly, good-humoured bunch of people. 

The Chief Geologist during my time there was Nic Smit.  Working in the Lusaka offices or in the Field were Clyde Kruger, Jim Downie, Steve Landsberg, Geoff Trollope, Graham Hunter, Brian King, Ken Clegg, Maurice Bergmann, Franco Pirajno, Colin Harris, John Horn and last but not least, Tosh  McIntosh. 

It was Ken Clegg who introduced me to Neville & Carla Huxham .   Ken also introduced me to George & Lil Payne of Whitehead & Jack (later to become Water Wells) and through them I met Murray Surtees. 

 Quite independently I met Geoff Dimmock, then at Blackwood Hodge, and I also later met Tony & Peter Moore.

I had met Ian Beckford shortly after my arrival in Lusaka but we only started “going out” in April 1967.  Not long after that, Ian went down to South Africa for a funeral and before his return to Lusaka he sent me a Telegram saying “Returning Friday, Boy Scouts Motto”. 


This Telegram went first to the Government Geological Survey offices where it did the rounds amongst a bunch of guys who knew Ian, including Julian Pagella, who eventually handed it to Tosh at Chartered Ex and it did the rounds there too. 


Finally, Tosh came into my office with a piece of paper in one hand saying “Dib, Dib, Dib” and giving the Scouts salute with the other hand.  I was young so Yes, I blushed – everyone had had a good-natured laugh! 

I was only with Chartered Ex for a little less than a year.  Ian and I got engaged in August and married at the Lusaka Cathedral in December 1967 before Ian was transferred with Total Oil Company to Kitwe on the Copperbelt. 

It was Brian King who took some cine film of our wedding.  I wonder how Graham & Barbara Hunter are?    

Whenever there’s a mention of Geological discoveries on TV, in a book or conversation, I am transported back to those ‘good old days’ of Chartered Ex.         

It is now 2015.  Ian and I have a son and a daughter and five grandchildren.   We are still in touch and good friends with Geoff & Wendy Dimmock, Maurice & Chris Bergmann, George & Lil Payne, Neville & Carla Huxham.  

How lucky was I to land such a good job back then and for that job and those friendships to have had such a lasting effect on my life.



TERRY CHISHOLM WRITES:


      "I was a teenage fieldie".

NR was great fun and I spent a happy two years reading westerns, shooting a large number of guinea-fowl , assorted duck, a few buck and the odd warthog with a beautiful Brno .22 which was all I could afford.

Most of the other fieldies and some of the geologists had larger rifles which they used to gather various trophies and shoot meat for the labour gangs. I did manage to shoot a buff with a borrowed .97 but it was not a single shot kill and involved a long walk and much tracking before I finally dropped it.


One did tend to get “bush-happy”and I do remember keeping one of the fieldies talking for a number of hours after I had spent two weeks on my own with Eddie Sulkowski`s dog Satan and the gang of labourers for company.
Two of us once drove 110 miles into the outskirts of Lusaka for a couple of beers and then drove all the way home. We must have seemed a strange bunch to the locals.
My last year with CE was spent in the Zambesi Valley in the Feira Prohibited Area with Des Horscroft as the Regional Geologist.
The local tribe had been almost decimated by sleeping sickness and the Tsetse Fly Dept had moved the remaining members of the tribe down the Zambesi to Feira. They knocked down a Mission Station, destroyed the road in from the Great East Road and sealed the area off for 12 years.
CE then managed to persuade the government that we needed to look for minerals in the area so they gave permission for us to regrade the road, build an airfield for supplies and take 25 black and four white males into the area.
It was stressed that vehicle traffic was not to be encouraged and that our fortnightly supplies should be flown in.
We had to employ the Soli tribe for all work as it was their ancestral stamping ground and the airfield was to be used in preference to the road which would be gated with a permanent Tsetse Fly guard.
We also had to take blood slides every month and spray vehicles in a grass enclosure before we drove into our camp.
The blood slide ceremony actually became quite amusing.

