SOUTH AFRICAN FLEMMER FAMILY SITE

WHO'S WHO IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN FLEMMER FAMILY

HOME | WHO'S WHO INDEX| PREVIOUS ENTRY | NEXT ENTRY | WEBMASTER

HERBERT Anthea (Woolridge)

Herbert Anthea (Woolridge) ANTHEA RUTH2 WOOLRIDGE (PERCIVAL CHARLES1) was born 7 July 1939 in Durban South Africa. She married TERENCE RONALD HERBERT 7 October 1967 in Durban South Africa, son of RONALD HERBERT and KATHLEEN FLEMMER. He was born 7 February 1942 in East London South Africa.


PERSONAL HISTORY OF ANTHEA RUTH HERBERT (WOOLRIDGE)
BORN 7 JULY 1939. WRITTEN IN JANUARY 2003.

My parents were Percy and Millicent Woolridge (Hunt-Pinker). My father had two sisters and my mother had a brother who died young at age 18. My father's parents were Charles and Ethel (Stonely) Woolridge and my mother's parents were John and Frances (Chapman) Hunt-Pinker. I have one brother - Graham Athlone Woolridge, currently living in Australia with his wife Molly (Parsons). They have two daughters - Leigh-Ann and Perry-Jane and a son Graydon and three grandsons.

I went to Penzance Road Junior School and then went on to Durban Girls High School. I didn't really enjoy any school subjects and got more pleasure from my studies of music singing and drama. I appeared in many stage shows.

I joined the Durban Municipal Telephone Department in May 1955 and worked there until 1963. During my leisure time I managed to do quite a bit of cabaret work with bands at various nightspots. I had a lot of fun and the money I made from these shows all helped me achieve my goal of my first trip overseas. I also did gigs for the Durban Publicity Association and appeared in a number of stage and ice shows, although my skating was never really of a professional standard.

I had always wanted to travel and had a list of six places I wanted to see. The Pyramids, The Blue Grotto at Capri, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Rio de Janeiro and Acapulco and I set sail on the "Southern Cross" in May 1963 for a working holiday in the United Kingdom. I took temporary jobs with Alfred marks Bureau and shared a flat in Holland Park with two girlfriends. I traveled several times on the Continent, even getting behind the Iron Curtain with a trip to East Berlin and the infamous Wall, years before it was demolished. I also did a trip around England and Scotland by car with some friends and after a skiing holiday in Leysin, Switzerland I returned to South Africa via the Suez Canal on the Italian liner "Africa".

I had the chance to see the Pyramids on a stop in Egypt, and we also went ashore at Mogadishu, Aden, Mombasa, Dar-Es-Salaam and Beira.

Back in Durban, I worked for a year in the office at Stuttafords and then joined Royal Insurance in 1965, where I met Terry. We were married in October 1967 and moved to Cape Town where our son, Matthew, was born in 1971.

Fortunately Terry shared my love of travel and we have had a very interesting life together. I managed to notch up the second of my target destinations when we went on a cruise on the "Reina del Mar" to Rio de Janeiro and other South American ports in 1969. We didn't do much travelling for some years after that - providing for a child and house purchase took care of all surplus funds. But in 1981, Ter was posted to Zimbabwe where we had six very happy years and were able to travel extensively to Europe, America and the Far East. By the time we left Harare in 1987 for Australia, Ter's next posting, we had managed to get to San Francisco and Hong Kong. Most of our holidays were in the Northern winter as all three of us loved the cold and snow, although none of us were winter sports people.

We lived in Sydney on the North Shore for 18 months until Ter was made General Manager and we moved to Head Office in Melbourne. His job took him all over Australia and New Zealand and we had some wonderful trips including our Silver Wedding Anniversary at Milford Sound on New Zealand South island.

Although we enjoyed our life in Australia, we missed South Africa and our friends and so were very happy to return to Cape Town at the end of 1995, where we were able to purchase a nice house in Kalk Bay.

We still travel extensively and are so pleased that cruising is back in fashion because that is our favourite way of travelling. On one Mediterranean cruise we took in the Blue Grotto which was better than I had ever imagined it to be and on another, out of San Diego, we finally made it to the last destination on my list - Acapulco. Ter has a contract with people on St Helena so we have had two most enjoyable trips on the last mail ship afloat - RMS St Helena. The first of these trips was especial fun because we were travelling with Steve, Judy, Paddy and Ronel, although we could all have done without the five days on Ascension Island before we flew out on the RAF flight to Brize Norton.

But the best cruise we have had to date was the one we took at the end of 2000 with Matt and our lovely daughter-in-law, Dani. We went from Hong Kong to Singapore, via Vietnam to celebrate the new millennium. That was really special for all of us, especially sailing out of Hong Kong on Christmas Eve with all the buildings brightly decorated and the entertainment crew singing carols.

HOME | WHO'S WHO INDEX| PREVIOUS ENTRY | NEXT ENTRY | WEBMASTER