Every Summer my mother Valerie Benjamin and I return to Westport, my father Harry's home town. Mum met Dad there in 1949 when, as a visiting nurse, she went into the local UFS Buller Pharmacy and asked the apprentice chemist if he'd mind taking her exposed film out of her Box Brownie for her.
Dad died suddenly in 1973 aged 44. There's so much I would like to know about his life growing up in Westport. But by returning, and wandering about with mum wherever our fancy takes us, I find connections to his (and her) past and to my own jumble of childhood memories of the Coast.
Dad's great grandparents, German-born Frederic William Nahr and his Irish wife Rachel moved to Charleston in the late 1860s to start a hotel. The family has been connected to the region, and particularly to its pubs, ever since.
One of the hotels pictured - at Granity - has now been demolished.
http://picasaweb.google.com/114511309688942105420/JulieBenjaminWestCoastPhotographicProject?authkey=Gv1sRgCLP7sJiX3uGHdA#
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