Protea Flower Rob Dempster
'Allo 'Allo Gardens! (AAG)
Howick (uMngeni)

AAG Blog

Archimedes Screw
15 March 2025 		Protea Flower

I cannot remember a distinct moment in my life when I became aware of race and the fact that I was white. It probably only became a substantive aspect of my lived experience when I was nine years old. and found myself back in the Orange Free State living in a Goldfields mining town. My father, a plumber, was in effect the town engineer. He had an electrician and a team of black men that he managed. He was responsible for the town's clean and waste water reticulation systems, the road network and waste (garbage) disposal. He was also responsible for the electricity reticulation that was maintained by the electrician.

The refuse truck driver's wife worked for our family as a maid, and he lived with her in the maid's quarters - a single room with a separate bathroom.

As we had arrived in Allanridge at the end of the school year, I skipped the last week of the fourth school term. When I stepped through one of the gates of the Allanridge Primary School at the beginning of the next year, it was to start my year in Standard 2. Not long after the school year had started, I was met at the school gate I used by a group of older boys who stopped me in order to determine whether I was a "Nat" or a "SAP". I had no idea! Nor did I know that there was an election about to take place, and that the major parties where the "Nationalists", and the "South African Party".

That day I guess I also learned that there were "Afrikaners" and that I was not an Afrikaner. During that year I also learned that the Anglo Boer War was still being fought by some of those boys. At the end of my Primary School Career I in effect left Allanridge to complete my High Schooling as a boarder at Grey College. Ironically by the time I had finished school, the Boer War in Allanridge was over, by then it was about girls, and language was generally not an issue.

After a year in the Naval Gymnasium I then found myself in Durban attending the University of Natal. From the moment I got off the train, I was struck by the fact that here the lingua franca was English. There I also met a lovely lass who spoke English, and together we then spent 55 years working our way from Durban, Pinetown, Hayflelds (PMB), and Town Bush Road (PMB) to Howick, the hub of the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, and also a thriving retirement village.

Many parts of the Midlands resemble the Northern European countryside as there are lush green pastures for cattle to graze on. It is also a center for the production of milk, cheese and vegetables. As one passes through the area there are many species of European trees and bushes that were planted by the English and Dutch settlers. [1]

Enough!!! in my working past I have been accused of digressing while lecturing, and what has happened here is probably a good example of that. So!!!, going back to Allanridge. There I learned that some white folk were different. The owner of the Cafe(, and a Porsche) was a Greek. So were the owners of many the other cafes in South Africa at that time. It was much the same for Market Gardeners, they were almost always Portuguese. They were different.

When I entered high school I met more Greeks. The first Greek I met there was Pythagoras. The next was Archimedes, and he was followed by Euclid. Half way through my high school career I met Douglas Dukas. He was also a border at Grey College, and hailed from Henneman, a small town on the edge of the Orange Free State Gold Fields. His parents owned the local cafe, and the only day of the year that they were both at home for lunch, was Christmas Day. They were not only different, they worked hard.

Moving on. Given that I taught Physical Science at Glenwood High School, Mathematics at the Technikon Natal, and finally Computer Science at the University of Natal, I continued to bump into famous Greeks who lived 2000 years or more ago. Their contribution to our understanding of the world was, and still is, amazing. There were of course others (Nationalities) that contributed, and the same is true of their work.

These days what I read is supplied via my interactions with sources on the WWW. Needless to say, the Genie in the Cloud is aware of my interests, and so I am still being exposed to the work done by the Greeks that lived 2000 years ago, and it still amazes me. This morning it was, "The Antikythera mechanism" It is the oldest known example of an analogue computer. Follow the link provided below and be amazed.

Oops!!! Almost forgot. Archmedes Screw is also a fascinating Greek invention and I intend to build a prototype.

Some Links

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