Forgotten Towns of the Karoo - a photojournalistic essay

Leeu-Gamka
Day 3: 18 December 2005 SUNDAY

Once we had left Bitterstroom we came to Leeu-Gamka and realized our mistake in confusing Bitterstroom with Leeu-Gamka. We drove straight past an old train station that had a name board clearly indicating the train station Leeu-Gamka. It had a railway track that runs right through the town, with old buildings scattered all alongside it.

There was an impressive modern church with a garden to make any fairy jealous. Any colour you could think of was in this garden, yellow, pink, purple to a light blue. And every imaginable shape and type of shrub created a wonderful background for these colourful flowers.

An older church as white as snow was right next to it. Its parapet walls looked like a castle wall, with an arcaded front door. The side walls had buttresses supporting the long wall with arcaded windows between them.

One house had a low wire fence with mealies growing in the yard, and two sunbathing donkeys were happily munching at their leisure between them, with a cool breeze playing between the tall mealie leaves. This Karoo house was built for shade, because it had a patio running all around it. Two chimneys were built on either side to surely bring warmth on a cold Karoo night.

There were no tar roads, only angry, stubborn rocks sticking out on the grey-white gravel road. But in the Karoo you would always find some or other form of life underneath a tree, because a family had moved their table and chairs and placed them underneath a tree and happily enjoyed the pleasant shade.

There weren’t anything more that was interesting at Leeu-Gamka. I would have liked to have spent a night there just to explore and maybe find some locals to talk to, because it was quite uneventful passing through this town on a Sunday afternoon.

It was approximately 55km from Leeu-Gamka to Prince Albert.

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A Short History:
After having done some research we figured out why we confused Bitterstroom and Leeu-Gamka. Originally Bitterstroom was a place for travellers to rest and freshen up. It was one of the few drinkable water spots and it is thought that it had first been given the name Bitterstroom by road builders, Thomas and Andrew Geddes Bain.

It became the choice of stop for adventurers, missionaries, explorers, settlers and even outlaws. They all camped near thorn trees where the Leeu and Gamka rivers met. This is where the other name came from, even they are so close they actually are two places.

LINKS:
http://www.heritage.org.za/karoo/leeu.htm

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