by Chris Marais
But what a setting. We had driven in along the riverside, passing orderly ranks of grazing flamingos feeding in the lagoon. Never mind all the bonking tortoises along the way, this place also had amorous European bee-eaters lined up on telephone wires. The succulent Karoo vegetation led down to cliffs, beaches and rocky outcrops where dassies lived in their dozens. This place was just waiting to become another overdeveloped millionaires’ playground. Jet skis and time share and golf and white mischief and selling off-plan and high security walls and levies and such. Heaven on a schtick.
“Please let it be a national park one day,” I begged no one in particular.
We wanted to talk to some of the Groenrivier community, but how could we break the obvious ice? I thought I’d lure them out with my lost tourist act, cameras swinging from my neck, baseball cap flipped around, a look of dumb wonder on my face and my feet trudging aimlessly down the road. It’s the way I normally dress and behave, so it wasn’t much of an act.
It worked. Pretty soon, there was a rustling in the homesteads. Out came Hilda, her husband Buks and their son Jacques, who also went by the name of Catfish. Hilda asked me to take her picture. I obliged, although the sun was at a terrible angle for portraiture and I could do her face no justice.
They were among the 70-odd families – mostly from Garies in the hinterland who used the Groen Rivier Mouth as a weekend-party venue.
Then we met the only couple who had moved in permanently. John and Zanne McDonald walked up and introduced themselves. He was tall, with shaven head. She was short, with floppy hat. They were both friendly and invited us back to their spot.
Openly admitting to being ‘white squatters’, the McDonalds had been living at Groen Rivier Mouth for six years. They left the strait-laced confines of life in a mining town and now revelled in their higgledy-piggledy surroundings.
They were well organised, though, and had hooked themselves up with solar power and inverter batteries. Major rolling-power blackouts would be like tits on a bull to them.
“You want to watch the sport?” John offered. And although I was dying to do so (being media-free and travelling has its down side in the cricket season, I find), there was a job to be done. Which was basically to find out how the hell these folks had ended up squatting in Paradise.
“Let me show you something else,” said John, leading me into his house, where a giant lobster and all its magnificent appendages adorned the south wall.
“We get them bigger than that,” he said, unconsciously rubbing his tummy as if a well-presented Thermidor had just made its way down there. “We put limpets on a hook out just beyond the rocks. Then all we do is reel the lines in. You’d better have a net big enough to catch them all.”
Right. A great sea view on the right, cricket on telly to the left, cold beer in hand and a crayfish tail for supper. You poor bastards, I thought bitterly. Where’s mine?
We all sat down in their shaded porch. I saw a car pass slowly outside. Now who could that be? I moved a strip of netting out of the way for a better view. I was becoming a Groen Rivier Mouth local, after no more than 90 minutes in this place.
“And there are our pets,” said Zanne, pointing down at a colony of dassies on the rocks. The McDonalds fed them with apples, cabbages and carrots. Although unofficial, this was probably the healthiest McDonald’s outlet on the South African coastline.
“What if the government chases you from this place?” I asked. “You know you don’t really have a legal right to stay here.”
“We’ll just sneak back in again,” they all chimed – one big happy lobster-eating, beer-drinking, good-timing, dassie-watching family of gypsies living in dwellings in reduced circumstances with the happiest of hearts. We thanked them and drove off in search of life and lunch at the Namaqualand village of Garies.
“It’s Sunday – we’re closed,” said the grim-looking woman at the Garies Hotel, a rather tatty grande dame of an old country establishment.
“A small, quick drink at the bar, perhaps?” I ventured.
“It’s Sunday – we’re closed.” All right then.
We drove on to Bitterfontein and sat silently outside the local railway station for a few minutes, remembering our Port Nolloth buddy, Alf Wewege, who had met a ‘weekend darling’ from the Lonely Hearts pages of a farming magazine right here 30 years before. She’d looked a lot older than her photograph but had made up for it with a couple of bottles of mampoer, said Alf. So they had a passionate time at the Bitterfontein Hotel until her train arrived a few days later.
