Cape Town Lens: Last stand of the Athlone Towers

A Cape Town Rhodes Memorial tagged image from photographer – mallix as published on Flickr.

Last stand of the Athlone Towers

Image by mallix

One last drive-by of the Althone Power Station towers. So we never managed to actually get inside or on top of the towers (altho we came very close to doing so on two occasions) and now they are gone forever. We attended the implosion on Sunday the 22 August 2010 and I got a little video of it here. We got a really good spot to watch it from amidst thousands of people from all over, and despite 3 of my friends trying to get me a press pass from the City. The demolition was set to go off at 12pm and I managed to set my Ixus up on K’s professional tripod, 3 meters up in the air. 5 mins before the implosion was set I switched on the camera and got everything ready. Suddenly there was a little squall of rain and as I popped open my umbrella to cover the camera somebody shouted "there it goes!" and I instinctively hit the shutter. It was all over rather quickly.. 5 mins before the set time. Apparently most people missed the whole thing, especially the 10 000+ people sitting up at Rhodes Memorial, who looked up to realize there was nothing left to see! Apparently the sudden downpour of rain caused some concern to the demolition company and they decided to set it off early, without warning.. As soon as the dust settled we’d gotten out of the area (thanks to some very strategic parking) and into the Fat Cactus for lunch while the rest waited up to 2 hours in traffic.. So it’s farewell to Cape Towns infamous landmark, hopefully we’ll still be able to get into the other buildings one day, altho with the recent activities the site has become much more secure than before.