Frontier Travel
Take the road less travelled and explore the riches of the Eastern Cape, where you’ll find everything from stunning scenery, old battle sites, crumbling forts, and eccentric country cricketers, to traces of one our country’s most endearing diarists, 10-year-old Iris Vaughan. One of the pleasures of exploring the Eastern Cape Frontier Wars Heritage Route is in
unearthing its hidden treasures – both living and historical.
Among the living, count Bedford’s Lochart Ainslie. Clutching a Stetson to his head in a howling wind while riding a scrambler, he guides my 4x4 over farm roads to view his eccentric cricket ground.
It’s cheekily called the “MCG”, after the famous Melbourne Cricket Ground in Australia. But in this case, it stands for Mill Cricket Ground, because it’s next to the old mill which was built in 1839 and now houses a pub.
“We’ve had Bangladesh play here, in a four-day game against country districts, to name one match,” says Lochart. “Plus Trevor Quirk opened the ground in 1998 and Robin Jackman and Pat Symcox did a show here in a marquee for 280 people.
“Locally, we play for the Midland Bat, the oldest cricketing shield in the country still contested, which started in 1891. It’s a keen rivalry between Bedford and Cradock, a 50-over game played on the first weekend of December. Socially, we also play places like Molteno, Queenstown and Cathcart. We also use the field for the Bedford Garden Festival in October (24th– 26th). Guitarist Steve Newman and vocalist Lu Dlamini will be appearing this year.”
Lochart’s’s farmhouse, Glen Gregor, is built right next to the foothills of the Winterberg and looks straight out at a mountainside of thick indigenous forest dripping with fronds of lichen. It’s been in the family for six generations, since 1835.
British authorities settled all the Scots quite far north of Grahamstown in 1820, including the poet and abolitionist Thomas Pringle. And there are still Pringle farms north of Bedford in the Baviaans River Valley. But life wasn’t easy on the frontier in those days, and nine frontier wars erupted between 1779 and 1879. There are still traces of that epic struggle in this area today.
Forts and Battles
If the history interests you, Rob Speirs, a strapping six-footer who is as fit as a fiddle at the age of 66, is one of the few people around who can take you on a frontier battle tour.
We spent four-and-a-half days locating the sites, using almost every dirt road in the district. One evening we even crawled very slowly up a terrible pass, only to find at the top that the section we’d been on was officially closed!It’s impossible to describe everything we discovered, but among the highlights was the site of fierce battles in the Fort Fordyce Nature Reserve, northwest of Fort Beaufort. Driving up through lush forest, Rob explained a key battle fought between the Xhosa and the British under Lt-Col John Fordyce in the Eighth Frontier War of 1850 – 1853.
The British soldiers had marched around the area so much, and had had such a horrible time of it, that they dubbed this peak Mount Misery. Fordyce was to become the most senior officer killed by the Xhosa, on 6thNovember 1851, and his death was felt as disastrous by the Colony at the time.
Today, you can still see a few traces of the fort erected up there a year later, plus some of the graves of the British soldiers who died here.
Farms Become Forts
North of Fort Fordyce is Post Retief, a fortified base. The British started building it in 1836 on Piet Retief’s farm and at his invitation shortly before he left on the Great Trek. In fact, he was one of the building contractors on it and the money he made helped finance his venture.
Post Retief was used as a supply base and a hospital during the Eighth Frontier War (1850 –53), but was also besieged for three months when farmers rushed within its protective walls. It was rescued in the end by a force of 130 burghers and 140 Mfengu.
You’ll find the outer walls still standing, plus a **stoep** house, all elevated on a slope with a great view of the Katberg. There’s a sign to the “Piet Retief House” nearby, but there’s only a monument there.
“The places that are looked after are usually the buildings that are still used,” explains Rob. “Sometimes buildings are falling apart due to neglect or lack of finances, but often too they’ve been totally stripped by dealers from the big cities who find an unguarded building and simply remove the yellowwood floors and beams, and basically gut the building.”
One of the places he wanted me to see was the beautifully restored fortified farm Barville Park, southwest of Bathurst, which was built between 1843 and 1845. A solid double storey building, it is surrounded by a 2.4 m high stone wall with loopholes for guns. It was called into service in the Seventh and Eighth Frontier Wars.
Today it sits quietly off a dust road, and is a beautiful example of its type. It’s unfortunately not open to the public, but maybe Rob can work his magic for you.
Fort Beaufort and Adelaide
Here you might find the slightly obsessed Moose van Rooyen, now retired, who has been the curator of the museum for 27 years. He’s been collecting South African war memorabilia since he was 17. Today, though, he’d fit right into a **Lord of the Rings** movie, looking a lot like a smaller version of Gandalf, complete with glasses and a ponytail.
The museum, well worth a visit, has a couple of cannons outside, as well as weaponry, paintings and sketches, including copies of Thomas Baines’ sketches of the Eighth War. It also houses displays on transformation and our post-1994 era.
Adelaide is a town with a multi-layered history, not least among them being that the 10-year-old diarist, Iris Vaughan, whose published diary is a South African classic, lived here during the Boer War. She describes moving into the “residensy” in her diary (her father was the magistrate) and the building still stands.
Moose took us to see it in the grounds of the hospital and showed us a real gem. If you walk around to the back courtyard you will see a childlike scrawl on a stone wall: “CT Vaughan”, her brother’s signature. The two of them painted their names on the wall one day and Pop was not pleased.
“It is the worst thing we have ever done,” she miserably confided to her diary. “Nothing can take off the names now... Our punishment is a hard one. Now we must go to Sunday School every Sunday.”Ever observant, she also noted the cricket being played, despite the war and being invaded by Boers one minute and British troops the next: “Pop is giving a cricket cup for playing between Adelaide and Bedford. Much fighting goes on when Adelaide and Bedford are playing the football match, but not when they playing cricket. Our cricket is the best.”
Out at Glen Gregor farm, Lochart might be slightly annoyed to hear that Adelaide used to be “the best”. But he’s not too worried, he says, because the town simply doesn’t have a cricket team any more. So let’s see who wins the Midland Bat this year…
<sidebar> Useful Contacts
Rob Speirs (Amatola Guest House in King William’s Town): Contact +27 43 642 1747, email info@speirtours.co.za or visit www.amatola.co.za.
Post Retief: Carl Kritzinger (ckritzinger@vodamail.co.za) keeps the keys to the officers’ quarters at Fort Fordyce Nature Reserve (+27 43 701 9600). The nature reserve is also a favourite with hikers and climbers, with good cliffs for abseiling.
Arminel Hogsback Hotel/ Katberg self-catering units: These are characterful country hotels in beautiful surroundings, well placed for exploring the area. Contact +27 43 743 343, email reservations@katleisure.co.za, or visit www.katleisure.co.za.
0 comments :
Post a Comment