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afternoons were entertained by bands from the Cape Peninsula Rifles and the Prince of
Wales Own Regiment. A festival atmosphere prevailed and “Motors, carriages and carts

by the dozen hummed up and down the road [Rosmead Avenue], and the pedestrian
traffic was heavy.” On the afternoon of 6 December, Weston was able to take aloft as

passenger Mr. Fred Barling of Woodstock. Barling had paid a £5 deposit and

experienced “….. less than half a minute’s soaring. The actual distance flown was about
450 yards, and the average height not more than thirty feet.” He became the “first flyer

in the Cape Peninsula.”

Meanwhile the three British aviators had arrived by mailship with their planes. Captain
Guy Livingston was General Manager for the Graham-White School of Aviation at

Hendon, organized and controlled the Hendon Aerodrome, and was responsible for

carrying out War Office demonstrations. Cecil Compton Paterson had taken up flying
two and a half years previously, and had designed and built his own machine and taught

himself to fly. He was Works Manager and Chief Pilot at the Graham-White School and

held Royal Aero Club brevet no. 38. Evelyn Frederick Driver - known as “Bok” for his
rugby skills - was born in Pietermaritzburg in 1881 and qualified as a mining engineer

at the SA College before going to England to study aviation at the Graham-White
School. He held Royal Aero Club brevet no. 110. The three colleagues had earlier

formed the African Aviation Syndicate whose purpose was to “promote the science and
practice of aviation in South Africa.” If there was sufficient interest they hoped to

establish one or two aviation schools, and even a factory for the manufacture of planes.

(Oberholzer, 1974).

Paterson’s self-designed and made bi-plane was taken in its crate to the Good Hope
Gardens at the top of Parliament Street, while Driver’s complete Bleriot monoplane was

trolleyed to the Gardens from the Docks, only its detachable wings remaining to be
fitted. There they were on exhibition for some days and scores of interested pressmen

and members of the public were able to talk to the aviators while watching the bi-plane

being assembled from ash and spruce booms and ribs, onto which rubberised Egyptian
cloth was glued to make the wing surfaces.