Continuing past Papendorp and Lutzville we came around a corner and our breathing simply stopped at the sight. The most extraordinary scene opened to our right, as the sun began to set over the ocean: a classic ‘beauteous bay’, shaped just perfectly, lined by an appropriately aged fish factory and punctuated at one end by a lighthouse in full working order, its beam flashing back and forth like comfort itself.
This was Doring Bay, an inlet that could have been part of the Scottish Hebrides. Except when you looked to the left and landwards at the motley collection of drab, mongrel homes.
“Jules, you know I’m no friend of developers,” I said.
“That I know,” she replied.
“For once, though, I have to say this place needs to be completely knocked down. Then they must decide on one classic seaboard style and get an honest developer up here. I’d be the first to buy property in Doring Bay.”
The Van Wyk family who ran Die Anker Guest House led us to their self-catering flat. We turned in early and lay on the bed watching the Doring Bay lighthouse beam play backwards and forwards across our curtains. After eight days on the West Coast, we were becoming accustomed to falling asleep to the sound of crashing waves.
The next morning, we corralled our filthy washing into one bag and made for the laundry at Strandfontein, a holiday-home village up the road.
My anxious notes that evening:
“Strandfontein is like a Stephen King novel, one where the whole town seems to be inhabited by vampires who sleep in their coffins by day. They are tended by housemaids who sit and laugh ghoulishly at strangers in the Laundromat.
“And there’s us and our sack of laundry in this zombie town. I ask the cabal of maids for help, but they look at me with stony eyes. And when I stalk off, they titter.
“But we are determined to wash these smelly clothes. So we drive down to a little shop by the beach and get new coins, washing powder and advice on how to use the machines. Very creepy. Must get out of here soon.”
As we drove out of Strandfontein, Jules looked back at the ocean.
“Stop.”
I pulled over and we both jumped out, taking turns with the binoculars. Not too far out at sea, a southern right whale breached, like a huge dancing giant, flinging itself above the horizon again and again. A private show for us – because no one else was looking …
Chapter 6: Elands Bay
Broke and Eating Bait
Autumn, 1997. The West Coast hamlet of Elands Bay wakes up to a foul-smelling invasion from the sea. It is D-Day for the West Coast rock lobster (some fools like me mistakenly call it crayfish) and thousands of them emerge from the depths, gasping in a crustaceous manner. For a local fisherman, who is legally allowed four tails a day, it’s a sin to see 2 000 tonnes of young and tender lobster arrive in this pathetic fashion. For the seafood-craving tourist who pays hundreds of rands to land one on his dinner plate, it’s equally shocking. Instead of temperamental chefs preparing the delicious tail, boiling and garnishing it and then presenting it with a flourish, massive front-end loaders are hauling piles of dying lobsters away to be dumped.
In the summer of 2002, about 1 200 tonnes of lobster come marching out at Elands Bay again, demanding oxygen. This time environmental officers, policemen, the army and the navy are called in. Even members of the public pitch in where they can. They save a hundred tonnes of lobster, rushing them to commercial holding tanks or flying them by helicopter out to m
ore aerated parts of the sea before they die of exposure.
And back in the cities, we stare at the newspaper photographs of kreef piled up on the beaches. Our mouths water, and we find ourselves reaching for the mayonnaise sauce. Is it safe to eat a ‘walkout lobster’? Sometimes. And then sometimes not. Not good odds for the seafood lover.
What causes this mass walkout? Ironically enough, it all comes back to the upwelling, that glorious wind-driven process that forces nutrient-rich cold water up from the depths. It’s feeding-frenzy time for marine life and everyone along the food chain has a party. But as the upwelling matures, sometimes diatom blooms are born. They literally consume all the oxygen in the water as they decay, leaving the local sea life very short of breath.
If you go for a cyber walk through Internet World, somewhere near the corner of Loopy Canal and Crazy Street, you’ll find a whole bunch of sites that will tell you the ‘Red Tide’ comes from other quarters:
“And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea.” – Revelation 16:3.
