User:Lindsayvanniekerk

Lindsay van Niekerk was born in Cape Town on 24 September 1957 at St Joseph's Hospital. Her parents are Elizabeth "Betty" Marian Gilfillan (Sprot) (1930) and Alfred "Ted" Edwin Gilfillan (1922). She has three siblings: Barbara Jean (1955); Katherine Beverley (1959) and Helen Elizabeth (1961).

The Gilfillan family lived in Cape Town, moving from Pinelands to 16 Eden Rd, Claremont in the early 1960's. Lindsay and her sisters attended Stepping Stones nursery school, and in 1964 Lindsay began formal schooling at Rustenburg Girls Junior School in Rondebosch. She took the E4 bus to school. Bus fare was 1c in 1964 and rose to 2c in 1965. The school uniform was a blue belted cotton dress with navy blazer and white panama hat. Her teacher for the first two years was Miss Dutton who drove a Morris Minor with indicators that jutted out from the side panel between behind the driver and passenger doors. The first books to be read was Old Lobb and Theseus, the story of a boy in ancient Greece. This was considered more sophisticated than the infantile Janet and John books the other class read at the same time.

The Gilfillan children went to Muizenburg Beach which was a long drive down windswept suburbs to the less glamorous western beaches of Cape Town. The long wide beaches were less popular because of their exposure to the battering south-easter wind, than the eastern beaches at Sea Point, Clifton and Llundudno. They also climbed Table Mountain and surrounding mountains in the district. Family friends, John and Margaret Lange and their two children Paul and Jane were also enthusiastic mountaineers and took the children on many climbs.

There was no television in the 1960s so entertainment was either through play, reading or the radio. The children listened to Springbok Radio, the commercial station which broadcast many radio serials and music programs.

The main family servant was Esther (can't remember her surname) who was a young coloured woman from the Cape flats. She had a small room at the back of the family house which she often shared with her boyfriend Christie. Esther had had an operation on her foot where a piece of cotton wool had been forgotton. As a result she walked with a limp and often complained of the pain in her swollen foot. She supervised the children, feeding them in the kitchen and looking after them when Ted and Betty went out. Esther followed the Coloured fashion of having her top teeth removed which affected her speech.