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plane if necessary – a life of freedom and excitement. SWA, Angola, Mocambique, the
Rhodesias – a white man had barely been seen, never mind one in an airplane with a white

woman in tow. It is believed that it was during this time that Billie shot the trophy animals
whose horns adorned Schoonzicht for many years.

Billie was able to bale his father-in-law out of financial difficulty in 1938 by buying
Schoonzicht for £1800. Rumour had it that he had made a fortune picking up illicit packets

of diamonds in the wilds of South West Africa, and even in Angola, on flights he made into
the remote parts of these countries.

Dinks used to drive through Kalk Bay in her yellow Packard, stop at the butcher and walk

in dressed in a flying outfit – and in trousers of course! By now Billie had taught her to fly

and she was one of the women flying pioneers in this country with many solo ‘firsts’ to her
name, but she took her ‘A’ licence only in the 1930s in England.

When World War 2 broke out they were in London trying to tie up the Cessna agency, but
Billie was summoned back to South Africa by the SAAF to train pupil pilots, Dinks

following later. She whiled away the time in London by volunteering as a transport driver –
driving army lorries and cars through London and Southern England. Unfortunately, Billie

died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 46 on 22 July 1942 while on leave at Kalk Bay
– he had been ferrying air force planes to the war theatres shortly before his death. (Fig.

3.20).

Dinks spent the rest of her long life in Kalk Bay – always with a twinkle in her eye and

radiating energy and vivacity. She owned the family home Schoonzicht by then and cared
for her parents until their deaths in the 50s. After that she seems to have been the perfect

foil to her brother Eddie’s emergence into the art world of the swinging 60s. Dinks
appeared in newspaper articles from time to time over the years – including the time she

drove herself to Johannesburg at age 80 to see Eddie’s latest exhibition. She had intended