The end is nigh. Prepare for your doom. That kind of stuff.
We were sitting down for supper at The Cabin Restaurant back in Doring Bay, discussing lobster matters. Owner Elize van Wyk was doing something magic with a kabeljou in the kitchen. Even though it was her husband Reynold’s 67th birthday, he was happy to join us and talk about West Coast life. Lobster, in particular. Kreef.
Outside, a kick-ass storm was lashing the West Coast like a fishwife beating a straying husband. Furious, wind-driven rain bulleted onto the windows. At sea, the whitecaps came galloping onto the beach. I shuddered with pure delight to be here, out of the storm. With something fishy happening in the kitchen and something cold to hand.
Reynold told us the story of the old canning factory down by the lighthouse.
“In the 1930s the North Bay Fishery Company set up its operations at Doring Bay,” he said. “To secure the land, they paid a certain Mr Bleeker to moor his canoe out in the middle of the bay and stay there for six months so that permanent residence could be claimed. They set up a corrugatediron-roofed factory and built about 20 houses for their workers – wood panelling inside, corrugated iron outside.
“Not one of these homes has been demolished. In some of them, however, the corrugated iron has completely rusted away and been replaced by brick. But mostly, the wood panelling inside has been retained.”
In those days, only poor folk ate rock lobster. The middle classes used them as bait. Ironically enough, the French were paying local fishing companies top franc for good tail. That’s probably why, to this day, the prices are still too rich for local tastes, and most lobster caught in South Africa is exported.
“We used to take them out from under the rocks, twist the tails off and use that for bait to catch hotnotsvis,” said Reynold. Then he leant over the table towards us, lowered his tone and added, in a conspiratorial whisper:
“But I, for one, have always loved eating kreef.” It sounded like dining on lobster was something you did privately back then, so the neighbours would not think you were ‘broke and eating bait’.
The Van Wyks arrived here from Lambert’s Bay in the mid-1950s. It was a time of plenty for the lobster industry. Everyone had a job.
“In fact, they brought in 500 Xhosas from the Transkei to help catch the kreef,” said Reynold. And then the resources were completely overfished in the quest for larger dividends for shareholders. And, of course, bigger bonuses for management types. Soon there were very few little tails wagging out from under the rocks. There was no work. But most of the 500 Transkeians stayed on in the hope of something happening.
In the 1980s, with the lobster industry on the rack, young people began filtering out of Doring Bay in search of a life somewhere else. Houses emptied and a stillness settled on the little cove again.
“We lost people and buying power,” said Reynold. “Things became petty. I once sold baby food to a coloured mother after one o’clock on a Saturday afternoon and another shop reported me to the authorities. I received a stern warning from the magistrate. This small-town mentality …”
I was in too good a mood to climb further down the wormhole of lobster-town politics that evening, so I enquired after some West Coast biltong: the famous bokkoms. Reynold immediately brightened.
“Here,” he said, flourishing a bag of the stuff. “I’ve got a guy who vacuum-packs it for me.”
I have to say my first encounter with bokkoms was not as bad as the time I had to drink deer-foetus whisky in a Borneo bar with a bunch of oil workers, back in my bold and silly youth. But it wasn’t a highlight, either. It was tough and smelly and bony and not very nice at all.
There were still two chunks of this ominous, dark fish flesh in the packet. Jules and I sneaked a look at one another. What to do with the smelly stuff? We could definitely not use the bokkoms as car deodoriser. We could also not eat another piece. But nor could we just leave it there on the bar counter. Reynold would be deeply hurt. So we carried the bag of stinky fish with us to the dinner table, where the delightful Elize brought us firm-fleshed, fresh kabeljou and veggies. The bag of bokkoms lay reproachfully near the salt cellar. And was conveniently forgotten when we left the restaurant.
Walking out, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck tingling. I half-expected Reynold to come running up, saying:
“Guys, you forgot your bokkoms …”
The next day we left Doring Bay (after startling the Van Wyks by giving them each a warm, Jo’burg farewell hug) and headed off inland for another ‘tree house moment’. Let me explain. It’s when you develop an obsession with something obscure. An experience you want to capture and take back to your tree house and look at and polish when days are dark – and friends aren’t answering the phone.
