The Zandvlei Trust

by Peter Tyldesley

We could hear the waves and smell the beach from our house in Cromer Road. So I suppose it was just a matter of time before I walked to Surfer’s Corner to explore the rock pools. My father had allowed me to fish the vlei all the way to the mouth, because he knew where to look for me if I wasn’t home on time. But I was under strict instruction not to wander off course. There were no GPS’s in those days and you did not need one. There was a strap hanging behind the bedroom door which had the most amazing telepathic capacity to guide you home via the shortest route and within milliseconds of the cut-off time. 

I had befriended Malcolm, who had replaced Klasie, and one Saturday morning when my father was working overtime, Malcolm popped around and suggested we wander down to the beach. I told my mom that Malcolm and I were going to walk to the mouth of the vlei, and she raised an eyebrow, looked at me sternly and said : “OK, but don’t go anywhere else, and make sure you get home before your father.” Mothers seem to know what you’re going to be thinking next week Wednesday. Anyway off we went.

We hit the beach where the bathing boxes were, and it was spring low tide. The sand flats exposed by the receding waves were littered with an assortment of mussel shells. One particularly large brown shell with a rough scalloped exterior caught my attention and I picked it up and took it home for identification. It turned out to be a horse mussel which has a particularly interesting and somewhat incestuous symbiotic relationship with a small round crab. Photo Zandvlei Trust 

But it was the rockpools that caught my attention. The shallow pools were full of large grey bullhead gobies and green klipfish. Clusters of sand anemones grouped together in sandy areas where there was a strong waterflow during high tide. They can survive being covered in sand for fairly lengthy periods. In the more sheltered corners purple, red and pink urchins gathered over small beds of green algae, and rock crevices sheltered several species of chitons, whose ancestry precedes the dinosaurs.  Many of the pools which were located higher up on the beach were filled to capacity with black mussel shells. The same shells that the Dutch burned in lime kilns to make the cement which still holds the stone walls of the Castle together.

But the real magic appeared when you poked your head in under one of the larger rocks which was only exposed at spring low tide. A kaleidoscope of colour. Feather duster worms, bright orange sponges, plum anemones, sea stars, squirting redbait – an incredible diversity of species. You could easily spend half an hour crouched under one of those rocks, in absolute wonder. But the ocean is full of tricks. The long, suckered tentacles of an octopus arm exploring the inside of your leg will bring you back to earth in a flash! 

On the way home we walked down Clevedon road and on the corner with Albertyn Road there used to be a large manatoka hedge, behind which was an empty plot. There was a very large Cape skink lying there in the sun. Malcolm threw a stone at it and it disappeared under the manatoka. When my father arrived home he asked me where I had been, and I confessed that I had been to the beach. Because I was honest and because I had gone with Malcolm, Dad did not get angry, but told me he wanted to know whenever I went and who I was going with. Then I told him about the skink, and he did get angry. “Why do you want to kill everything?” 

That afternoon, after the customary muscadels, my father and I walked down to the large Rooikrans bush which provide shelter for a number of Cape skinks. In a howling Southeaster he got down on his hands and knees slowly crawling around the bush hoping to surprise a dozing skink. I thought that I would stalk the skinks from the other side of the bush. Just as dad was about to pounce, I appeared from the opposite side. The skink saw me and dashed off. Dad looked up at me and there was murder in his eyes. He never said anything, but I knew what he was thinking!

We sat back and waited a bit. Those skinks had become used to people walking past the rooikrans bush, and it didn’t take them long to appear again and settle in to some sunbathing. Dad got down again and this time I let him do it on his own. He was quick off the mark and I wasn’t too sure that I could outlast him if I accidently awakened the skink he was targeting. Not too long and he had one. The poor skink got such a fright that he dropped a turd and his tail at the same moment. The tail lay trashing on the sand for a while. Dropping its tail was a clever party trick to distract evil-eyed predators while the skink made a quick getaway. 

My father then proceded to show me the skink and explained that it was not poisonous – he let it bite his finger – and informed me that there were no poisonous lizards in South Africa. He pointed out the eyelids which enabled the skinks to close their eyes and doze off. Our marbled leaf-toed geckos on the other hand don’t have eyelids. Their eyes are protected by a firm clear scale which they have to lick with their tongues to keep clean. He let me hold it and then told me to release it. If any more of its tail fell off it would not have the balance to run away in a straight line.

I lowered the skink gently and watched in wonder as it zigzagged off into the rooikrans bush. 

At supper that night my mother informed us that we were going to move to Lakeside. Her offer for 42 Orient Road Lakeside had been accepted. 

That session with my father had piqued my interest in reptiles. An interest which was about to explode into a fanatical lifelong passion.

