Coast to Coast by Chris Marais & Julienne du Toit

Author:Chris Marais & Julienne du Toit
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Published: 2007-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Whisky & Submarines

De Hoop to Port Beaufort

De Hoop Nature Reserve has a fascinating history and its dunes offer some of the best vantage points for seeing whales. Southern right mothers often come to calve there.

De Hoop Nature Reserve, the famous whale sanctuary, is best viewed in the cheery light of a sunny day. We arrive in a blizzard of leaves and dust, with a gunmetal sky looming down over the horizon. There are strong rumours of a Cape storm arriving soon. Within the hour, the rain is pelting down and we find ourselves temporarily marooned in the little De Hoop Museum near our chalet. Instead of whales, we find something just as valuable: The People of De Hoop Nature Reserve: A Cultural–Historical Heritage, compiled by Ann and Mike Scott of the Overberg Conservation Services. We ignore the storm bellowing outside and read.

During the floods of 1906, the 36 000 sprawling hectares where De Hoop stands today were completely submerged. On Sundays, the extremely sociable farmers of the area visited each other by lifeboat, skiff or, in some cases, crudely built rafts.

This is where the farm Melkkamer once flourished, under the talented and eccentric hand of one John Henry (Biddy) Anderson.

After seven days of constant rain, with water levels ever-rising, the Wilsons of nearby Skipskop Farm decided to visit Biddy Anderson to see if he wanted a bite and some help bringing his livestock to high ground of sorts. Their arrival had to be unannounced, because all “comms” were down. So the Wilsons packed a picnic lunch, jumped in their lifeboat and rowed on over to Melkkamer.

Biddy and his building partner, a man called Dickson, had been hard at work, putting up a loft in the stables. But the rain had temporarily halted all construction, and the flood level was cause for concern. Biddy, for some reason, had a piano downstairs in the stable. He and Dickson manoeuvred it upstairs to the newly built loft. Biddy looked out of the window at the world of water and decided “What the heck?”. So they stalked back downstairs and brought up a case of whisky.

And this is how the Wilsons found Biddy Anderson and the man called Dickson: in fine musical whisky spirits up in the loft, tinkling the ivories without a care in the world.

Before Biddy Anderson’s day, there was a slave called Februarie, originally from Hangklip near Pringle Bay. Februarie had been a droster (runaway slave) who chose to live as an outlaw instead of at the foot of a colonial master. He wandered up the coast some time in 1850 and set himself up in a cave on the north-west corner of what later became the Melkkamer property.

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