Keeping Hillcrest on the road
|Published
Durban - The old picture this week was sent to us by Jacqui Hicks after a series of articles on Hillcrest. It features the village’s old Caltex Garage which was on the Old Main Road and opposite the Hillcrest Hotel.
It would seem that a garage has been on the site since the earliest days of Hillcrest, which is a key stopping point en route between Durban and Pietermaritzburg.
Hicks notes that the forecourt and the petrol pumps were close to the Old Main Road, with the white painted line in the old photo being the centre line of the Old Main Road itself.
The garage was owned by Dave Findlay who lived in the flat above. Not only did it supply fuel, but it also fixed the cars of many who lived in the village.
“My brother Richard Fripp often helped out at the garage during his high school holidays. He was regularly given the job of removing radiators from old Mini cars, which had transverse engines – apparently a difficult job because of the confined space.
“In gratitude, Mr Findlay gave Richard a derelict Oldsmobile Rocket 88, which had been lying around the back of the garage. It was duly towed to our farm in Inanda Road, and once there, it was driven around the yard by Richard like a stock car,” Hicks remembers.
In the second picture, taken from the Facebook site Durban Down Memory Lane, the garage stands much further back from the road. To the left was Richdens Spar, the photo being taken in the mid to late ’70s shortly before the supermarket burnt down. The new Richdens was then built on its current site, a piece of land behind the landmark Lille’s Corner and the Ogilvie Buildings that wrapped around the corner café. A hardware store replaced the old supermarket.
In the post, Bruce Pickering notes that his wife’s father, Dennis Findlay, and his brother Peter Findlay, and brother-in-law, Hugh Bresler, owned the garage from about 1964 until about 1985.
Wendy Winthrop remembers the “lollipop man” who stood on a tin in the middle of the Old Main Road in front of the garage with a stop/go sign to see children across the road as they safely walked to school.
Our photographer Shelley Kjonstad’s picture shows a modern Caltex Garage on the site with a number of retail and catering outlets in the old Richdens premises.
The Independent on Saturday