50 Years of Umko 1966 - 2016 1966 - 2016 | Page 60

next to the tents and tentpoles in the back and he and Colin Mercer set off
for the Umkomaas valley. On the way they were stopped by police ‘dagga
check’ road blocks. Each one wanted to search this heavily-laden truck with
its back wheels invisible under the loadbed and its headlights aimed at
Venus. The last lot put sniffer dogs on it who get very excited at the thought
of a meal from the Royal Hotel!
The food was duly delivered to Old Buck campsite that night - late but
sufficient. There was even ice cream and fruit salad left over. KCC noted
in SA Canews: Oscar Chalupsky had his fill and was satisfied, which answers
questions of was there enough; and as to quality: Well, Arthur Egerton ate his!
On the way back the lighter F250 hit the tar and picked up speed only
to disappear in a cloud of dust (this according to the driver of a following
BMW). A loud bang had preceded a loss of control - right rear tyre burst.
However, having Driven the Fastest Milk Cart - in the West, this was but a
small challenge to our Ernie, Ernie, and he brought this cart to a safe halt
where the wide-eyed Bee Emm driver helped him and Colin change the tyre.
The KCC report also proudly stated: This must be the only race where
competitors erect and take down their own accommodation after paddling 60km.
*Bugsy enjoyed the distinction of finishing last with Basil Cary in the ‘83
Umko - in a time of 16hrs 13mins when the Pope and Tim Cornish won in
8hrs 2mins. Bet their story was more interesting than Pope’s and Tim’s!

Organising and Paddling and Organising

In 1984 Ernie only got back to his Musgrave Road flat in the wee hours
of the morning, showered and changed into his paddling kit and drove
straight to the start at Hella Hella. Yes, dear paddlers, remember who our
sometimes-maligned and slandered officials are behind their official badges
and uniforms: paddlers like you and me. So without a wink of sleep Ernie
set off from Hella Hella on Day One in his Accord with his ‘paddling
captain’ Greg ‘GT’ White sitting in front. This Day One just happened to be
the longest-ever Day One of the Umko before or since: 91km*, all the way to
Old Campsite. Even Oscar said as he pulled in at the overnight stop that day
“Never in my life have I sat on my arse for so long!”
*Reliable saucers (who are often in their cups) have put this first day
finish at Old Campsite, Old Buck, Mpompomani and just above Bad Rapid,
with the distance varying - by their confident accounts - from 80 to 103km!
Any of these guesstimates still make it the longest-ever Umko single day.

Mart and the barbel

Once at St Elmo’s a local scout troop had been deployed to help out with lunch
duties. Martin Loewenstein was standing with twins Marlene and Jenny
at the counter getting soup and rolls when one of the scouts accidentally
poured hot soup onto his hand. “I pulled my hand away and shouted out
a loud “FU-UCK!”. The scoutmaster freaked out telling me not to swear in
front of women. I tried to tell him it was an instinctive reaction to the burning
soup, but he said if I carried on talking back to him he would ban me from
supper. So taking up the challenge I told him to stick his supper - I would
get my own. I had brought along a handline and some hooks and a sinker, so
found a cricket and baited up and threw into the fast-flowing Umko. After
only a short while I got a bite and had the twins holding on to me while I
pulled in a big barbel. Marlene snuck into the kitchen at suppertime, made
friends with the cook and fried up my barbel for supper. It was delicious. In
hindsight I suppose I could have handled it differently but I had to prove
something . . haha. “
(Aside: St Elmo is the patron saint of sailors and abdominal pain. That just seemed
interesting).

UMKO 50 Years

Mart and the barbie

Mart and Derek Howe confess: “We did get pissed the night before and
could hardly walk back to the tent. Next morning Derek was still under the
weather and had a fat barbie. We got into the canoe and rolled right over
into the muddy drink . . . “
Owen Hemingway remembers the day thus: “Derek Howe hit the pub
hard and got to bed late. The next day on the river Derek hurled onto his
spraydeck, gazed intently at it and said “Boerewors! It must have been the
boerewors that made me ill”.
During one of the last official overnight stops at Josephine’s Bridge a young
KCC paddler decided to take advantage of Ernie’s fully stocked bar. He was
eventually bundled off to bed in terrible condition. In the early hours of
Sunday morning Rob Davey was woken by a flurry of activity next to the
generator which had been started. There was this same young man lying
on the ground being attended to by our very own KCC cardiologist, Dave
Gillmer. Turns out this fellow woke up having difficulty in breathing and,
suspecting he was having a heart attack, summoned help. The good doctor
stabilized him and to this day insists that he did not use the generator
to shock the heart back into rhythm. The race committee took a decision
banning the paddler from getting onto the water for day two as his alcohol
level was still way over the top. But he had other plans, portaged a few
hundred meters upstream of Josephines Bridge and then blended in with
the batch before slipping past Ernie. Thankfully he made it all the way to
Riverside.
Rumour has it that Cookie’s wife would not hear of him naming his first
child Honda, even more so as it was a pretty little girl.

Mud

We all want water in the river, but the rain that brings it also falls on the
roads! One overnight stop Duncan Porky Paul remembers the Daily News
Reporter (and Rob Stewart’s cousin) Evelyn Holtshouzen’s car was stuck in
the mud. “We were pushing him out when the car was suddenly freed and
the wheels spun off covering Dutch Timmerman in mud from head to toe as
he was standing directly behind a wheel. All we saw was the whites of his
eyes and white teeth. Dutch was really unhappy but we were all laughing
our heads off”.
Canny officials meanwhile, realising their vehicles would not make
it up the muddy road out of the valley, ordered paddlers to push all the
vehicles up to the top of the hill. Meeting with some reluctance to this form
of physical labour before a tough day’s paddling, the heavies had to resort to
threats. They announced that the race would not start before the last vehicle
had been man-handled up the muddy slope! That did it! The vehicles were
shoved to the top in short order. A slight delay occurred when the bombastic
owner of a Chev Nomad (in Mr Umko’s brusque judgement ‘probably the
most useless apology for an off-road vehicle ever to grace SA’s roads’)
announced that no-one was to touch his car - it would make it out under its
own steam. Well, very soon its spinning wheels had to be shoved out just
like all the others!

Mud In Your Eye, and other Official Capers

At the 1972 overnight stop Paul Chalupsky’s eyes were itching and blurry.
He thought from the constant splashing of waves into his face. He consulted
Doc Curson who rolled back his eyelids and removed packed strips of
mud! Doc then instilled eyedrops that stung like hell. “I usually only use

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