A fashionable day out on South Beach

IN this picture, probably taken in the 1920s, of South Beach looking towards the Bluff, Durban residents enjoy the beach in all their finery.

Dress lengths may have shortened since, but the women were still turned out in heels, and the men with jackets and hats. “Facilities” were merely a few beach huts.

The building in the middle ground was probably the original Addington Hospital Nurses Home, before the

Addington Children’s Hospital was built on the next plot in 1928, opening in 1931. The building, along with the children’s hospital, is currently under restoration.

Some 100 years later, as Shelley Kjonstad’s modern picture shows, South Beach is still a popular “playground” for city residents and tourists alike.