Shorelines (6 page)

It was a day of miracle and wonder with the grizzled, amiable Floors, whom we’d come to like a lot. He also showed us that the oft-maligned De Beers (and there are many reasons to take issue with this diamond giant) had, ironically, kept a huge section of the South African coastline pristine and free (for the time being) of developers and their grubby little millionaire condo-plots.

Time spent in the company of Floors was also a window into the soul of the true Namaqualander. Like the hardy succulents of his region, Namaqualand Man is minimalist, stripped down by the elements of his environment, living by his own rules.

His is not a world of duvets, wide-screen TV sets or sushi bars. Just give him a
karos
(buckskin blanket), a sad old song and a plate of
stormjaers
– little doughball dumplings rolled and fried in fat.

That night, the threat of stomach bombs was far from our minds. Our hostess gave us chicken tortillas – and some parting words of wisdom:

“Most of us go to the grave with the music still inside us.”

Summer, 1855. The old jetty at Hondeklip Bay at low tide. Chained to its piers are three miserable souls, part of a drinking club that tore up the town the night before. Their mates are in the local lock-up, also suffering the effects of too much Cape Smoke brandy.

It all begins the day before, and sounds like a damn good idea. The group of men, copper drovers who have battled across the sands from Springbokfontein (now Springbok) with their loads, invest in a 16-gallon cask of brandy and form a drinking circle around it on the beach. At first, there is much merriment. Then they all fall into a deep depression, have another round and become ‘general disturbances’, making sleep impossible for the few locals.

The magistrate, a large and powerful man called Pillans, is rousted from his bed and emerges from his hut a very angry person. Grabbing torches and a couple of deputies, Pillans soon has the drunken drovers rounded up. He has most of them thrown into the small goal and the trio that can’t fit in are hauled back down to the beach and chained to the piers. They watch the morning sun through a haze of Cape Smoke and remorse. And there’s also the small matter of rising waters.

Winter, 1866. The old jetty at Hondeklip Bay at high tide. Roped to its railing is a ship’s captain with a death wish. He waits for the right wave and flings himself down into the sea, one end of the length of rope tied to his waist and the other to the jetty. Hours later, his lifeless body is found bobbing in the waters around the pier.

Captain Johan Daniel Stephan had brought the
Jonquille
to the mouth of Hondeklip Bay, where it lay at anchor. It was a great mystery to everyone that the
Jonquille
had run aground on one of the reefs – the young captain was familiar with the bay.

But no lives were lost, some of the cargo was recovered and the rest was well insured. It seemed a small matter, something that happens practically every day along this unpredictable West Coast.

On 4 August 1866, the
Argus
newspaper in Cape Town reported thus:

“Readers will remember that, a few days since, we reported the wreck of the schooner
Jonquille
at the mouth of Hondeklip Bay. We now regret having to add that Captain Stephan, her late commander, died by his own hand on Thursday last. We are not aware of the precise cause, which led the unfortunate man to terminate his existence, nor are we aware that any censure had been passed upon him for the loss of his vessel, but it would appear that the fact must have weighed upon his mind and led him to the commission of this rash act.”

Letters between Captain Johan Daniel Stephan and his father, head of the shipping company, were found:

Dear Father,

I had sooner expected my death than that I should lose the schooner, and as I was so certain I have been sadly disappointed. I am the lost son, and you will see me no more …. Believe me, I am sorry, but my time has come, and I shall go where the schooner has gone.

Captain Stephan’s father receives this letter and replies:

Dear Son,

Come on by the first opportunity direct to Cape Town. Be not much concerned about the loss sustained, as long as your brother and yourself have retained your health. What gladdens me most is that you and the crew have been saved. You will continue as ever, like all the others, one of my beloved children.

By the time the father writes this letter, the son has been dead for two days. Much later, it emerges that one of the flukes on the
Jonquille
’s main anchor had mysteriously snapped, leaving the vessel free to run onto the reef. It wasn’t Stephan’s fault at all.

We had no clue of this deeply moving historical background to Hondeklip Bay on the day Jules and I drove in. This information came to us later via a retired skipper with a sharp ear for history. For now, all we saw as we approached the harbour at low tide was a collection of brightly painted little houses, with a ghostly mist descending.

A man with a collie dog walked past on the beach. The collie headed straight for a beached fishing boat, peed joyously on the propeller and trotted off after its owner.

The sea line, only metres away from us, became invisible. The cloak of mist lifted slightly and revealed a flotilla of bobbing tuppies with their suction pipes hanging aft like large intestines. Hondeklip Bay has its own mad diamond-diving fraternity.

An ancient mariner of sorts arrived and sat down near us. He wore a blue worker’s overall and a white cap bearing a South African flag and the words:

“Put Children First Now”.

His name was Ivan Don. By day, he fished. At night, he was the guard at the old lobster-packing factory. Which was a bit sad, because the rock lobsters were fished out of this area more than 20 years ago. Even the West Coast Upwelling could not withstand the constant overfishing.

“Now there’s just a couple of rowing boats that go out for
hotnotsvis
, harders and a bit of snoek,” he said. We asked about the jetty, which seemed to be absent.

“A big storm came in 2002 and washed it away,” he said. “The surge killed three men in a rowing boat, then crossed the road to the Post Office and ruined the petrol pump forever.”

Jules and Ivan chatted away casually, with the fisherman giving colourful insights into life in Hondeklip Bay, until she asked him about the fishing quotas in the area. He told her about his fishing permit, but when she threw in a few more questions, he clammed up and gazed out at the misty coastline.

