‘Tussen die Klippe’
In 1940 Alberton was recognised as a Registration Authority under the Motor Vehicle Ordinance.
At the time the Transvaal registration numbers were prefaced by a series of letters beginning with a T for the province, and followed by a letter allocated alphabetically so that TA was Benoni, TB Boksburg and so on. Occasionally synchronicity made TJ Johannesburg and TP Pretoria.
Since Alberton was classified much later it received three letter TDK. Needless to say the registration letters caused delight and amusement in the rest of South Africa as an abbreviation of “Tussen die Klippe”, a reference to the topography but also symbolic of Alberton’s reputation as a rural backwater overshadowed by the two big rocks of Johannesburg and Germiston.
*Interesting to note that the first mayor of Alberton, Mr PJ Fick, was awarded the registration number TDK 101 and he used this number right up to 1968.
*Taken from An Alberton Album, published by the Alberton Town Council 1997
