The monument around us: The story of Leighton and Ann Hulett and St Francis Bay - R.N. Simpson

Born near the Transkeian border in Kokstad, East Griqualand, then still officially part of the Cape Province, brought up in rural southern Natal, and now in his 30th year as a St Francis property owner, Robin Simpson has a strong feel for, and understanding of, everything Leighton and Ann Hulett and St Francis Bay stand for, past, present and future.

Following school, and a civil engineering degree at Natal University College, Durban, where he was SRC President and Rugby Captain, he saw active service with the SA Engineer Corps in the Middle East and Italy during the 1939–45 War. Post-war, as an Elsie Ballot scholar, he gained an honours degree and MA in Economics at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Thereafter, his career embraced an unusually wide and interesting spectrum of industrial, commercial and consulting activities, bringing him diverse directorships and chairmanships of companies and associations, and including even the establishment of companies in South Africa, England, Spain and Australia and, as a member of the South African Liberal Party in the politically turbulent early 1950’s, the writing of a book on contemporary South African politics.

He first visited Cape St Francis in 1955, with a fishing rod, to try his luck at the lighthouse. Few fish were caught, but he returned to Port Elizabeth with the St Francis virus already coursing through his veins.