Of the 25 local Soli tribesmen working for us five were changed every month with five new chaps coming in and five who had been with us for the previous four months returning home.
The five new recruits were corralled behind a tent out of site of the operating table which was prepared by lining up hammers, saws, chisels, pangas and any other torture instrument that we could rake up.
The 20 chaps who had been with us over the last few months then gathered in front of the tent. We then grabbed one of the new recruits pulled him in front of the tent , chose one of the grisly instruments on the table and made as if we were about to amputate his finger.
All the old hands roared with laughter and after a minute or so of anxiety we would pick up a needle, prick his finger and take a blood sample. The new recruit would then join the old hands and laugh at his friends’ reactions.
Such is the humour of young adults in the bush!
As you can imagine it was like living in our own private game reserve. We built our camp on an elephant path right next to the Zambesi and left a Tilly lamp on for the first few weeks during which the elephants made a new path around the camp to the Zambesi.
I am quite sure that a superior being looks after teenagers in the bush as I survived the following: wounded animals shot and wounded (I might add, by my compatriots),
*  three leopard,
*  six buffalo,
*  one lion,
*  two warthog, and
*a honey badger.
Yes, the last-named was howling mad and its teeth had to be seen to be believed!
The latter half of 1961 was uneventful apart for one amusing incident when Lusaka Base camp (Poppy) informed us that Lady Dalhousie and her lady-in waiting were going to land at our air-strip at Jeki to join her husband who was at Mana Pools.
Her plane would follow our fortnightly supply plane so no mistakes were made. She had stayed behind in Salisbury looking after a sick child and now wanted to join her husband on holiday at Mana Pools, on the Southern Rhodesian side of the Zambesi.

It was such a convoluted tale that we assumed it was a leg-pull as one of the rules about working in this restricted area was that NO females were allowed in.
Anyway off we went to the airstrip dressed in our usual hats, shorts and boots, no shirts, in our bush Landrovers (no canopy).
A strange plane started circling the airstrip which we had already cleared of the odd impala and buff. At that moment Lord Dalhousie walked out of the bush opposite the airstrip with his Aide-de camp!
What they must have thought about being greeted by two very suntanned, underdressed and embarrassed, twenty-year-olds I do not know, but after apologies from us we loaded them into our Landrover and took them on an informal game drive on the way back to their motorboat moored on the Zambesi.
I seem to remember that we managed to get very close to both elephant and buffalo and these were photographed at very close range.
They were profuse in their thanks for our help. This was when I started realizing that it was not what you knew so much as who you knew!
I remember we used to play a game with all visitors to the Valley - which was to sit them in the passenger seat of an uncovered Landrover, and drive around until we found a herd of elephant and then drive closer and closer until we got some sort of reaction.
The worst case we had was our admin officer (Launce Garner) who literally jumped out of the Landy when we were still a mile away! The best was one of the pilots, Robin Hood, who remained in the vehicle as we followed the elephant up to a small tributary of the Zambesi, but who then declined our offer of following them on foot.
The staff of Chartered Exploration used to gather once a year for the annual Christmas Party and that was the only time one met all the other personnel in the company. It was hosted by a VIP from the Salisbury Head Office and I seem to remember that one of the field assistants - normally Tom Eloff - tried to hijack the VIP transport.
It must have been very trying for the organizers as we could only go to three places: the Woodpecker Inn, Ridgeway Hotel, and the Blue Boar Inn - and after each party we would be banned for the next two years due to riotous behaviour!


                               #
glenchiz@hotmail.com
Terry was with CE from Jan 1960 to Dec 1961, and he recalls the following contemporaries: Tom Priest, Rob Yeardon, Keith Joubert, Jan Plankman, Dirk Eva, Charles Morley, Les Von Holt, and Bill Stephens – John Osten was the Chief Geologist.

Terry and Glen (nee Kirby) were married at Shangani in 1967; have two married daughters, and now happily retired in Cape Town.