The man who can lay claim to being the first baby to travel up Table Mountain in a cable car recently returned to the top of the popular tourist attraction for the first time in 78 years, for a special birthday celebration.
In a trip organised by the Table Mountain Aerial Cableway Company, David Bester and his family visited the mountain to commemorate his 79th birthday.
Bester spent part of his formative years living on the mountain with his parents.
“My newly married parents lived in the Cableway House on top of the mountain after my dad was appointed cable car operator in 1943. My mother was pregnant with me at the time and in January 1944 she gave birth to me,” explains Bester.
He was the first baby (at the age of just two weeks) to travel up to the top of the mountain in a cable car, coming from hospital to go to his parents’ home.
But by the age of eleven months, it was decided that it had become too dangerous to have a crawling toddler living on top of the 1067 metre high peak. This prompted his parents to move the family away from the unique Cableway House residence.
“This was my first ever visit back to the mountain since those early days and I thank the Cableway Company for assisting me and my family in making this ‘homecoming’ journey a reality,” says Bester.
On his first visit back, he spent most of the morning showing family members around the upper mountain plateau where he used to play as an infant. He explained that his mom used to serve tea and sandwiches to visitors in what is now the ‘Shop at the Top’ building.
The cableway has been upgraded three times in its nine decades of operation. There was first the tiny car that Bester and his family would have used, followed by updates in 1958, 1974, and, more recently, in 1997, when the cars with revolving floors, (called Rotairs), were introduced.
This past December, the cableway transported its 30 millionth passenger to the summit of the mountain.
You can watch archive video of the first cable car that operated at Table Mountain (the same one that transported Bester all those years back):
