Back to Rhodesia for a visit - Bulawayo

The first post on this blog dealt very sparingly on the two places I grew up in Livingstone and Bulawayo. There are some awesome places in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) that luckily the locals could not screw up. I will take you all on a tour of the country's main centres.

The city of Bulawayo where I completed all my formal education and training was the headquarters to the Rhodesia Railways and very much an industrialised city. Some of the buildings are really awesome and the city known for its very wide streets. Here are a few albums of pics.

Street Scenes (pics)

The second pic here is from the 70's and there was always a black points man on duty in peak traffic (name we gave to cops directing traffic).  Even with these wide roads, many intersections had no traffic signs or traffic lights. The rule was yield to traffic on your right and do not turn in front of oncoming traffic. This served us well as there were only traffic lights every 3rd intersection. We called traffic lights robots.

This was a monument to the fallen of the Matabele Rebellion in our Main Street/Selborne and sported a very old multi barrelled gatling gun.  This monument has since been demolished. Buildings in the pic are the Post Office and post Office Savings Bank.

This was Grey Street and had 3 lanes either side. The main roads all had dips at the intersections for excess storm water drainage so you really could not speed despite the lack of traffic control and wide streets.

This was the road to the suburbs and passed through the centenary park and eventually would take you on the road to South Africa. In the background Ascot Towers.

Bulawayo Buildings (pics)

I'll share a few here.

Bulawayo House

High Court and Grand Hotel

Formerly Asbestos House, now the National Art Gallery

City Hall (plenty more pics) of course was the most well known building and not only served as the HQ for the municipality but was also a venue for entertainment with the two large halls it had. A lot of local and international talent performed here as the main hall was bigger than any theatre we had.

Centenary Park (pics)

Park and Centennial Fountain

The Rhodesian African Rifles marching band performed at the park on Sundays and the miniature train was a blast for the kids.

The park also was the home to our museum.

The links have oodles more pictures from the Bulawayo Facebook Page. All the photo albums can be found at this link. You probably will not find better info on Bulawayo, especially the way it was as it is a collective of folk that lived there in the days when Rhodesia was a country to be proud of.