“Don’t worry, I’m not a Fisheries inspector,” she assured the man. But the brief connection was over, and we drove on. Hondeklip Bay. Dog Stone Bay. How did that name come about?

John M Smallberger explains it in
A History of Copper Mining in Namaqualand.
It seemed there once was a stone around here, a large boulder shaped like a dog. Then a bored traveller painted the stone red. Time passed and foul weather removed most of the paint but for small traces in the crevices of the stone. A prospector came by, looking for copper. He saw those remaining red paint spots, knocked off what was the ‘dog’s ear’ and sent it back to his employers for analysis.

There’s no record of that particular prospector’s later progress in life. He probably found himself another day job shortly afterwards.

We drove past a house where an old woman stood on her porch, keeping her head down and steadfastly ignoring us.

“Maybe she also has a fishing permit that needs checking,” I joked. But, really, fishing permits are a serious matter all along the SA coastline. You’re only a dumb townie if you joke about them.

We left Hondeklip Bay and drove past mining grounds that looked as though they had never seen a rehabilitation programme. On the Waterval– Kotzesrus road, we came upon a farm that sorely needed a break from the hundreds of sheep and goats that had grazed it bare. This place was crying out to become part of a national park for a millennium or three.

And then we were at Groen Rivier Mouth amidst a collection of Zozo dwellings, construction huts and steel igloos. Even the lighthouse was tatty and painted an uninspiring combination of dirty yellow and black. Gullies ran rich with empty beer bottles. Rotting caravans were parked within sight of the breakers. Their owners sat under shade cloth, eating and talking in low tones. As we drove past, sundry strips of netting twitched as hands moved them aside for a better view of us.
Deliverance By The Sea.

But what a setting. We had driven in along the riverside, passing orderly ranks of grazing flamingos feeding in the lagoon. Never mind all the bonking tortoises along the way, this place also had amorous European bee-eaters lined up on telephone wires. The succulent Karoo vegetation led down to cliffs, beaches and rocky outcrops where dassies lived in their dozens. This place was just waiting to become another overdeveloped millionaires’ playground. Jet skis and time share and golf and white mischief and selling off-plan and high security walls and levies and such. Heaven on a
schtick.

“Please let it be a national park one day,” I begged no one in particular.

We wanted to talk to some of the Groenrivier community, but how could we break the obvious ice? I thought I’d lure them out with my lost tourist act, cameras swinging from my neck, baseball cap flipped around, a look of dumb wonder on my face and my feet trudging aimlessly down the road. It’s the way I normally dress and behave, so it wasn’t much of an act.

It worked. Pretty soon, there was a rustling in the homesteads. Out came Hilda, her husband Buks and their son Jacques, who also went by the name of Catfish. Hilda asked me to take her picture. I obliged, although the sun was at a terrible angle for portraiture and I could do her face no justice.

They were among the 70-odd families – mostly from Garies in the hinterland who used the Groen Rivier Mouth as a weekend-party venue.

Then we met the only couple who had moved in permanently. John and Zanne McDonald walked up and introduced themselves. He was tall, with shaven head. She was short, with floppy hat. They were both friendly and invited us back to their spot.

Openly admitting to being ‘white squatters’, the McDonalds had been living at Groen Rivier Mouth for six years. They left the strait-laced confines of life in a mining town and now revelled in their higgledy-piggledy surroundings.

They were well organised, though, and had hooked themselves up with solar power and inverter batteries. Major rolling-power blackouts would be like tits on a bull to them.

“You want to watch the sport?” John offered. And although I was dying to do so (being media-free and travelling has its down side in the cricket season, I find), there was a job to be done. Which was basically to find out how the hell these folks had ended up squatting in Paradise.

“Let me show you something else,” said John, leading me into his house, where a giant lobster and all its magnificent appendages adorned the south wall.

“We get them bigger than that,” he said, unconsciously rubbing his tummy as if a well-presented Thermidor had just made its way down there. “We put limpets on a hook out just beyond the rocks. Then all we do is reel the lines in. You’d better have a net big enough to catch them all.”

Right. A great sea view on the right, cricket on telly to the left, cold beer in hand and a crayfish tail for supper. You poor bastards, I thought bitterly. Where’s mine?

We all sat down in their shaded porch. I saw a car pass slowly outside. Now who could that be? I moved a strip of netting out of the way for a better view. I was becoming a Groen Rivier Mouth local, after no more than 90 minutes in this place.

“And there are our pets,” said Zanne, pointing down at a colony of dassies on the rocks. The McDonalds fed them with apples, cabbages and carrots. Although unofficial, this was probably the healthiest McDonald’s outlet on the South African coastline.

“What if the government chases you from this place?” I asked. “You know you don’t really have a legal right to stay here.”

“We’ll just sneak back in again,” they all chimed – one big happy lobster-eating, beer-drinking, good-timing,
dassie
-watching family of gypsies living in dwellings in reduced circumstances with the happiest of hearts. We thanked them and drove off in search of life and lunch at the Namaqualand village of Garies.

“It’s Sunday – we’re closed,” said the grim-looking woman at the Garies Hotel, a rather tatty
grande dame
of an old country establishment.

“A small, quick drink at the bar, perhaps?” I ventured.

“It’s Sunday – we’re closed.” All right then.

We drove on to Bitterfontein and sat silently outside the local railway station for a few minutes, remembering our Port Nolloth buddy, Alf Wewege, who had met a ‘weekend darling’ from the Lonely Hearts pages of a farming magazine right here 30 years before. She’d looked a lot older than her photograph but had made up for it with a couple of bottles of
mampoer,
said Alf. So they had a passionate time at the Bitterfontein Hotel until her train arrived a few days later.