Peter Berry

I had been in South Africa for four years after being transferred from the company I had been working for in London. I spent 1968 in Johannesburg and was now working in Durban.

I was twenty-six years old and was in a position where I needed to make some decisions about my future. I was in love with South Africa but at the same time needed some adventure before I put my roots down. Travel was the obvious answer.

After a lot of of thought, I decided to return to London and see what transpired from there but how to get there was the question. Option 1 was to fly but that was quick and boring. Option 2 was to book onto one of the Castle mail ships but this was slow and boring. Option 3 was to travel overland through Africa. This sounded by far the better option and in March 1972 I flew from Johannesburg to Nairobi with Olympic Airways arriving in the early hours of the morning. I had booked in advance into the Park Hotel in the centre of Nairobi and the taxi duly deposited me at the hotel’s entrance just after 03:30. A guy in an old army greatcoat checked me in and handed over the key. The room was a good size and reasonably clean except for the bathroom which certainly needed some attention. After the flight I was feeling pretty tired and decided it was time for bed. When I pulled the sheets back it...

About four years ago I popped into the premises of Cannon & Cannon (auctioneers in Hilton) and, whilst looking around for nothing in particular, came upon a rather battered, leather covered box on which was embossed, if you looked very carefully, ‘His Excellency The Governor’. I asked the attendant if they had a key to the box and was told that they did but were having difficulty in opening it but duly handed it over. After several attempts, I found that if you pushed the key, turned it and then turned it back on itself again, the lock opened.

Inside were about thirty documents which obviously had some age to them and included a couple which had what appeared to bear the signature of Paul Kruger and I decided to take a chance, attend the auction and try to purchase the box.

At this stage, I must say that all of my schooling had been in London and South African history was not a strong point.

I attended the auction and after bidding against two other gentlemen, managed to secure the box for R2 800 – more than I had intended to spend.

Once I got the box home and started to unload its contents, it became clear that I had the deed box of a family named Stockenstrom from the Eastern Cape. The name Stockenstrom meant absolutely nothing to me. The first thing I did was to Google and establish that the Stockenstroms were an extremely important family in the...