BARRY TREACY

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First, well done on a great web site. I guess it’s a work in progress at the moment and will be expanded over the coming months. The photos struck a real chord, especially the two of Khormaksar beach where we often walked. I remember people catching sharks off that beach. The sharks were only about a foot long but still strong enough to bend the fishermen’s rods almost double. Looking at the photos brings back the sound of the constantly rushing waves and the feel of the breeze that was always blowing off the water.

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So now to the point. My father, Barry Treacy, worked for Aden Airways when we lived there in 1966/67. He was an aircraft engineer based at Khormaksar. One of his big mates was a bloke called Arthur Bartlett, famous in those parts for cooking up volcanic-strength crayfish curries. We lived in a flats complex at Khormaksar just across the road from the beach (I think the flats were owned by Aden Airways) and I attended the Isthmus School. I was six years old at the time. My brother, John, was aged three.

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I have many happy memories of living in Aden. The dangers there at the time made no impression on me as those tensions weren’t communicated to children by parents. We were told not to kick Coke cans or milk cartons we found lying around in the street because they could be booby trapped, but that’s about all. To me it was just a great place where the sun shone every day and we didn’t have to go to school in the afternoons.

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We spent many a happy afternoon at the Beach Club in Gold Mohr and I remember places like Steamer Point, Ma’ala (however it’s spelt) with its constantly honking car horns and the oasis at Hiswah well. I also recall the time when it rained for almost 24 hours – the heaviest downpour in living memory, it was said – where all the seeds that must have lain dormant in the ground for years sprang back to life and the mountains were carpeted with flowers. It didn’t last for long, though. Once the sun came out everything was scorched back to bare rock.

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Sadly, there’s not a happy ending to my little story. We were among those evacuated in 1967. My mother, brother and myself traveled back to England the way we had come – on a BOAC VC10. My dad stayed on for a few weeks before heading on to Australia, where he got a job with Ansett. We were supposed to follow him out there, but unfortunately he died from a heart attack a few weeks before we were supposed to go - so we stayed in England and the rest, as they say, is history.