14/10/2026
"Choose a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life!"
Looking through some old photo albums not so long ago, made me realise that I have indeed followed the advice given in this quote. My love for mechanical things started when I used to help my father work on his car over weekends and grew when my brother and I bought a 50cc motorbike for R300 and I fixed it up. That bike was a legend in its own right and still gets discussed around a fire. My first car was the red mini seen in the pics, not running when I got it at the age of 16, but running beautifully before long! Several more minis followed and then a host of other cars and motorbikes, always arriving in a terrible state and leaving as a sought after vehicle so that I could begin a new project much to my wife's horror once I was married.
My time spent working in the Naval Dockyard in Simonstown further honed my mechanical skills and it was after an apprenticeship in the Dockyard that I qualified as a Red Seal Artisan.
The rest, as they say, is history but how fortunate am I to truly enjoy what I get to do as my job each and every day! (Colin Henderson)
