Lakeside: When a Dam Was a Day Out

A rowing boat, a little island and tea afterwards: that is one remembered way of spending a Sunday at Lakeside.

In her recollections of Bulawayo, Margaret Kriel describes hiring boats from the Kabot family, taking a picnic to the island and visiting a tea room for scones. Her account preserves an outing rather than a grand occasion, the kind of afternoon that might leave no record beyond a photograph and somebody remembering it years later.¹

The water is at the heart of these memories: somewhere to spend an afternoon, with enough to do that the hours could pass almost unnoticed.

For another writer, the way into Lakeside’s history was through his grandparents’ smallholding.

Darrell Insley grew up in Riverside, on Redstone Drive. In a recollection published in 2019, he describes walking to the nearby family plot and exploring the adjoining Kabot estate with his friend Darren. The Kabots, he remembered, allowed his grandfather’s cattle and sheep to graze on their land.²

His account looks back to Lakeside’s popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, but his own adventures came later. By the time the boys discovered the dam, its recreation area had deteriorated. Old play equipment and neglected seats suggested the earlier outings they had missed.²

There is something touching about children finding the remains of somebody else’s good afternoon. They could see enough to know that people had gathered there, though the place had already changed.

Insley also remembers a time when the dam spilled again. The water ran past his grandparents’ land, and the boys took to it in Darren’s inflatable dinghy. The adventure ended with his mother collecting them and the discovery that they were covered in ticks.²

That last detail belongs entirely to childhood: the expedition is over, ordinary life has resumed, and there are ticks to deal with.

The two recollections give us different Lakesides. One holds the boats and refreshments of an established Sunday outing. The other holds the discoveries of children arriving later, finding both neglect and new possibilities. Neither account supplies the dam’s construction date or the full history of the surrounding neighbourhood. Together, they show how a place can remain important as its uses change.

There is a later, modest record too. BirdLife Zimbabwe’s Babbler announced an August 2009 outing to “Lakeside, Kabot Drive.” Years after the outings remembered in those accounts, Lakeside still had a place on a local society’s calendar.³

For the neighbourhood’s history, these are worthwhile things to keep: the route a family took, the person who owned the boats, the friend who came exploring. They give later generations ways to recognise a place that a map alone cannot provide.

Perhaps an old Lakeside photograph is still tucked into a family album somewhere. A boat at the edge of the water, a group beneath a tree, a child too occupied to look at the camera. If its owner can add a date and a few names, it could help bring another part of this story into focus.

What do you remember of Lakeside Dam? Were you there for the boats and picnics, or did you discover it in a later chapter?