By Peter Tyldesley

In any environment it takes time to settle in and crack the codes. The time it takes you  to become integrated and fully operational depends on how observant and aware you are, and often how many cracks you have had. Clips become cracks as you get older and you get cracks when you don’t get home on time.

In the heat of summer, there were no earthworms, so I had to find another easily accessible bait to catch the steenbras. There were no prawn pumps in those days so I was scratching for an alternative. I walked to the footbridge one Saturday morning when the tide was pushing. There was a fur seal lounging on the concrete bridge support under the bridge on the Capricorn side of the vlei. I watched him for a while and then walked on to the main bridge near the mouth. Over the course of the next two years I saw him in that spot quite often.

The water was exceptionally clear, and for the first time I noticed sandshrimps swimming in amongst the grass and weeds up against the bank. There were no reeds on this section at that time, and the waves pushed in past a large sandbank which was located in the middle of the vlei on the northern side of the footbridge. I went home and told my dad about the shrimps. He told me to wait for low tide. Four muscadels later my father turfed the last of the potatoes out of the hessian bag they used to be packed in in those days, and cut the bag open all along the seam. We had a net!

Together we walked down to the vlei and jumped in. With dad on one side and me on the other, we dragged our net along the sandy bottom and up under the grass verges. Shrimps galore, flicking all over the place, and in the middle of the net, a light brown pipefish. The first I had ever seen. It had a scalloped body, with a long snout and a tiny mouth. Just like a seahorse which had been stretched out on one of those medieval torture racks. 

On about our fourth trawl dad stepped on a sharp submerged branch, and I got my first lesson in men’s talk. Apparently at eight years old you are ready to become a man.

For the next two years, that net produced endless excitement, because we never knew what we would find. Besides the shrimps and the pipefish which were routine catches, there were juvenile mullet and steenbras, and on rare occasions a juvenile leervis, with its black and orange body and prodigious lower jaw. It looked nothing like the streamlined silver superpredator it would morph into. Some of the steenbras we caught in the net were tiny, only five centimetres long. While working on a conservation project on the Eastern Cape Wild Coast many years later, I was shown some photographs of large white steenbras shoaling in an estuary and was led to believe that this was a tributary which needed special protection, as it was one of the few places that white steenbras came to breed.  I was also informed that these fish only bred in the estuaries of the Eastern Cape. I have often wondered about that, as I netted so many of the tiny juveniles in Zandvlei. As a student and avid scubadiver, I occasionally cleaned the hulls of yachts moored in Simon’s Town harbour, to make a few bob to pay for the beers and tassies that the bursary didn’t cover. On occasion I came across shoals of large female (I suspect) white steenbras feeding on the extensive prawn beds on the soft sandy bottom stretching almost all the way to the bullnose.  I have often wondered if these fish were not entering Zandvlei to breed. I have never really answered that question.

Besides the steenbras, harders (mullet) became a favourite fishing target. It happened quite by accident. I was sitting at my favourite spot one afternoon after school eating a peanut butter sandwich. The last crust of the sandwich contained no margarine or peanut butter and I turfed it into the water. To my surprise the bread was almost instantly attacked by a school of harders. The last little piece was engulfed by a sizeable fish, which immediately caught my attention. I went home quite early, tidied my room and made sure the kitchen floor was clean, and waited for dad. When he came home the first things he asked me were: “Have you been fishing again? Have you done your homework?” Aaai. I hadn’t thought about the homework.

After supper dad unlocked the closet and we scratched around for some thin fishing line, small hooks and a round float, those little red and white ones which you simply clip onto the line. We wound a considerable length of line onto the hasper (a piece of wood with notches on both ends used for handlines), tied on a small hook and attached the float and I was ready to go.

Catching harders became my favourite pastime for the two years we lived in Cromer road. Unlike the steenbras, which tend to prefer slightly deeper water which is a little murky or cloudy, harders seem to be happiest in the crystal clear fresh seawater pushing in on the high tide. They readily accepted bread as bait, whether it was squeezed onto the hook, or dampened and turned into a doughball. After several months I graduated from the red and white plastic floats to a porcupine quill, which if set properly on the line stood up vertically in the water and disappeared in a flash when you got a bite (or a “take” as it is known in fisherman’s parlance).

Catching harders took on a greater significance after I caught my first leervis, which again was quite by accident. There were some big harders near the footbridge, but they simply refused to take the bread I offered. Frustrated, I tried to foulhook them with a treble hook (we called it an angel –Afrikaans pronunciation). On my second caste a leervis of forty centimeters grabbed the treble hook. It fell off as I got it to the side but I managed to grab it and carry it home.  My dad put it in the deep freeze, as he wanted to preserve it with formaldehyde. Three days later a fishing mad friend of my father came to visit us. He had never caught a leervis before and offered to take it home and have it mounted.

I never saw that leervis again.

