Forgotten Towns of the Karoo - a photojournalistic essay

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Plooysburg | Douglas

Plooysburg
Day 1: 16 December 2005 FRIDAY

Nestled besides a green koppie, and tucked between dense Karoo trees, was a little town we had thought was nowhere to be found. Just when we thought there was nothing, or that we had missed the town altogether, we came around a corner on the gravel road and we saw structures sticking out through trees. It was a very small development of about ±8 houses, a town hall, convenience store and a petrol station comprising of 2 small Caltex tanks and three very well looked after “kak-huisies”. The town seemed asleep, even though it was a Friday afternoon at 16h55. There was no traffic at all, nothing. Only a small group of townsfolk, and a friendly little dog who sat by their feet, conversed happily beside the road and waved excitedly as we drove past them.

Although the town was so small, it was very clean and looked like a fairly new development had been added recently, especially the houses, with face-bricks and new 4x4’s in the driveways. We only encountered one local car on the road and a daring meercat who thought it would be fun to play the game “Chicken” with the tires. We won, because it wasn’t long before he darted straight back into the thick shrubs in the horizon. This was just the beginning of our encounters with these little furry creatures.

Later on we were told of something very interesting about Plooysburg and that is that they have four ghosts who reside on the koppie. Two of the ghosts were from the Boers who were buried on top of the koppie, while the other two ghosts were a wife and her husband. We were fortunate enough not to have met them personally; well at least I thought so.

It was quite late in the afternoon and without having made any reservations or thought as to where we would spend the night, we drove through to Douglas, hoping to find a campsite or to see what we would find there, since it looked like it would be a large town on the map. The distance between Plooysburg and Douglas was approximately 46km (all gravel roads).