A different view on current affairs & history
Over my life of 72 years, I have witnessed this building slowly crumble and fade away. Now little more than a pile of bricks, my memory was pricked after 40 years after relocation to Joburg when a Mrs. Charlotte Brunette surprised me with a photo of an oil painting of this building. Now yet another piece of the giant PE puzzle has found its niche in the mosaic.
Main picture: Church on Kragga Kamma-AI Enhanced
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Initially the area known as Kragga Kamma stretched all the way from the Van Stadens River to the headwaters of the Baakens River. Included in this vast portion of land was a lake then called Klaas Niemand’s Lake but now renamed Lake Farm. Replenishing the lake is a short feeble stream called grandiosely Klaas Niemand River. Correctly speaking such a lake can be referred to as an “endorheic” lake, id est, that is one with no outflow.
Main picture: Lake Farm. The picture was obviously taken many years ago as the Lake has sadly not looked like this for years. The probable reason for this is the curtailment of the water flow due to the building of farm dams for their cattle.
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Prior to the 20th century, hunting was both a sport and a source of protein. The early explorers and adventurers in the 18th and early 19th century all reported encountering huge herds of elephants and even buffaloes roaming around in the vicinity of Kragga Kamma. By the time of the arrival of the Trekboers in the mid-eighteen century, most of the large game had been exterminated except for a patch near Alexandria.
Now it was the turn of the small game to be decimated all in the name of sport.
Main picture: PE Hunt Club on Willowby Farm, now Glen Hurd, owned by George Parkin
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Prior to WW2, Port Elizabeth hosted a prestigious motorcycle race known as the PE 200. This was the culmination of the development of motor cycle racing since the first race held as a 60 mile relay on the 7th August 1922 on the Kragga Kamma circuit.
The early engines on the motorcycles were satisfactory for level or downhill riding but as soon as a hill was encountered, the rider had to pedal to assist the bike’s ascent of the hill. But this was only the start of what would ultimately become the power machines of today.
This blog covers the development of motorcycle racing from that date until the Second World War as well as the development of the early bikes.
Main photo: Winners of the PE 200 on 1st January 1958
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Preceding the arrival of the Dutch farmers in Algoa Bay, intrepid adventurers and naturalists were exploring the area. Amongst this band of hardy individuals was a Swedish naturalist, Carl Peter Thunberg, an apostle of Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist, zoologist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. Due to Thunberg’s discoveries in the Cape Colony, he has been awarded the sobriquet of “the father of South African botany”.
Of all the observations made by Thunberg during his three-year stay at the Cape Colony, two of them resonate with me but for vastly divergent reasons. This is the story of Thunberg’s brief sojourn in the wilderness that was Port Elizabeth in the 1770s.
Main picture: Carl Peter Thunberg in later life
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For me the inscription on the granite statue, “The greatness of a nation consists not so much in the number of its people or in the extent of its territory as in the extent and justice of its compassion” is apt. That Port Elizabeth chose to honour our equestrian friends who were slaughtered during the Boer War epitomises that humanity.
Main picture: Horses being offloaded at the Port Elizabeth harbour during the Anglo Boer War using the sling-hoist method.
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