My Parents

Alf (Albin) Pettersson

25th November 1906 - 4th May 1998

Hamba Gashli Daddy, Shala Gashli - we miss you

My dear Dad, Ake (Alf) Pettersson died when his aneurysm ruptured. It was so sudden and so quick. He left his physical body to go into the spirit world and is now without pain. The wrinkles vanished from his lovely face and peacefully he left us that evening. On the following Saturday from a Coastguard boat, at his favorite place, we scattered his ashes and as they drifted away with the outgoing tide, all of us in this large family threw in beautiful roses to accompany him out to sea. We silently watched as he left us for the final time. Bye Bye Daddy.

New York, New York

Dad ran away from his home in Sweden when he was just a lad of just 14, boarding a boat to the land of plenty, The United States of America. The great continent called him there, to be where his older brother was. Times were tough over there during the depression . However he dreamt of becoming a boxer and earning a mere "Buck a Fight", kept the wolves from the door together with odd jobs here and there. For instance at one stage, he used to clean the great Statue of Liberty and even carved his name into her famous torch.

He once worked for a silk merchant, and on a bitterly cold day in the middle of winter, he and his boss, planned to make a delivery of silk material to one of their many customers. The snow came down thick and fast and soon the roads were shrouded in white. The traffic grinding to a halt along the way, they found themselves stranded in the van surrounded by rolls if silk.

They reached for those precious rolls of material and wrapped themselves up to keep the cold at bay and succeeded in surviving that day. My Father relates, that that was a really bad winter and many people died in that traffic jam .

In yet another period of his life in New York, he was working as a steeple chaser during the days when a lot of tall buildings were going up. One day, he and a work friend, were warned not to climb the steel girders in the snowy weather. My Father was never one to follow orders from anybody and they both decided to take a walk high, high above the ground over one weekend. The steel was very wet and slippery where the snow had been. Very high above the ground, both these men slipped at the same time, as they had been standing side by side. While hurtling towards the ground, they both reached for the same steel cable at the same time. The other man managed to grab it first, which wrenched it out of my father's reach. Dad fell to the ground landing in a pile of snow covered sand, breaking his pelvis. To this day, one of his legs is much shorter than the other and he has walked with a limp since that day. The other man's hands froze to the cable and he hung for many hours in the snow, high above the ground. When the ambulance arrived they were helpless in that situation and had to call for the fire brigade to reach the man. The pipe was cut through on each side of his clasped hands and he was taken to the hospital still holding on. The time it had taken for all this to happen was so long, that none of his fingers could be saved. What a price to pay for a bit of weekend fun.

Dad and his brother Eric Peterson (he changed his name from Pettersson in order to be more American), belonged to Jack Dempsey's gymnasium in New York where they trained in those good old days. Eric went on further to become a successful professional boxer but regretfully after one particularly brutal fight, he became paralysed from the neck down and lived out the remainder of his life bedridden. I had the opportunity to visit New York some years ago and made contact with Eric's son but these days his Christmas cards are coming back and we have lost touch.

Eric was married to a very pretty American girl and Alf was infatuated with her. Eric would have none of this and he went after him with a loaded rifle. My Father parked his car on the side of the road on the docks of New York and caught the next boat to darkest Africa. Years later his brother got the traffic fine for the car that had remained stranded for so long. They did not speak to one another for around 25 years, until my sister Evelyn, who was living in the Bahamas at one stage, traced the family and went to see the family. She was surprised to find that Eric had been bedridden all these years. After Evelyn's visit, Eric dictated a letter to my Father and when the letter arrived, Dad cried and wrote back. Eric did receive his letter but died before he had a chance to reply. Wasted years can never be recaptured.

Darkest Africa

Tanganyika in Africa. was the place to find gold and that was where my Father headed for, seeking his fortune. The Lupa gold mines were, as all gold mines were world wide, rough and tough where deadly games were played by grown men. Avarice abounded ; quality of life was poor. Dirt and dust. These men of old had no respect for human life. They drank and cheated life every day, avoiding disease and theft where they could.

Dad and his friends used to drink in the local pub each night taking turns to pay for their rounds. One of them had died one day of Black Water Fever and it was his turn to pay for the drinks. The guys would not be cheated out of their free drinks and propped the dead man at the bar with his head resting in his hands. There he sat "paying" for drinks all night unbeknownst to the barman. That's the way things were in those days, men lived and died and hardly anyone cared.

Abyssinia

Once, two local natives approached my Father and told him that they knew of a thick vein of gold . After some negotiations with these two men, they loaded provisions and tools for the arduous journey deep into the African bush. They set off, the four of them ; My Father, another white friend and the two local black men.

Night fell and they light a fire for warmth and to keep away any savage animals that may stray into their camp. They swapped stories sitting around the fire light until they fell asleep where they sat. Waking up suddenly some time during that night, they found themselves surrounded by almost totally naked savages. They did not know that they had crossed the border into Abyssinia, a savage and closely guarded native land where the white man was hated totally. The useless yellow metal belonged the the tribes of Africa and not to these while men.

