Beachfront

I took this picture the other day on a walk at Kings Beach looking towards Hobie Beach. You can see the old Slipway at Humewood Beach as well as Shark Rock Pier at Hobie Beach.

Grave search 1

Regular readers of both my blogs probably know of my fascination with old cemeteries which leads to often posting grave pictures, specially on The Firefly Photo Files. The only reason I post most on there and not here is cause I often discover interesting grave yards in small town while on holiday and weekend outings and it doesn't fall within the Port Elizabeth area.  Anyway, due to the fact that I post these I have had a couple of people e-mailing me and asking me to look up graves of their ancestors around PE.  Unfortunately its not always that easy and I don't often have that much time to do the research and then the subsequent search for the actual grave.  Due to this it takes me a little time to get to them and I often think people think I had forgotten. 

One of the very first people who asked me to find a grave for them was Ann Darling from the UK.  She was looking to find her grandfather, Gordon Darling's grave in the South End cemetery and luckily for me she had a grave number, which helped quite a lot when I went to the cemetery's office.  Her grandparents and their 3 small children lived in Port Elizabeth when her grandfather died in 1930.  Her grandmother and the kids (of which one was Ann's father) moved back to England shortly after and nobody has been back here since those days.  It was quite easy to find the grave once I was shown where it was on the cemetery's layout and off I went.  It didn't take long to find it with it's two heart stones, just like Ann described. I think the thing that surprised me the most was Ann's reaction when I sent her the pictures. WOW! It really made the effort worth it.  There are a couple more that I have been looking for and some I have found.  I will post them in the near future as well.

Subantarctic Fur Seal

A week or so ago I posted a pic of one of the Cape Fur Seals at Bayworld. Sharing their enclosure with them is this Subantarctic Fur Seal.

Canon sunrise

Sunrise over the Port Elizabeth Harbour from Fort Frederick

For more sunrises and other sky related photos from photographers all over the world, visit Skywatch

Naval ships

Better late than never. The South African Navy recently did a joint exercises along with the navies from India and Brazil along the South African coast. Part of the exercise took place in Algoa Bay and the ships spent a couple of days in the Port Elizabeth Harbour.  The ships were open to the public on the Saturday, but unfortunately I had a prior engagement and couldn't go.  I did get a peek at the ships from the Humerail shopping centre and got this pic to show you.

High tide at Pollok Beach

Looking back towards Hobie Beach from Pollok Beach at high tide

Rudolph Street Mosque

Standing at the bottom of Walmer Boulavard is one of two mosques that survived the demolition of old South End.  In the early 1890's Imam Jalaludien Abrahams, together with his trustees, set about the task of having a mosque built as this was much needed in the area then. In 1893 the land was transferred to the Trust and the Mosque of Righteousness was completed in 1894.

Old Walmer Road

In the days of old South End before most of it was demolished and the people forcibly removed from the area, Walmer Road was the main road running through South End towards the suburb of Walmer.  In those days the main hotels and businesses of the area was found along this road.  Today only a small section of this old road is still visible at the top of Pier Street.  It leads through an open piece of land and is slowly being overgrown by the grass and other vegetation.

Windpomp

One of the iconic rural countryside objects of South Africa is the windpomp (wind pump).  Windpompe is used to extract water from boreholes and can be found (working or not) on all our highways and byways around South Africa's countryside.  This one I photographed on one of the game reserves just outside Port Elizabeth.

Fort Canon

One of the canons on Fort Frederick