SAM posts pre Firefly

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Heritage

Last week the National Heritage Symposium was held in Port Elizabeth, in the old Drill Hall. The room was full of people who are passionate about preserving the heritage of the country, and the discussions were really interesting. Although, to be honest, I left with the uncomfortable feeling that much the same gets said year after year, and that the absent key players and grey areas mean that the same thing will be said again next year, with few tangible…

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08/09/2008
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aftermath

The sea wall between Sidon Street and Mount Road was badly damaged by this weeks huge waves, large chunks of concrete were tossed onto the railway lines.As you can see these Municipal workers have a massive task ahead of them!

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05/09/2008
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more havok

Even before the major tsunami type waves that did all the damage on Monday, the seas on Sunday were building up unusually high. On Sunday afternoon we took a stroll along the beachfront (yes, in our case it is "mad dogs and SouthAfricans go out in the freezing gale!") hehe. But we couldn't resist the opportunity to snap away despite fingers so frozen they could barely operate the camera!We have often shown the wonderful wide pristine sands of King's Beach…

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04/09/2008
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more spring tides….

Continuing our coverage of the spring day havok, the section of the Settlers freeway that runs past Sidon street towards Albany road also took a pounding. Even after the waves had eased up a bit, they were pretty impressive.These are the main railway lines that feed Port Elizabeth, an as you can see it may be a while before normal services resume! A huge concrete section of the breakwater wall was tossed onto the tracks like a lego block by…

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03/09/2008
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Spring has sprung…..

Usually it would be the sounds of birds chirping hopefully, flowers popping up in happy colourful profusion, winter coats being stored away.... but PE is never a place that can be considered predictable and boring, so on our spring day yesterday, we had a big surprise. Our coastline was pounded by Tsunami type waves, railway lines covered with huge chunks of the concrete breakwater wall, businesses flooded, and the freeway closed most of the day due to waves crashing over…

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02/09/2008
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Monthly Theme Day: Sister Cities

Port Elizabeth seems to be part of a large family, and has a few sister cities, including Tainan in Taiwan, and Jacksonville, Florida as well as Palm Desert, California,in USA!The one I have always felt was the closest relation is Gothenberg in Sweden. When Panoramio first started on Google Earth, and there was a small community of photographers who all corresponded and knew each other, a guy called Andreas Elmquist from Gothenberg used to post pix, and I was putting…

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01/09/2008
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Then and Now #3

Gaston has been finding more fascinating old photos for us. This is Govan Mbeki Ave as it looked in 1953 ........ (it was the only place in town to go shopping, long before de-centralisation took place)And as it looks now, with the recent development into a pedestrian mall with shaded lock-up trading shelters for the street traders.

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31/08/2008
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happy birthday dear Ma-ax….tra la

It is the m in sam's birthday today, and the family decided on an outing to the wonderful Addo Elephant Game Park which we are lucky enough to have on our doorstep. So we packed a great picnic and set off this afternoon when our son-in-law got home from work.Addo is looking quite dry, which is a bit scary, because we should have had some major rain at this time of year. As we drove in we saw a huge…

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30/08/2008