Steam Locomotives in Kroonstad

We Visit the Vermaaks in Kroonstad.

Sarel Cilliers Making a vow to God.

Kroonstad (Afrikaans for Crown city, pronounced [krūn'stät]) is the third-largest town in the Free State province of South Africa,   It was established in 1855.   It is the centre of a rich agricultural district, producing maize, wheat, dairy and meat products and wool.   The main industry is agriculture.   Despite its allusion to royalty (kroon is Afrikaans for ‘crown’) Kroonstad has far more humble beginnings, rumoured to have been named after a horse belonging to one of the Voortrekker leaders - the jury is out as to whether it was Sarel Celliers or Adriaan de la Rey - who may or may not have met with an accident in a stream named Kroonspruit.   Notwithstanding this, Kroonstad is said to be one of the Free State’s loveliest towns and lies on the banks of the Vals River, a tributary of the Vaal.

            I have mentioned before that my dad’s youngest sister, Ivy, married Sarel Petrus Vermaak and that they lived in Kroonstad where Uncle Piet was a guard on the trains.   When we had a car we used to go and spend a weekend with them.   They were a big family with eight children:  Phyllis, Irene, Joyce, Jan (John Henry), Maxie, Little Piet, Mercia and much later they had Bennie. 

The Vermaak Family

 These girl cousins of mine were very pretty blondes.   When Aunty Ivy married Piet Vermaak she could not speak Afrikaans, so she spoke only English to her first two girls, but after that the family switched to Afrikaans.   During 1944 Aunty Ivy had her last child, Bennie, and at the same time her two eldest daughters, who by then were married, each had their first born.   I can remember seeing photos of the three mothers with their babies.

            Kroonstad was a very busy Railway junction and you could smell the smoke from the coal-fired locomotives.  

 You could also see the long trains passing below the Vermaak home on their way to the station, or leaving it.   If you drove into town you would have to pass through the subway and it seemed to be so deep and steep to me as a child, but when I passed that way as an adult it was a bit more than a dip.   The church where my parents were married was in the centre of town, the St John’s Methodist Church, and I loved my mom telling us about that.

            Also on the church square stood a monument of the Voortrekker leader, Sarel Cilliers, who had led the fighting men under Andries Pretorius in prayer when they made the pledge before the battle of Blood River to keep the day as a holy day if God would grant them a victory over the mighty Zulu army.   They did win the battle and until recently the 16^th December was indeed a holy day in South Africa.

            It was fascinating to stand on the platforms in the Kroontad station, watching the trains coming and going, but it was not pleasant to get a bit of coal dust in your eye.   The young Vermaaks were all very street wise and were a great help to us when wanting to look at everything.   It was in Kroontad where my sisters had to have their tonsils removed and got to stay at Aunty Ivy’s place for a few days after their operations.

Ivy Vermaak

           Uncle Piet had a big vegetable garden in the grounds of this railway house where he grew enough to feed his big family.   My cousin ‘Little Piet’ wanted to become a motor racing driver so he used to borrow one of his mother’s pot lids and used it as his steering wheel whilst playing racing cars.   He went into quite a trance as he raced around the garden.   I believe that many years later he did indeed become a racing driver when he lived in Rhodesia, before it became Zimbabwe.   Piet and his brother, Bennie, have always been involved in the motor trade and their older brother, Jan, was an engine driver on the S A Railways.   It is still only the four youngest of our Vermaak cousins living today.

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