Joy McKean Part 3

Joy and the Bantam Part 3

By Ashley Blair

Travel in Africa.

The incredible story of the New Zealand midwife who rode a 150cc Bantam Major around the world alone continues. 

On the way to Beira in Mozambique the Kampala called in to Seychelles, Mombasa, Zanzibar and Dar Es Salaam. Joy was not one for the highlife as she wrote that cocktails with the captain were “rather dull”. The Bantam had to come ashore on a lighter and that, combined with all the paperwork, took almost two days. It was after 4:30pm on 26 November 1955 when she left for Umtali in Rhodesia*. 

Joy spent her first night in Africa in her sleeping bag on a concrete floor beside a river – but underneath a shelter. It was hot, there were mosquitos - except when the wind was blowing - and she did not have much sleep. Part of Joy’s diary for the next day, Sunday 27 November 1955, reads:

A cloudy day. Got up before daylight. A car arrived before 5:00am so I went over on the punt with it. The punt was pulled across by men who pulled on a wire cable, but the Pungue River was not wide. The road was unbelievably rough for about 6 miles and then a good bitumen surface commenced. It was straight flat going with the railway on my left through cultivated and wet areas and small African settlements. There were beautiful cream and pink lilies along the roadside - as large as Belladonnas and similar to ones in Ceylon. After about 70 miles the bitumen ceased and low hills commenced; they were covered in trees and a dry savannah grass below which the land had been fired. The road became terrible - bog, water and deep ruts every hundred yards. Detours were at every creek where a bridge was under construction. One detour was nine miles. The grade was good but the further I moved towards the mountains the steeper it became. Made a halt at Gondola, a small town and railway centre. It was just after 9.00 am. Continuing, the mud ceased after a few miles and except for creek detours the road remained fairly good to the border. 

A couple she had met invited Joy to stay with them in Umtali. At 3,000 feet the Umtali night was cold she needed two blankets. The following night she slept under a tree just off the road on the savannah and had to put on all her clothes to keep warm. At Salisbury the South African High Commission were non-committal about her chances of getting into South Africa as her registration papers from the South African Nursing Council arrived in New Zealand after she had left. However, the Nursing Division of the Medical Services for the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland said she could take up a nursing job in Rhodesia. 

The road from Salisbury to Bulawayo was surrounded by farms with black headed sheep, red pole humped shorthorn cattle, dairy cows and she also saw donkeys pulling ploughs. At Bulawayo she stayed with a member of the Registered Nurses Association who told her about nursing conditions in Rhodesia. 

Joy headed off to Victoria Falls where she came across strip roads for the first time. These were a Rhodesian invention where the road was tarred in two narrow strips, one for each wheel, with signs which said: “Cars give way one strip to motorcyclists.” From a ridge she could see the spray from the Falls rising from the bush about two miles away. The sightreminded her of the thermal area of New Zealand. Joy visited Victoria Falls one hundred years and two weeks after they were first seen by David Livingston.

At the South African border at Beitbridge Joy was told she needed more proof she was a nurse before they would let her enter South Africa. She walked back to the Rhodesian side and telephoned the Nursing Council at Pretoria before going back to South African Immigration. She embroidered while she waited. On her tour she embroidered for relaxation and created a stitched map of her travels. After four hours the officials heard from Pretoria and she was allowed through but was told to go straight to Immigration in Pretoria. Just on dark she had a puncture and spent a cold windy night in a bamboo hut beside the road. She was up at 5:00am next morning to fix the puncture. 

At Pretoria, after visiting Immigration, the Registered Nurses’ Association and the Nursing Council, Joy decided she would rather work in Rhodesia and wrote to Salisbury asking about a job following her tour of South Africa. She visited the Voortrekker Monument and rode to Johannesburg en route to Durban. On her first night out from Johannesburg she had trouble finding a place to camp, eventually settling in a grove of gum and wattle trees with the Bantam near the road camouflaged with branches. 

In Durban she stayed with the aunt of two nurses who worked at Waikato Hospital. Joy called in to S. & W. Killerby, the BSA agents for Natal and discovered they had heard about her tour and had been trying to find her. They offered to overhaul the Bantam the next day and when she arrived she was introduced to Mr Stansfield of Stansfield, Ratcliffe & Co., the BSA agents in Cape Town. She also met Mr Andrews, Natal supervisor for BSA. They were very interested in where Joy had been, where she proposed to go and gave her helpful advice. She was also given the names and addresses of all the BSA agents in South Africa. At 4:00pm she left with a spare chain and the Bantam serviced - all for free. 

