Slow down, don’t move too fast
A visit to Cathcart explains why the Eastern Cape’s N6 is called ‘the friendly route’, says GILLIAN WARREN-BROWN. There’s time for a chat, exploring some history, and adventure too
As I drove into Cathcart, I glanced at the dashboard clock. Old habits die hard: that one stemmed from childhood when I’d check to see if we were going to get to school before the bell rang. Until I was nine years old, we lived on a farm close enough to the town for my mom to drive us to school every day. So coming back, all these years later, Cathcart had a warm familiarity. And – I checked – the school’s heavy cast-iron bell was still there, hanging between the same solid pillars.
If you drive from East London north towards Queenstown, you can’t miss Cathcart, tucked at the foot of Windvogelberg. It’s a small town but – at least to the locals – Cathcart is not just the village but the entire farming community spread over 40 kilometres in every direction.
Although there was plenty that felt familiar, I could no longer claim to be a ‘local’ so I’d asked one of the farmers, Theo Kemp, to be my guide.
He greeted me with a giant bear-hug before we set off on our first excursion. We turned off the N6 into the shopping street, which is wide enough to U-turn an oxwagon and where the dressed sandstone buildings appear to have grown out of the earth.
A couple of blocks down, we took a sharp left and my tyres began to do a jive with the gravel road as we headed out of town and into the rugged Henderson Valley, where Ferndale 4x4 Trails and Outdoor Adventures has made good use of the terrain to create challenging and highly rated trails. While visitors tackle them using their own 4x4s, manager Stuart Pringle was behind the wheel as we climbed through an indigenous forest belt to mountaintop grassland. There, we startled a mountain reedbuck before stopping to admire the 360-degree view: a ring of distant mountains, with Cathcart to the west.
Back in the car, and en route to another outlying attraction, Thomas River Historical Village, Theo and I talked about the sort of family connections that give a small platteland community its character.
‘My great grandfather [from an 1820 Settler family] arrived in 1870,’ Theo said. ‘He was mad about cricket and the story goes that he used to boast about his family being able to field a whole team – he had nine sons and a daughter.’
Those cricketing genes were certainly passed on; various descendants, including Theo, have played at provincial or national level. Some of them, with uncles and cousins added, revived the family team tradition. ‘About 30 years ago we had a Kemp Eleven that played against a side drawn from the district league teams. We remain unbeaten,’ said Theo, with a hint of satisfaction.
Great-grandfather Kemp was already farming on the other side of Cathcart by the time Thomas River station was established. It was situated where a cluster of small forts stood, built for defence when this was frontier country. Now the old station and settlement, known as Thomas River Historical Village, falls within a 31 000-hectare conservancy.
Before doing any exploring, the midday heat forced us to make a beeline for the bar. The yellowwood counter of the old trading post now sees plenty of beers cross its planks when the place is buzzing with farmers and visitors on Friday and Saturday nights. Thomas River is 28 kilometres from Cathcart, but that’s nothing to farmers who cover at least that distance during a day’s work.
While I was looking at the memorabilia in the pub, high-energy owner Jeff Sansom (he bought the village lock, stock and barrel) arrived to give us a whistle-stop tour of the town, which is essentially a spread-out museum.
‘People label me a collector but I see myself as a preserver of history,’ said Jeff. His advantage is that he has a place to put all the things he collects.
Next on Theo’s agenda was a drive out towards Hogsback, through the Fairford and Happy Valley area. The bumpy journey was worth the view of open grassland bordered by the Elandsberg, the clear Klipplaat River and the iconic Gaika’s Kop in the distance. Parts of
Happy Valley reminded me of Scotland.
For my last day, Theo had lined up Malcolm Kidson, who knows everyone and anything worth knowing about Cathcart. He was just as I remembered him: full of beans. His grandson Lance proudly told me his grandfather had climbed Mount Kilimanjaro to celebrate his 70th birthday some years back, having used Windvogelberg as his training ground.
Malcolm moved to the town 56 years ago to produce and print the local newspaper, the Cathcart Chronicle, which started in 1881. He showed me the front page of an early copy, which was chock-ablock with advertisements for reaping machines, saddlery and the like. Sadly, he had to close it down a decade short of its centenary – due to lack of advertising.
Before Cathcart became a village with a newspaper, it was a small military post during the Eighth Frontier War (1850– 1853); there’s still at least one building with gunslits. It was named after Sir George Cathcart, Governor of the Cape of Good Hope during the last two years of the war.
‘Although Cathcart was situated on the Great North Road, it was only when the railway line from East London was opened in 1879 that the village really began to flourish,’ said Malcolm.
After looking around the museum, we bumped into Jongile Tole, who’s involved with community development. A highlight, he told me, is that 18 youngsters from Daliwe township are learning to play African drums and the recorder.
A quiet interlude followed as I admired the beautiful stained-glass windows in the Anglican church, St Alban’s, which was built in 1886.
It was drizzling when we emerged so we took shelter in the Old Oaks Coffee Shop, where – over an excellent cup of coffee – Malcolm told me about Kenya Corner: a row of corrugated iron houses that abut Windvogelberg.
During the 1950s charitable townsfolk, led by farmer Callie Evens, refurbished a row of abandoned railway cottages and offered them to refugees from Kenya who had fled the bloody Mau Mau Rebellion. Now they provide subsidised accommodation, mostly for pensioners.
This is the sort of thing that says a lot about the town: it’s a haven for those who need a break. It’s not bursting with things to do but it is full of heart. I felt as though I still belonged.