Oldsmobile Kalahari Mail SWA
can anyone throw a light on the cancel on the cover below?
It has been suggested that 3 men (whose "signatures" are on the face) formed a business in 1929 to run a private mail service for certain areas of the vast and rough terrain of SWA not serviced by rail. The letter is sealed, with no contents. The supposition is that the enterprise never succeeded.
Air Mail only commenced in 1931.
Kloof
Uploaded files:These pages from the Runner Post may help you.
Uploaded files:Peter, many thanks for responding so quickly to Kloof with your excellent information. It gives Kloof pretty much all the understanding he needs to place his Oldsmobile Mail cover within SWA / Bechuanaland postal history. This is exactly how we hoped the Forum would work when we started the SAPC website. This thread comes at an appropriate and poignant time when many in the UK are wondering what direction the SA Collectors' Society will take after the passing of Otto Peetoom, editor of the Runner Post in 1995 with responsibility for your piece. Otto's magazines will continue to provide philatelists and postal historians with answers to questions for years to come. It is particularly pleasing for me that they are doing so now on this website so soon after his death. I can see his eyes twinkling good humouredly with a secret understanding of this interesting co-incidence. Many thanks again.
An open letter.
Hello Peter
Absolutely delighted and grateful for your response, and the most interesting 3 page files from the Runner Post. Do you or anyone else know who the three names on my cover may be, and for how long the service lasted?
It does illustrate how difficult contact and delivery of goods and mail was at the time.
The outstanding book "SKELETON COAST" by John H Marsh in 1944 illustrates how difficult journeys still were in 1943.
Steve is to be complimented for the creation and service of this worldwide instant forum.
Regards
Michael
Are there more pages to this article? It ends rather abruptly.
It is unusual to not address a stamped and cancelled letter. Could the names be the Oldsmobile Kalahari Mail team?
Yesterday I visited Bob Hill to return his Apartheid Mail collection. He told me that he tried to buy this cover from Otto Peetoom but was beaten to it by Kloof. It reminds me that Otto was a fair but tough dealer with great material.
Just to put the record straight, the Oldsmobile letter was in the collection of a pal in Wigston Leics, John Leddington. He was a great character, but sadly lifetime handicapped. He passed away several years ago, and he had left instruction to his family to offer for sale his SWA collection to Otto, from whom he had received valued help. As a thank you to me, I should be given this particular cover, the source of which we discussed.
As the Leddington family were not well-off, Otto made a generous offer for the collection sight unseen. The family were delighted, as I was.
Dear Kloof,
I have a cover from this remarkable Oldsmobile Expedition and will try to upload it here.
It is a very rare cancellation and I sense your cover probably has the signatures of the three architects of this Expedition.
I bought mine from Argyll Etkin in 2004 and there are several others we have handled in the last 15 years.
I imagine the economics were probably unattractive and I know from a family friend who worked at Maun in Bechuanaland that there was no tarred road until the Second World War.
Reading Steve's comments, I am sure Otto would have a wry smile about the dialogue continuing post his handling of a fascinating collection!
Best regards
Adam
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Thanks for sharing the wonderful cover, Adam. This Kalahari Oldsmobile thread has turned into a delight. Many thanks to all who have contributed to it. The men of the Kalahari Oldsmobile Mail were intrepid pioneers. I cannot imagine doing what they did and feeling comfortable about it, driving an early motor vehicle across the Kalahari from East to West and back again in 1929 without spares, petrol or water for 100s of miles? You'd do it today in a 4x4 with some considerable planning and a sat-nav but back then? No ways. On the other hand, men in cars armed with machine-guns chased the rebel General Christiaan de Wet some way into the Kalahari in 1914. I believe that all the cars but one broke down before the last one caught up with him and his rebel commando and forced their surrender.
Steve,
You are absolutely right. Since you encouraged me to find my Oldsmobile cover, I have managed to locate a photograph which I imagine came with the cover and I note that this is the same/similar to the photo in the Runner Post which Peter Thy showed earlier.
I am pleased they managed to take a few photos.
Adam
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Adam, your original photo is amazing. The article that Peter submitted included a poor photostat of it and perhaps for that reason I did not notice that while the article drew attention to the policeman on a camel, it failed to highlight the two policemen mounted on cattle. The Khoi (Hottentot), a race now largely disappeared, made extensive use of cattle as a means of transport in southern Africa. As a boy learning South African history I was led to believe that the Portuguese Viceroy of India, Francisco de Almeida, and many of his men, were driven into the sea and slaughtered by Khoi riding cattle or "war oxen". Your photo captures this ancient practice alongside a recently introduced camel and the advent of the internal combustion engine in the deep Kalahari. It is a wonderful record of a changed world.
Incidentally, 'Velox' was a Kodak brand photographic paper, apparently "The Amateur's Favourite Gaslight Paper", (The British Journal Photographic Almanac 1922). It was probably a Kodak camera that took this 'snap' in the Kalahari.