I frequented Arniston regularly in the old days for many reasons, but mainly for spearfishing and Jock Dichmond a character absconded lawyer who in his forties simply left a lucrative career in a family legal firm, Dichmont and Dichmond in Cape Town. Not only that Jock was an old family friend of my late parents. He did this, moving his kids, attractive wife Ann out to Arniston as he and a well-known surgeon Sandy (cannot remember his surname, I think it was Brown) had bought the old fishermans hotel. When he was asked why, he simply replied, Easy decision, I prefer fishing to law.
In the bar in the Strandlopers pub there was a large head of a Black Musselcracker
While the Arniston Hotel of today offers four-star sophistication in 67 rooms and the pampering services of an in-house spa, the original hotel (built around 1935) started out as a much smaller seaside inn. The late Jock Dichmont, Cape Town lawyer turned fisherman and one-time owner of the hotel (he later became the barman of the Strandloper Bar), appears to be one of the most colourful characters ever to have lived in the village.
In his later years, he would apparently regale his patrons in the bar for hours with fishing stories, of which the one about the "Goatfish" seems to be the best known. Above the bar, Dichmont had mounted a stuffed musselcracker to which he'd added a goat's beard. When an American tourist asked him what sort of fish it was, Dichmont told him it was a "goatfish" - not just because of the beard but also because, at night, it crawled out of the ocean, fed on the grass ashore and then returned to the sea. The story goes that the American was quite taken in by the yarn, until the regulars couldn't contain themselves and gave the game away.