Palapye, most spectacularly, demonstrated both. Such has been the extent of change that I completely missed the old road to the station and hotel and ended coming at them from the wrong side of the track. What an uncanny experience! All too clearly the old Palapye of the Shaws and Freemans has been completely shut off from the new.
The formerly bustling railway station, once the centre of the town, was lifeless, and its lovely old building now encased within a hedge and hidden well out of sight appeared to be little more than a private dwelling.The hotel was much as it always was, and in need of an overhaul which its current situation is unlikely to justify. Nearby was the still just recognisable old pavilion, once the pivot of 'white' Palapye's social life as it played tennis and cricket in an area now dotted with thorn bushes. Nearby used to be Mma Shaw's ingenious rondavel house, her Mess where billiards were once played, and the home of Thomas and Barbara Shaw. Not having been there for years it was inevitably disconcerting to find that what had survived the flood and the passing years, had been swallowed up by what is now the Itumela camp which states curiously that it is located in Palapye Village. Perhaps the designation is a deliberate attempt to distance the old railway settlement area from the brash and not entirely attractive new town.