Taking the two black men aside. For leading these white men into this land these men were held captive and subsequently killed for their "crime".

The white men were told to strip naked. Their provisions were confiscated and Dad and his friend were told to walk back over the border. They were told to warn others, that strangers were not welcome in this land. They did leave...naked and on foot. They were the lucky ones.

Dad to England and Back

While working one of his mines, Dad discovered an incredible amount of gold. Excited, he sold the gold for the princely sum of 5,000 pounds Sterling. This amount of money in those days was, he thought, enough for the rest of his life. He magnanimously gave his diggings away to one of his friends and went to England to seek the life of the rich and powerful. In a few short years after spending all his money on a Bentley and Lord only knows what else and with tail between his legs, he ventured back to Africa, back to the call of the Yellow Metal. He was once again a gold miner with a new site. The site that he gave away to his friend, is still there to this day and still produces massive amount of gold to its wealthy owners.

Eva Hunke (16 years old)

My Father was 31 years old when he saw and fell in love with a 16 year old Austrian girl from Graz, who was on holiday with her parents. Behind her mothers back, this young girl started seeing Dad. When her mother found out, she forbade her young daughter to associate with this older man. The mother suspected that her daughter had been jumping out the bedroom window to meet up with this huge Swedish man, so she set a trap by layering drink cans outside the window. She caught the hapless lovers and decided that her only course of action would be to take her daughter home on the next boat to Europe. The day of the journey, the young girl vanished with my Dad and the lovers were nowhere to be found. They married across the border in a town called Nkana/Kitwe and only years later when the grand children started arriving, did the grandmother come back to visit and make claim to her grand maternal rights.

Eva gave birth to seven children in her lifetime, but tragedy struck early, with the death of their first son Ernest at the tender age of three. They were on holiday and had travelled from Zambia to East London in South Africa, where the child started getting sick. It was such a simple operation and he went into hospital to have his tonsils out . The operation was a success but he bled to death in his bed within hours. To this day Dad still cries at the thought of his tiny son.

Eva Dies 10th February 1964 - a very very sad day

Mom and Dad remained married for 28 years until my Mother died while sky diving at the age of 44. It was to be her last jump. My sister Erika and her husband David, had been to a fortune teller a week before in Salisbury which was then Southern Rhodesia and is now Zimbabwe. This lady told them "There is somebody in your family who has something to do with planes....this person is going to die." They phoned my Mother in a panic, who promised to have one last jump in order to get her wings. That day her parachute only opened 50' above the ground, far too late, and she fell to her early death, leaving behind a devastated husband and family. In the church at her service, the padre told the congregation that "This woman will not go to Heaven because she didn't attend the church on a regular basis. "The last thing my Mother gave to my Father was a tin of sandwiches for his fishing trip. He welded that tin closed with the food still inside and buried it with her. Dad hand made a huge stainless steel cross, filled it with lead and put it at the head of her resting place, where she lays to this day, in a lonely grave-yard Kitwe, Zambia. Sadly, I have no memory of my Mother, who died when I was 17.

Dad Marries Ingrid

Ingrid Pettersson with Bianca (the daughter of my brother, Charles and his wife Debbie)

Enter Ingrid - this Angel from Heaven, who gave up her life as a milliner in Sweden and her world travels in the fashion industry, to move to Africa and marry my Father. This lady came into our lives like a breath of fresh air, where she has been friend and Mother to this very large and eccentric family for the past 37 years. This lovely lady left her safe and ordered life in Sweden to move to Kitwe, which was to be her home for many years. In this small mining town there were only two small hospitals and at one stage, Mom had incredible pains in her stomach and had to be taken to Llewellyn Hospital where she was diagnosed as having severe appendix trouble. The Doctor was called but it was a Sunday and he was far too drunk to operate that night and she had to wait until he sobered up the next day. That was Africa---way back then. When retirement age arrived, they decided to move to East London in South Africa, where Ernest was buried. They lived a happy relaxed lifestyle, fishing and playing bowls to their hearts content, until their lives were shattered during a brutal home invasion. After returning home from a mornings shopping, Dad went into the kitchen and Mom into the bedroom to put down her parcels. When my Father heard her screams, he ran as fast as he was able with his false hip, towards the noise and found a man crouched over her beating her head with a pistol. Turning on Dad the man fired the gun after telling him that he was going to kill them both. Unknown to them both, the gun was one of Dad's and was loaded with blanks. In a fury the man jumped on Dad and started assaulting him until Mom then attacked him from the back. The man gravitated from one to the other, beating them. The love between Dad and Mom was such, that they saved each others lives in that attack and fought this young man until a neighbour, on hearing the noise, came to help them. Between the three of them they managed to subdue this criminal, who was well known to the police for having preyed on the elderly. He was arrested, escaped on his way to court and subsequently hunted down and killed by the police. Dad and Mom suffered severe head trauma and after that day, feared for their lives at every turn. When the opportunity came for them to immigrate to Australia they took the gamble and never looked back.

2009 Ingrid is still alive today and re-married a man 10-years younger than herself when she was 86