Before I tell you about our life on Valentine Farm and our new chapter in Lydenburg, I need to introduce you properly to Pete Immelman—better known as Fishy Pete.
Pete was about six years older than me, and a fascinating character. Rangy, good-looking—he reminded me a bit of Kurt Russell. He came from an Afrikaans academic family: his father was a well-known Cape Town accountant, and his brother Aubrey was a respected academic. But Pete had taken a different path. The black sheep, in a way.
He'd forged a life as a fly-fishing guide. About four or five years earlier, my brother Niels had met him and, in his inimitable way, asked, “You’re 35, Pete—what the fuck are you going to do with your life?” Pete, in his broad Afrikaans accent, replied, “I’d like to start a fly-tying factory.” So Niels lent him R30,000, and that’s how Fishy Pete's was born.
I’ve already described how I bought into the business, but by the time we moved to Lydenburg, Pete had six fly tiers—Black women already skilled with their hands from basket weaving and the like—producing truly exquisite flies.
Now, I knew fly-tying. I was passionate about it and pretty damn good too. But Pete had this uncanny ability not only to teach the skill at a professional level, but to invent new fly patterns. And he could fish. Jesus, could he fish. He thought like a fish.
If you’ve seen A River Runs Through It, think Brad Pitt’s character. That was Pete. I was a good caster and a solid fly tier, but I could never read water like Pete could.
Over the year or two before our move, Pete and I had become friends. Now, we were business partners, seeing each daily. I was the senior partner—not in terms of equity, but financially. All the money going into expanding the business came from me. I hope I wasn’t arrogant about that. The fact I’m even mentioning it probably means I was.
So there we were. We’d moved into Valentine Farm, just on the outskirts of Lydenburg, on the Long Tom Pass Road. As you head toward Long Tom, you take a right—and there stands the factory Niels had built, called Valentine Projects. That’s where the tile business had been moved from the original Harry Seftel property in Joburg, the one I had setup.
At the time, Niels was still employed full-time by Wood Creations, running the Lydenburg branch, but he’d also started building trout lodges all over the Eastern Transvaal—some of them for big companies like Anglo American. Those side projects, I suspect, were one of the reasons his partners at Wood Creations eventually fired him. It must have been 1995. Niels had moved to White River and, brutally, was ousted from the very company he had founded. That was a major blow.
But true to form, Niels bounced back. He contacted Wood Creations’ biggest competitor, a company in Cape Town run by a Danish guy named Søren Lassen—ironically, a former apprentice of Niels. They made a bid for the Lydenburg factory, and Wood Creations accepted. From there, Wood Creations essentially split: Clip-Lok now owened by Niels and Søren ran the Lydenburg factory, supplying the car manufacturing industry in the Eastern Transvaal, while the Johannesburg operation focused on office furniture and components. The Lydneburg operation was big employed around 300 people.
Back to Valentine Farm: as you drove down from the main road, you’d pass the Valentine Projects factory on your left, then the airstrip Niels had built—one I was the first to land on just a few months earlier. The house itself was a sprawling, single-story bungalow. It was heaven.
My Beechcraft Bonanza sat in a hangar Niels had built, right by the strip. Fishy Pete's was five minutes away in the middle of Lydneburg. Evenings were for my wonderful family—Terry and Mikey—and life felt full of promise.
That year, another character entered our orbit: Dave Hinton. We met him at a wedding in Joburg—a cousin of Terry’s who's name escapes me. Dave, the cousin’s brother, was the master of ceremonies. I was struck by how sharp he was. After the speeches, he came over, we got talking, and he told me he was an accountant working at his father’s firm in central Johannesburg. He wasn’t loving it.
I knew Niels wasn’t happy with the guy running Valentine Projects, so I asked Dave, “Would you ever consider moving down to Lydenburg?” He said, “If the money was good enough.”
I called Niels. “I’ve found a guy with the right qualifications. Want to meet him?” Niels said sure. Dave drove down. I wasn’t at the meeting, but I later heard he asked for R8,000 a month—a huge salary at the time. Niels immediately agreed.
Dave moved down and asked if he could stay with us. Of course, I said yes—it was Niels’ house, after all. So Dave became our lodger at Valentine Farm.
The joke was on Dave, though. When payday rolled around that first month, there was no money in the bank. He called Niels. “There’s no money to pay salaries.” Niels simply said, “You’re running the place—if there’s no money to pay salaries, that’s your problem.” Classic Niels.
But it worked out. Fast forward 30 years and Dave is still living in Lydenburg, married to an Afrikaans girl he met there. He ended up owning Valentine Projects outright—and made a fortune from property that Niels effectively gave him as part of the settlement.
I know this chapter has been a bit all over the place, but that’s how memory works. I’m not working from notes—just telling it like I remember it. What I remember is the excitement. The joy of a new business. A deepening friendship with Pete. Playing chess and drinking red wine with Dave in the evenings and of course the love and connection I felt for my little family. Life felt good.
But not everything was rosy. Around that time, Terry decided she wasn’t feeling fulfilled. She wanted to study again.
You can imagine how that landed—with me having committed everything to Fishy Pete’s, throwing myself into this new venture, and now suddenly my wife wants to go back to full-time studying.
She chose UNISA—correspondence—but still planned regular trips back to Johannesburg to stay at her mom and dad's house in Linden. Her mother -Mary, of course, offered full support. I can't remeber Malachy's position on it but but there was no sense of “you’re married now, you need to support your husband.” None of that.
One evening, we were having dinner at the Inn on Robber’s Pass which is about 10km outside Lydenburg on the Pilgrim's Rest road—me, Terry, Niels, Carey, and Briony. When Niels heard Terry’s plans, he hit the roof. He gave her both barrels. Eventually, I had to step in and say, “Look, it’s her decision.” But he was livid. Mikey was four. I’d sunk every cent into this business. And now she wanted to go back to studying?
Looking back, I think that was the first fracture in our marriage. I didn’t forbid it. I didn’t even try to dissuade her. But I was deeply disappointed. And I paid all the bills, of course. There was no other way.
From my point of view, it was a disappointment, but I was committed to supporting Terry in her endeavours. As it turned out, her enthusiasm for studying lasted only until the June exams, after which she decided that having another child would be a much better idea. Hallelujah! That was something I could get behind wholeheartedly, and I threw myself into the business of falling pregnant with great enthusiasm and even greater vigour.
A real negative from that first year in Dullstroom was that Terry's wonderful, kind and dignified father, Malachy was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. She was devastated.
In the next chapter, I’ll tell you about our final Denver Tackle Show—and the last truly happy family holiday I ever had.