When Dave married my sister, Patricia, he was working in Human Resources in the gold mining sector in the Orange Free State Goldfields. As my parents also lived in the Goldfields, I reckoned on seeing them as often as my family visited my parents, and that would be at most, twice a year. Subseqently Dave and his family moved to Durban, and of course much closer to my family. Since then I have seen Dave regularly. He is to be comended for the support he has provided to his own family, and of course his mother-in-law, since she also moved to KwaZulu-Natal.

When I became interested in my own family tree, I obviously involved my sister, Patricia, and her husband, Dave. So Iit was that I became aware that Dave's father, like my own, and I suppose all those whio saw active service during the SEcinf World War, stories that worth recounting. I also learned that Dave's Dad had done his family tree, and that the Cloetes went back quite a long way. It was only recently that I learned that they in fact went back all the way to 1652, the year Jan van Riebeck landed in the South Africa, in the vicinity of Cape Town, to establish the s settlement. The purpose of the settlement was to produce fresh produce to re-vital the shipos of the Dutch East India Company, as they sailded between Europe and the Dutch colonies in the Dutch East Indies.

Whe I started using Gramps to build my family tree, my sister sent me details regarding her family, and include a copy oif Dave's Family tree. It can be viewed here.