But that friend did tell me that harders were the favourite prey of leervis. Then he showed me another trick. To catch a number of harders in one go, all you needed was a milkbottle and some bread. You took the bread, wet it and massaged it into a doughy paste which you squeezed into the mouth of the milkbottle. Then you walked along the side looking for a shoal of harders feeding on the bottom. Walking ahead, you carefully submerged the milkbottle, with the breadpaste on the bottom half of the mouth. In no time the harders would be crowding around the bottle trying to feed on the bread, and some would be pushed into the bottle by those behind them trying to get to the bread. You could catch eight in one shot!

Having taught young people for forty odd years, I believe that some children are born to be naturalists, others are born to be petrolheads, a few will naturally become academics, and a small unique group are Keith Richards clones, able to smoke forty Lucky Strike cigarettes a day at the age of twelve.

I was the naturalist who caught my first “snake”, a dwarf burrowing skink, at the age of four. I took it to bed with me and refused to give it to anyone – until my grandmother paid me fifty cents to flush it down the toilet. I have never forgotten that day – and never forgiven myself for that deed.

But then again you could buy four hundred chappies bubblegums for fifty cents.

By Peter Tyldesley

ARRIVING IN PARADISE

In 1963 my loving mother decided to move the family from Goodwood (pronounced Gooroet) to False Bay. She was of the opinion (quite rightly so) that Klasie, the boy next door, who was five or six years older than me, was teaching me things I was too young to understand, and should not know anything about anyway.

We moved into the top storey of a large house in Cromer Road. For a fanatical budding young naturalist it was paradise : the vlei, the mountains and the beach.

My job was to collect earthworms, and I was very good at it. So good in fact that I got a clip around the earhole, when I walked into the house with my hand over my schoolblazer pocket to prevent the earthworms from crawling out and falling onto the floor. Parents were allowed to give you a clip in those days.

We cast our lines into the water, and almost immediately the juvenile steenbras started biting. I cant remember how many we caught, but it was plenty – all between twenty and thirty centimeters in length. They were all released, but I was hooked for life.  After a good supper and a good few glasses of white muscadel (remember that?) the family went off and I was sent to bath and to bed. That night I dreamed of mighty battles with giant white steenbras, and how I would proudly lay them down on my mother’s spotless kitchen floor. My dreams stopped just short of another clip around the earhole for messing on the floor.

Some weeks later, after a heavy morning shower, the street gutters were alive with  earthworms. After school I walked home from False Bay station, and once again picked up a few handfuls of earthworms. But this time I only filled my pocket halfway. I knew dad didn’t like it when I filled the pocket to the top. Racing upstairs, I spread my schoolclothes all over the room before pulling on my shorts and T-shirt. Then I hurried to the closet where the smaller fishing rods were kept. Locked! Dad didn’t want me to go fishing on my own.

In despair I started hunting around the house for a makeshift fishing line. I found a hook in my room, but there was no line. After searching every room I eventually found myself in my mom’s sewing room, where I discovered several spools of strong, colourful crochet cotton. That would have to do.

Down at the vlei, at what would become my favourite fishing spot, I tied the lengths of crochet cotton together, until I had a line of about 20 meters in length. I found a small stone for a sinker, tied on the hook, baited it and threw in. The steenbras started biting immediately, but the hook was just too big to catch them. When I was down to my last two earthworms I made a mental note to fill both pockets next time – only halfway. I put the last worm on the hook and almost immediately got a really decent bite. After a real struggle, I managed to land a steenbras of approximately thirty five centimeters. This was a keeper!

Time to go home.

Then I found out that crochet cotton doesnt behave like fishing line when it is wet. It has magical qualities. It can contort and twist into a million knots while just lying there in the grass. It was getting late and I knew if dad came home before I got home I was in big trouble. REALLY big trouble. The crochet cotton had now transformed itself into a net. If I had only known it would do this in the first place, I need not have worried about the potential risks of collecting the earthworms. I could simply have used it as a fishing net. Try as I may, I couldn’t untangle it, and eventually I simply scrunched it up into a ball and pushed it into my pocket. I grabbed at the steenbras, and promptly got spiked by the very long, sharp dorsal spines. I didn’t curse – you weren’t allowed to in those days!

As I turned the corner into Cromer road I knew I was in trouble. Dad’s big black Buick was parked outside. I ran up the stairs leading to the kitchen, opened the door, and found my parents in the kitchen. As calmly as I could, I put the steenbras down on the kitchen floor, and stood back admiring my prize. Bang, bang! “How many times must I tell you…..”.  “Get that fish off my floor!”

I grabbed the steenbras and rushed outside onto the landing, standing there awkwardly and not knowing what to do. Finally, my father called me back inside and told me to put the fish in the sink.

I really should have let that dream play out to the end.