Death Notes

Lilani Hot Springs

Story about Lilani Hot Springs:
My grandfather, John BLAINE, travelled from Durban to the States in 1922 to study medicine. He met and married my grandmother, Dorothy PELMULDER (Dutch) in Los Angeles and my father Cyril Delabere BLAINE was born there in 1928. After further studying at Edinburgh, Scotland, John brought his family - now including another son Robert - to Durban in the early 1930s and thence to John's parents' "resort" at Lilani Hot Springs, near Greytown. My grandmother's introduction to South Africa, she told me, reminded her of the stories her father and grandfather told about dealing with the Indians in the "wild west." Apparently, two tribes were at war and the losers happened
to be working for the BLAINE family at Lilani. Granddad Cyril Maud BLAINE, John and other members of the family held off the attackers with a single .22 calibre rifle - convincing the warriors that there were several armed men in the house by tossing the gun back and forth and firing it out the different windows. The attackers broke off after about a day.