South of Durban Joy detoured up a very rough road to visit the Oribi Gorge, a spectacular canyon on the MzimkulwanaRiver. The ride to Cape Town was relatively uneventful, apart from misty, foggy weather, until at Grahamstown where the Bantam would not start as there was no spark. Joy “fiddled with the points” and was soon on her way again. Each day Joy continued to make detailed entries in her diary about the places she visited, the weather, the road conditions, the people she met and the places where she camped. 

When she arrived in Cape Town Joy went straight to the BSA agents. Everyonethere was very kind to her and she returned in the morning to have the Bantam overhauled, new tyres fitted and to find out about road conditions and travel in the Middle East. She stayed with people she had met in Beira. Joy had been riding non-stop since she left New Zealand, apart from the sea voyages, and this was the first “rest” for her. In the seven days in Cape Town she managed to visit most of the tourist attractions in the city and surrounding district. Two days after Christmas she headed toward Kimberley.

Part of Joy’s diary for 27 December 1955 reads:

Made the short detour to Worcester, got petrol and ate. Then carried on through uncultivated desert country where some bushes were a mass of yellow flowers. Crossed a low Pass at 3100 ft. De Doorns was particularly fine with miles of vineyards and attractive whitewashed homes dotted among the green of the grapes. African children were gathering berries from a shrub. I continued in poor flat desert-like land into the evening. Only a little wheat and barley grew and mountains were less striking and more distant. The wind was strong and cold and I was now out of habitation except for the railway station houses and a store selling petrol at about 20 - 30 miles apart. It was obvious that the Little and Great Karoo were desert-like. It was much like parts of Australia where there are salt and blue bush only. All rivers and creeks were dry but it was said to be good sheep country. I stopped at Laingburg as the sun set and camped under a pepper tree not far from a riverbed and the railway line. The moon was almost full. Trains passed all night and a strong wind continued. Three people passed near me in the evening but said nothing. I had a job to keep warm.

The next day she met a motorcyclist on a 500cc Ariel who had left Cape Town only that morning – he was travelling very much faster than Joy’s 30 mph. That evening as it was getting dark she wheeled the Bantam into the shelter of trees but an Afrikaans farmer appeared in the darkness and told her she was trespassing. Although he said she could stay at his home, Joy did not want to upset his household and packed up all her gear and rode eight miles to bed down by a bridge. The next morning, when she was just across the Orange River she stopped, made a fire, cooked vegetables and “relaxed with embroidery”. A few hours later the engine of the Bantam was missing, sometimes quite badly. Joy discovered that the carburettor “had not been tightened; so much dirt had got in”. She cleaned the carburettor and rode off with the engine running perfectly just as the sun was setting. She was showered with dust by every vehicle that passed until she turned off to camp under a bush. Although it was beside the railway with trains passing all through the night, Joy recorded in her diary that she had a pleasant night as there was no wind and a cloudless sky with a full moon. 

In Kimberley the next day she rode around sightseeing, stopping at a park to wash under a tap and eat pineapple before visiting the Kimberley diamond mine, known as The Big Hole, where she obtained a pass to see uncut diamonds. She was impressed with the diamond display and the commentary. Afterwards she talked with the Bartletts, an American couple who invited her to visit them at Fire Island, New York. Many months later Joy did visit them. At Bloemfontein she bedded down at about 10:00pm in a park but as it was not very private she got up early the next morning. At Dewetsdorp Joy stopped to eat in the main street under the shade of a tree and was surprised when a Lebanese man came across the road from a shop and gave her a lime drink. She was even more surprised to discover that the man had a sister in New Zealand. 

Just past Mafeteng in Basutoland Joy asked some women if she could take their photo and they gave permission on condition she sent them a copy of the photo. Emely Semokowrote her name and address in Joy’s notebook. When Joy was back in Salisbury she sent three photos to Emely and received a letter back from her before leaving for London. This began a life-long connection between a New Zealand midwife and the village of Ha Ramohapi. Joy had a very enlightened and empathetic attitude to all African people she met. She often referred in her diary and in her recordings to African homes rather than the more usual term “huts” used at the time. 

