Forgotten Towns of the Karoo - a photojournalistic essay

Fraserburg
Day 3: 18 December 2005 SUNDAY

Hunger, food and Sundays usually go well together one should think, but not this Sunday.

By the time we reached this town, I was quite hungry (again). I got quite worried when I realized all the shops where closed and I was going to have to go without food for the rest of the day. I’m use to the corner café being open until eight at night and when they were closed we always had the garage shop. Here there were no corner café and the garage hadn’t ever sold anything but petrol and car oil.

While I was frantically searching through the Jeep to find something to stop the hunger pains in my stomach, I was fortunate enough to remember I had forgotten about a bag with a few snacks in it that was luckily lying quite reachable. All the while Etienne was chatting to Kerneels the petrol-joggie, who was busy filling up our tank at the petrol station, I fumbled around the back of the car and found my precious bag.

Munching greedily on my snacks, another customer stopped at the garage and started talking to Etienne. They were talking about the Swartberg Pass, where we were going to go to. This man had driven with his old Sting through that pass, and had laughed at some 4x4 guys who managed in some extraordinary way to get themselves stuck. He simply drove past them and smiled at them. I could just imagine the rage some of those men must have felt when they saw this old 2x4 Sting spitting mud into their faces.

From somewhere behind the garage local music was blasting at full volume. We said goodbye to our friend in the Sting and he wished us good luck on our travels. Just then a land rover pulled up alongside us with equipment hanging all over the vehicle. I looked at them and wondered why they needed all that equipment, when you could make do with half of what they carried.

We explored the town further and found nothing particularly interesting about Fraserburg. The town was asleep, and nothing stirred. We did see an odd building with a plastered wall stretching five to six meters high, and a tree, which grew right in front of the door. Maybe the town was so asleep that they don’t even open their doors. But this was a very beautiful town. Some homes had really stunning gardens, which surely proves that they do spend some time in their gardens, but definitely not on Sundays.

All along the Karoo roads you find numerous ruins, these most likely date back to the Voortrekkers. They used what was available to them, and even built the roof from stones. It is possible to confuse them with old farmhouse developments, but if it looks like corbelled houses, then the Voortrekkers most probably built it.

It is approximately 104km from Fraserburg to Bitterstroom.

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A Short History:

The town was established in 1851. Named after Ds. Colin Fraser, one of the Presbyterians who came from Scotland to become a Ned. Geref. Minister, and after Gerrit Jacobus Meyburg, who was a well-respected citizen from the district.

There are quite a few well-preserved Victorian homes in the town. One of them is the “Peperbus”, an unusual building which was transformed into an office and then later as a church, municipal office and magistrate’s court.
The “Peperbus” and the Ned. Geref. Parsonage are both national monuments.

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