Forgotten Towns of the Karoo - a photojournalistic essay

Prologue | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Epilogue | About Us | Home

Plooysburg | Douglas

Douglas
Day 1: 16 December 2005 FRIDAY

MI pictured all Karoo towns to be quite small, but Douglas proved me completely wrong. It’s a thriving, fast-growing town with lots of culture. The centre of town was lined with shop after shop, and the streets lined with beautiful deep green trees. Large gardens had low walls with double story houses and families were seen strolling along the streets pushing prams. It took us quite a while to drive through the whole town to orientate ourselves and to see what the town consisted off.

Thereafter we set of to look for a place to quench our thirst, and to eat, because I had become hungry, and we had to look for a camping site, but were unable to find one. I don’t think they have a campsite in Douglas, because we couldn’t find one.

We were subconsciously aware of the apparent petrol shortage, so we stopped at a garage to refill the Jeep, even though we never really needed too. I climbed out and started speaking to the petrol-attendant in English, only to realize that they actually speak Afrikaans to one another.

Just next to the centre of town we came across a Bed and Breakfast, but found two desperately lonely souls trying to create an atmosphere, and who failed miserably, because we just could bear the thought of staying. Since we actually wanted to find a fair number of locals to talk to, we searched further and came across, the Geelhuis restaurant, where we initially felt isolated amongst the local crowd of families who all seemed to know one another. But by the end of the evening, or the early morning rather, our table was surrounded by people and the hub of the restaurant with Christmas carols playing the whole night long.

We came to know the manager Nico right from the start, a very friendly father of three kids. He spends his spare time in artwork, and some of his paintings were seen hanging in the restaurant. He lives in Douglas because he’s divorced and wanted to live in a peaceful neighbourhood where he could relax. But that’s not exactly what he got, because our waiter Louise had been at war with him for the past two days. Her armour was a bucket of water. Somehow during the day she would sneak up to Nico and totally drench him with it. But that night she met her fait, because he was prepared!

Everyone was minding their own business and when she was once again at her tricks, he came running around the corner after her with a whole bucket of ice water. We saw them disappear out a back door and her scream of utter shock as he got her drenched in ice water momentarily halted the whole restaurant. Some laughter was heard echoing through the kitchen. The whole kitchen staff came looking at her and cheered Nico with his success. Nico walked back inside with a broad smile of contentment only to discover his wine glass has disappeared. This was the work of Louise’s father who, during the commotion, walked behind the bar and helped himself to beer and simply took Nico’s wine glass and hid it underneath an empty wine bucket. But it was clear all of them where just playing around and Nico did eventually find his glass of wine. (NOTE: it is illegal for a manager to drink on the job, so we just hereby wish to inform you that Nico wasn’t actually working, he was only having his supper at his restaurant, and after all, it was after hours.) We all had a good laugh and Louise really took her revenge very well, because it wasn’t even 5 minutes or maybe even less, before we saw her smiling and laughing again.

If there ever was any tension amongst the people there, it was definitely broken by Nico’s revenge because everyone started talking to one another. We were told various stories, ranging from diamonds to ghosts. We met a man who drives through South Africa in search of diamonds. He told us that if we ever got the opportunity to fly and look at the Vaal river from above and look down onto the river, we would be able to see a variety of colours stretching along the embankment because of all the different minerals in the area. Apparently it’s quite beautiful to see. But ghost stories seemed to be more interesting and fascinated Etienne immensely and only managed to raise the hair on my neck. These stories stretched throughout most of the night and Nico was the first to tell us of a ghost who made a windmill turn, called the Windpompspook. It didn’t live very far from the restaurant that we were sitting in and Nico thought that we should go there (to my discomfort), but fortunately (for me) and unfortunately (for Etienne and a few others), the wind was blowing too hard and we wouldn’t have been able to distinguish between wind and ghost. It appeared on Pampoendraai road and in order to communicate with the ghost you had to drive up to the windmill, put off your lights and then flash them three times and wait a further five minutes. The windmill would then automatically start to turn.

Nico had gone there twice, on windless nights, just to prove to himself from his first experience that these experiences really where true. They were true. The first time he went there he actually screamed in fright. He said he felt a strange sensation over him and a eerie atmosphere was all around him. Nico didn’t look like a guy who would make up stories and the other locals around us nodded in agreement to his descriptions, who, most likely, had experienced the same thing. This led to conversations about Kimberly ghosts. By the end of the conversation it sounded more like Kimberly’s main population consisted of ghosts than of humans. Apparently even ghost tours have been opened there. One young man around our table was Dieter, who lived in Kimberly but drove all the way to Douglas to socialize at this restaurant; he seemed to know quite a lot about these ghosts. So it was quite evident that he had gone on these tours and had seen with his own eyes at a graveyard how ghosts stood up from their graves, apparently they where Chinese or Japanese. His friends around him had been there too.

During these conversations I noticed Dieters’ table of friends were constantly flirting with the waitresses. I was actually confused at one point because the one waitress had two names and I just couldn’t figure it out why they would talk to her by using two names and that she actually responded to them. I actually thought they where drunk. But it was only when I saw the two identical waitresses walking in, that I realized that they where twins!

But eventually our night (or early morning rather) had to come to an end and we parted from our friends. It was actually me begging Etienne to call the night a night, because from all the excitement of this trip my eye lids where crawling on the floor. We stayed in the four star guesthouse that was right next to the restaurant, Villa de Ghaap. You won’t be able to miss it; it looks as if it is part of the restaurant. Our friends at the restaurant told us that it was owned and run by the Ice-queen. I was quite curious to see who she was, but when I met her she just seemed quiet and reserved. She’s very young and had recently married, and was actually very considerate to us, because when we looked for accommodation on such a short notice, we called her and she drove from quite far to organize something for us. The guesthouse was absolute luxury compared to our forthcoming accommodation and I highly recommend this guesthouse to any traveller. We had a very refreshing night, not even the main road had disturbed our sleep where big trucks come driving past, but they seemed to have crawled past the guest house at a snails pace, because neither of us heard a single one.

Nico Heyneke – 072 299 8852
Dieter – 082 434 3979

* * * * *

A short history:

Doulgas was one of South Africa’s first missionary stations which where established in 1838 at a drift over the Vaalriver by Isaac Hughes from the London missionary society.

Water from the Vaal is being used to irrigate Lucerne, corn, cotton and potatoes fields near the town. Fruit and vegetable seeds are also produced; there’s a variety of (diamantdelwelrye) along the river; and saltpans. 33km to the southeast, is the largest salt producing pan in the land.

Additional Pictures: