I have lived in Gordon’s Bay for quite a few years now, and to date, I had still never visited Pollock Park, a little strip of interesting green literally a stone’s throw away from Vergeet-My-Nie, Jessica’s current play school.

Well, I am happy to report that the status has now changed, because in the space of five days I have now taken the girls there twice – and both times Jessica and Emily have had an absolute ball!

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It’s actually quite a pretty little park, if a little run down, with its area divided in two distinct spaces, one for natural fynbos flora, the other a more open, grassy area for kids to play on. It has a little walkway stretching around and through it, a small pond at the top with geese and ducks (which mightily entertained Emily), some standard playground equipment in pretty decent nick, and the remains of what must once have been a really nice waterway feature.

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Although a little windy, the girls and I made the most of the area, with Jessica taking quite a strong liking to the see-saw. Emily had a go at it as well, but as per usual, the gigantic slide remains her personal favourite!

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As always, when the moment allowed I grabbed a couple of snaps with my mobile phone:

As it turns out, a friend of mine from my Gordon’s Bay karate days (Ian Pollock) has quite a strong link to the park – after all, it was built by his dad! I grabbed this off the Gordon’s Bay History Facebook group (written by Ian):

“Some more info regarding the Pollock Park.

My father, Theo Pollock came to GB +/- 50 years ago as appointed electrical engineer to Gordon’s Bay Municipality.

Those years he embarked on an ambitious project to change the mostly overhead electrical network to an underground electrical distribution system. The primary reason was the super strong South-East winds in GB causing long periods without electricity, also due to geographical layout of GB having an overhead system would spoil views especially on the slopes of the mountain and increase maintenance on the network. Understand Municipalities worked very different those days than today.

All work was done in-house by labourers and electricians. A sizable labourer complement was needed to maintain the then fragile electrical network and the change to underground network, of 2 electricians and 8 – 10 labourers. During times when planned budget was spent, or maintenance and planned work was completed the staff was kept productive on the public open space.

Theo Pollock, electricians and labours claimed ownership of the space due to a lack of maintenance from the Parks section at the time. The design, layout and construction took many years. Apart from cement, very little capital funds were spent, mostly time and effort. The space was divided into 2, one section was left natural with fynbos and proteas, the other section was developed, with dam and water fetcher. The developed area had pumps and an irrigation system to maintain the flow of water during the dry summer months. Gordon’s Bay Municipality named the Park after Theo Pollock as acknowledgement for the initiative and effort of him and his staff.

Unfortunately after Theo Pollock retired in 1991 the Park was neglected, several residents in the area tried to maintain it. Until a few years back when the Parks Dept of the City of Cape Town started maintaining it again. Unfortunately all irrigation, pumps and cabling has been vandalised and stolen by that time.

Theo Pollock lost a battle with cancer in 1994. He however left Gordon’s Bay with two accolades (among others): Pollock Park and the fact that Gordon’s Bay is the only Western Cape town with an entire underground electrical network.”

gordons bay pollock park overhead photo

So well worth popping in to see if you’ve as a local never actually been there before! :)

Update: It was such a good little outing that the girls and I ended up going there quite a few more times before Winter started setting in!

IMG_20150505_171432 jessica and emily lotter - girls playing on merry-go-round 1

IMG_20150505_171515 jessica and emily lotter - girls playing on merry-go-round 2

IMG_20150505_171533 little girl emily lotter on the merry-go-round

IMG_20150505_172137 jessica lotter girl sitting at the top of a slide