But the delights of the biannual floods lasted just a few short days, until the Spruit dried up again.
When I was in Standard 9, my penultimate year at Lyttelton Manor High School, one morning I was discussing with a few friends the unfortunate brevity of the periods when the Spruit actually flowed. One of them suggested that we recce the upstream course of the river to establish if some farmer wasn’t perhaps damning the flow of water.
At the time, it sounded like a good idea, and four of us sectioned off parts of the river for ten kilometres downstream of the Irene Farm and set about the task of discovering who the farmer might be who was blunting our fun.
Jurgen, one of our group of four, lived in a newly built suburb called Hennopspark, through which the Spruit flowed. A few days later Jurgen reported to us that he had found a dam across the Spruit near his house. At a subsequent council of war, the four of us decided that, if the fun times along the river were to be extended, the dam simply had to go. I was tasked with approaching our neighbourhood ‘scientist’ with the request that he manufacture an explosive device to blow up the offending structure. I think my initial approach was quite casual in nature, and I didn’t expect it to go anywhere. But then Quentin, the ‘scientist’, told me that he was working on a nitroglycerine-based bomb that could do the job, and things just kind of escalated from there.
When the bomb was ready, we arranged for all four of us to spend a Friday night at Jurgen’s house. My job was to fetch the bomb from Quentin in the afternoon and cycle the four or so kilometres to Jurgen’s home, where the others would wait for me. We planned to detonate the bomb at about midnight. Only Jurgen had seen the dam, and his description lacked a lot of detail, as we were subsequently to discover.
I collected from Quentin an odd-looking plastic jar (about the size of a 500-gram honey jar with two wires coming out of the top) filled with grey jelly, together with an old-time telephone dynamo that produced an electric current when wound rapidly, and set off for Hennopspark on my delivery bicycle.
Near the ‘target’ I met up with the rest of the demolition crew and we ducked into the bushes beside the river to have our first look at the object that had been spoiling our fun. We soon saw that the dam wall had long since been breached by past floods and that at least half its length had been washed away.
Unfazed by the facts and without needing much persuasion, we unanimously decided that the other half of the dam was what was impeding the main flow of the river, and that its obliteration was vital. And so the clandestine mission continued.
Following Quentin’s instructions, we used a crowbar to bore a four-inch-diameter hole about six feet deep into the base of the dam. Into this we pushed the bomb, right to the end of the hole, which left only the two electrical wires protruding. We then connected the two wires from the dynamo to the bomb wires and paid out the reel of line attached to the dynamo.
I think we’d all hoped for at least 50 metres or so of separation between the bomb and our shelter, but the line supplied by Quentin extended just 20 metres. Our determination to complete the task overcame all thoughts of safety, and we reasoned that Quentin would not have provided us with a detonation controller that was too short. We led the line over the top of a large willow tree that had fallen over in the previous flood and made our shelter there.
With the device in place and ready to be detonated at the turn of the dynamo, we left the scene and went off to Jurgen’s house for dinner. I am sure that Jurgen’s mother knew something was up, as she spent dinnertime trying to get to the bottom of our strange behaviour. But group loyalty held firm. Her suspicions must have heightened when, after supper, instead of visiting some of the many pretty girls in the neighbourhood, we told her we planned to play Monopoly and get an early night’s sleep.
At 23h30 or so we quietly slipped out of the kitchen door and made for the target, which was located about 500 metres from Jurgen’s house (and, I must add, about 200 metres from the nearest building – we weren’t complete idiots).
It was a calm evening and the only sounds were the rumble of cars on the nearby freeway and the odd bark of a dog in the distance. I don’t recall any of us being afraid but I remember my heart racing wildly as we approached the scene of the imminent blast.
We all took cover behind the tree and began a dramatic countdown.
Five… four… three… two… one… wind the dynamo like hell!
Nothing happened.
Try again.
Five… four… three… two… one… wind the dynamo like hell!
Again, nothing.
‘Wind it from the start,’ someone whispered.
(Start winding rapidly) Five… four… three…
There was a blinding flash and the earth around us lifted at least a foot in the air. A simultaneous BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM shattered the silence of the night.
Deafened by the enormous blast and engulfed by fumes and debris, through the haze of dust and falling leaves and branches I saw Charlie’s distorted jaws mouthing a soundless ‘Run!’, and we were off, sprinting like cheetahs after a gazelle, only much, much, much faster.
I knew well enough not to follow the others, who were all of a similar mind, and I flew through the river, up the opposite bank and put 300 metres of terror-fuelled distance between me and the blast site in less time than it takes to say ‘Shit!’, which incidentally was the word I kept repeating over and over and over again for hours, days and even weeks afterwards.
On reaching a nearby road I stopped and took shelter in the shadows near a concrete wall. It seemed to take ages before I was able to breathe easily, but my heart still beat like a pneumatic drill and the fear of discovery clutched at my chest.
Figuring that anyone in the area would be making their way towards the site of the explosion, I somehow forced myself, walking stiff-legged, back towards the scene, all the while trying to pretend that I had been out on an innocent midnight stroll, in case anyone had been watching. Painstakingly, I made my circuitous way down the network of roads surrounding the blast site, trying hard to give observers the impression of someone rudely roused from their slumber by the deafening explosion.
As I approached the scene of the crime, I saw that a crowd of people had gathered at the roadside nearby. The sound of the explosion had affected my hearing, but I heard the words ‘bloody terrorists’ being uttered more than once.
By the time the police arrived, our little band of very sober youths had regrouped. We dusted each other off as best we could before making our way back to Jurgen’s house, where we slid, like lizards, silently into bed.
‘Where have you little bastards been? What have you done?’ screamed Jurgen’s mom, just as soon as our heads hit the pillows.
‘Are you still awake, Mom?’ Jurgen inquired politely.
‘THE WHOLE FLIPPING WORLD IS AWAKE!’ she screeched, ‘Soon there will be dogs and helicopters and soldiers looking for you! Are you all mad?’
‘It wasn’t us!’ responded an indignant Jurgen. ‘We were visiting girls,’ said Kevin, while Charlie, Jurgen and I nodded eagerly in agreement.
She switched the bedroom light on.
In its harsh glare, we saw that were all covered, from head to toe, in fine clay dust. Our ears, eyes, hair and clothing were a uniform pale grey. A trail of dust was clearly visible across the windowsill through which we’d gained entry after returning from our pyrotechnic foray.
‘It’s only a matter of time before the police come for you,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘I think I will call them.’