The roads through Basutoland were very rough and somewhere before crossing back into South Africa the Bantam lost a fork nut. Joy rode into Golden Gate National Park, north through Kroonstad and stayed at Parys with a widow she had met at Victoria Falls. Next day she rode north to Johannesburg where the BSA agents replaced the right-hand fork spring and nut and greased the bike. She was most disappointed that there were no vacancies on gold mine toursbut when she got to Pretoria a woman at Immigration managed to make her a booking for a tour in four days’ time. Joy rode back to stay at Parys where she washed her hair, wrote letters, wrote up her diary and as the Bantam had not been running well, decarbonised it. 

On the day of the mine visit she left the Bantam outside Shinwell Bros., the Transvaal agents for BSA, with a note telling them of the poor running. Joy found the mine visit fascinating and wrote almost 700 words in her diary describing all she had seen and heard. The BSA agents had her motorcycle ready when she arrived in the afternoon. They had put in new points, a new spark plug and cleaned out the silencer. At 4pm she headed north. Joy’s diary for Wednesday 1 January reads:

Up at 5:30 am and made my way to Warmbaths through fields of peanuts, maize and open thorn bush land. The town was situated at the foot of a line of hills and was named for the hot springs there. Got petrol and then went and had a hot bath for 1 shilling. It seemed a very popular place. Ate and wrote my diary before getting on to Nylstroom. Becoming very hot. The hills began and the land became poorer. Few areas were cropped; thorn bush and large outcrops of rocks as usual. Africans sold baskets on the roadside as well as watermelons. Near Nylstroom the bike stopped and I changed the plug. More hills. I was surprised to see how little I had remembered from my journey through Naboomspruit and on to Potgietersrus. Here I bought food and carried on a few miles when I lit a fire and had boiled eggs. The sun was very hot but by 2.30 pm the clouds had become heavy and it seemed rain could fall. The road passed through a valley of African farms and kraals. Citrus orchards and maize crops continued till the road climbed over a low line of hills and dropped onto cleared open land. After 20 miles I reached Pietersburg. Short stop, then continued on flat road with long ups and downs and odd rocky hills about. The Africans were tending their cattle and maize. Their kraals were nestled against granite rock hills with succulent trees growing between the rocks. A little rain fell. Reached the Tropic of Capricorn about 6.00 pm and took a photo. Then carried on until dark. I was 10 miles from Louis Trichardt, so seeing a good place off the road in unfenced land, I spent the night in scrub. It was warm and overcast. 

At the Southern Rhodesia border the Immigration officers, although very diplomatic, were not keen to let her in. She had £19 which she thought was a lot of money as she had only spent £15 during her 36 days in South Africa. The officers assessed her living expenses at £2 a day and they thought £19 would not go far. Finally, she was given a form stating she was required to find work in a week and to report to the Immigration Department within that time. Joy turned off the main road to visit the Zimbabwe Ruins and like all travellers was both amazed and mystified at what she saw. 

At Salisbury she was told she could start work at the Lady Chancellor Maternity Hospital the next day so she had to quickly buy stockings, uniforms and a veil. The matron was very happy with Joy who wanted to work night duty in the labour ward. During the four and a half months she worked there, Joy spent many of her days touring on the Bantam and managed to see most tourist attractions. She revisited Victoria Falls twice more as well as the Zimbabwe ruins again, climbed 8,300 foot Mount Nyangani and rode north to Lusaka. She bought herself a second hand 35mm Voigtländer camera to take colour slides. However, when the films were processed in London, Kodak put a note with them to say they had been ruined by the heat.

All the time in Salisbury she was planning her ride to London with help from AA and Cooks Travel. She also read a number of books on Africa at the public library. 

*Place and country names are those Joy used in her diary.

Extracts from Joy McKean's diaries of her 1955 to 1957 world trip, as compiled by her niece Catharine A. McKean and following Joy's death, have been included with the permission of Catharine A. McKean's estate and Julian K. McKean as the trustee of Joy McKean's will. These diaries reflect the views and impressions of Joy McKean only and the language is that in use at the time her diaries were written.

Acknowledgements

Suzanne Barnaby

Geoff Clarke

Annice Collett, Vintage Motor Cycle Club 

Steve Foden, BSA Owners Club librarian

Lynda Goulden

Julian McKean 

Bernard Kerr

Liz Robertson

Jane Skayman

Heather Woods, New Zealand Nurses Organisation

References

McKean, C. Midwife on World Safari. Privately printed for the McKean family. 

Interview with Naomi Margaret (Joy) McKean, Date 21 May, 10 July 1984 Ref OHA-2175. Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand.

The Motor Cycle.

Trove. https://trove.nla.gov.au/