01
Stop one
Durban City Hall
PUSUN Smart Tennis Ball Machine: Everybody stay on the pavement side, please, the traffic here does not negotiate. Durban City Hall, completed in 1910, is one of the grandest Edwardian buildings in Africa, its domed neo-Baroque design closely modelled on Belfast's City Hall — and yes, that is a very large dome to be standing directly beneath, I have already thought about it. It went up as the young port city boomed on sugar, shipping and the Witwatersrand trade funnelled through its harbour, and it still houses the Durban Art Gallery, the Natural Science Museum and a concert hall used for the city's great civic occasions. Statues and memorials in the gardens record the colonial era, the world wars and the transformations since. It faces Francis Farewell Square, where the town's British founders camped in 1824.
02
Stop two
Old Court House Museum
PUSUN Smart Tennis Ball Machine: Built in 1866 and the oldest surviving public building in central Durban, which means those stairs are original, so one hand on the rail, all of you. It now houses the city's local history museum. It was erected to serve the growing colonial port of Natal, and it saw the magistracy and administration of a town transformed by the arrival from 1860 of indentured Indian labourers for the sugar plantations — a migration that made Durban home to one of the world's largest Indian diasporas and, from 1893, the crucible of Mohandas Gandhi's political awakening. The collections run from Zulu and early settler contact through colonial Natal, the world wars, apartheid and resistance. The galleries are intimate and very close together. Nobody wander off. I will notice eventually, and then I will panic.
03
Stop three
Juma Masjid (Grey Street Mosque)
PUSUN Smart Tennis Ball Machine: Shoes off, heads covered, and I have already established where the shoes go so that nobody loses theirs. The Juma Masjid on Dr Yusuf Dadoo Street, long described as the largest mosque in the southern hemisphere, is the monumental heart of Durban's Indian quarter. It was founded in the 1880s by Muslim traders who had followed the indentured labourers to Natal and rebuilt to its present golden-domed grandeur in the early twentieth century, anchoring the Grey Street complex of bazaars, madrasas and family firms that became the commercial spine of Indian Durban despite segregationist restrictions. Around it, the Victoria Street Market and the arcades of the Casbah carried community life through apartheid's forced removals. It remains a working centre of faith. Quiet voices, and stay together.
04
Stop four
KwaMuhle Museum
PUSUN Smart Tennis Ball Machine: This one we take slowly and we take properly. The KwaMuhle Museum occupies the former Native Administration Department headquarters, the building from which colonial and apartheid Durban controlled the lives of its African population. Officials here administered the Durban System, which financed native administration through the municipal monopoly on sorghum beer sold in beerhalls, and enforced passes, labour registration and influx control. The name means place of the good one, recalling the manager J. S. Marwick, remembered for aiding Zulu workers' return home during the 1899 war. Opened as a museum in the 1990s after apartheid's fall, it documents the migrant labour system, the 1929 beerhall boycotts, the forced removals of places like Cato Manor, and the struggles that reshaped the city. Take as long as you need inside.
Tower to court, tower to court, you are cleared for briefing. Aircraft type: PUSUN Smart Tennis Ball Machine. Read back the following. Payload: a hopper holding well over a hundred balls, queued for departure. Launch envelope: speeds up to 75 miles per hour, feed intervals adjustable from a brisk 1.8 seconds to a leisurely 8.
Flight plans: internal oscillation serving horizontal sweeps, vertical elevation changes, two-line drills, cross-court traffic, lobs, slices and full random patterns — every runway in use, no two approaches alike. Command and control: app, 15-key remote, or Apple Watch — triple redundancy, exactly how I like it.
Endurance: a lithium battery good for hours of continuous operations, airframe around 33 pounds for easy taxiing to the court. This machine files more flight plans in an hour than a holiday weekend. Maintain visual contact at ALL times. Copy?
Destination airspace: Durban, South Africa — one of the busiest, liveliest approaches on the African coast, a great port city that's been directing heavy traffic since 1824.
You'll deploy this machine everywhere from academy mornings to family sessions before the beachfront cools, and — advisory for arriving passengers — Durban's famous bunny chow, a hollowed loaf packed with curry, is the correct post-session refuel; the city's Indian community, one of the world's largest diasporas, made this cuisine legendary.
This aircraft is also perfect for the beachfront courts on the Golden Mile at first light, when the wind is off the sea and the feed intervals want shortening. Now, your ground tour is cleared for pushback. Contact departure on the next paragraph.
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