So it was with the Heerenlogement, a seemingly obscure cave on the Trawal road about five rooibos tea farms from Doring Bay. This was the Holiday Inn of the 1700s. The Benbow Arms of the 1800s. A stopover for adventurers, crooks and prospectors. It had a freshwater spring and grazing on the hill slopes. It could be guarded. From the mouth of the Heerenlogement you could see forever.
The famous Oloff Bergh passed through here in 1682 on his way to the north in his search for copper fields. It must be noted that Oloff’s trusty guides (I don’t know if they were Bushmen, Strandlopers or Khoi) actually showed him the cave. Most Africa explorers of old had to be led to the sites they eventually discovered – a fact that carries its own strange irony.
Just more than a century later, the Heerenlogement hosted its most flamboyant guest, in the form of naturalist (hunter, endearing character, ‘soft touch’, baboon-lover, general show-off and possible philanderer) François le Vaillant. The Frenchman arrived in splendour, ostrich feather in his wide-brimmed hat, the scheming Chacma baboon Kees at his side and a retinue of Khoi and their wagons in his wake.
They stayed there for a week, eating dassies until they could take it no more. François le Vaillant’s name was scratched on the inside wall of the cave, along with others like Bergh and Andrew Geddes Bain. For my money, it’s the most significant, mysteriously misspelt graffiti in South Africa.
Lunchtime at Lambert’s Bay, and we trooped out to Bird Island to watch the gannets in their multitudes. Nearly 25 000 of these ‘mad geese’ were going through the entire gamut of gannet protocol: sky-pointing, bowing, preening, feather-nibbling, hovering and squawking as they landed and took off. Who wants to be a gannet air controller?
There’s an old West Coast yarn about the local form of capital punishment, back in the days of the guano hunters. You strapped a fish to the condemned man’s forehead and floated him out to sea, where a dim-witted diving gannet would gouge his brains out with his beak. We also heard (and this was, quite possibly, a true story) of a guy who drove his inflatable dinghy through a flock of rising gannets and was speared through the neck.
Several weeks after our Octo
ber 2005 visit, the endangered gannets at Lambert’s Bay deserted Bird Island en masse. Conservationists confirmed that the exodus was provoked by seals attacking nesting birds at night. About 300 breeding gannets were killed within a few weeks. Seals had been reported attacking the birds at sea off the island. Studies show that up to 10 000 gannets may have died through seal predation between 1998 and 2002. But the seals had never attacked the (estimated) 11 000 pairs of nesting birds on shore, despite the presence of a growing seal colony on the island since 1985. An entire gannet-breeding season at Bird Island was lost, with gulls eating up the abandoned eggs. Bird Island gannets make up 14% of the world’s gannet population. The Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism has since issued permits to shoot seals – mostly adolescent males – that attack the seabirds.
But the tales of the guano collectors on this vast coastline were the most gripping. At one stage, more than 500 competing guano boats were moored off Ichaboe Island, further north, off Namibia. A typical squabble between guano hunters would begin with someone tossing a rotten penguin egg at someone else. Then a live penguin would be hurled in anger. Then out would come the cutlasses and pistols. Artificial fertiliser arrived in the 1960s and the bottom fell out of the guano market. So to speak. And all the crazy men left the island.
After visiting the gannets, we returned to the mainland, fell on a lunch of fish and chips like wolves (those wolves, obviously, who eat fish and chips) and remembered a previous visit to this place, when the air was thick with the stench of fish being processed. We mentioned this distinctive aroma to restaurateur Isabel Burger, whose husband worked at the fish factory.
“That smell? That’s the smell of our money.”
The real smell of money around here lay in the ‘chips’ side of the fish-and-chips business. There were more potato farmers up here in the sandveld than you could shake a dipstick at. Those very farmers were having a potato convention in Elands Bay when we chugged into town and took up temporary lodgings at Die Bottergat (The Butter-bum).