Posts tagged “History”

I’ve just googled “rubbing-stones” and come up with some surprising results, not at all what I had in mind. Advertised were stones to smooth bricks and tiles, stones for use by sculptors, materials for making stone-rubbings, and ‘lucky’ stones...

It’s that time of the year again when, walking through the coastal bush or forests, one’s nostrils are assailed by a sweetish, fetid waft that results in most visitors inspecting the soles of their shoes. Those of us that live here are of course...

The term “brand image” is a comparatively recent concept, although the idea of linking a product to animals for example, is as old as the hills. I have noticed of late advertisements for cement associated with elephants, car tyres with lynx and...

When last we were at Kariega a couple of hippos had taken up residence in the dam close to Reception and as a result we were unable to walk the Wildebeest Trail; the hippopotamus despite its bulk being capable of moving pretty quickly out of water...

The restaurant at the Main Lodge is surrounded on three sides by the twisted branches of trees punctuated by the great green candelabras of the tall euphorbias and in winter by the scarlet-flowered aloes. These thickets are the remnants of a...

As young boys my friend Graham and I spent a good deal of time pretending to be hunter-gatherers, living off the land. This involved, amongst other things, making bows and arrows for our “hunting” expeditions, and of course, tipping the arrows...

It was finding a large sheet of cork that led to my collecting insects. I brought it home from where I had found it amongst the rubbish behind the shops. It was obviously something out of the ordinary, and a treasure to a small boy, but I wasn't...

The south-east Cape coast is an area regularly beset by drought. The family farm diary bears witness to this, and it seems that hardly a year passed that was not “the worst in living memory.” Nonetheless for close on 200 years farming activities...

It was in April 1947 that Dr Robert Broom, the noted doctor-turned-palaeontologist, announced to the world the discovery at Sterkfontein caves, some 70 km south-west of Pretoria, of “Mrs Ples,” the fossilized skull of an Australopithecus...