Wings Over The Karoo
After WWI, small air transport businesses were established in several South African centres. Among these companies were South African Aerial Transport Company and South African Aerial Navigation Company, which operated on the Witwatersrand, Natal, and in the Eastern and Western Cape. Aerial Stunts, an air taxi company, offered joy rides over Durban. Aviation Limited which…
Read MoreTop honour for Karoo soldier: John Clements of Middelburg
The Victoria Cross (VC) was awarded to 78 members of the British Armed Forces for bravery in action during the Anglo-Boer War. One of the recipients of this highest and most prestigious award for gallantry was John James Clements, a son of the Karoo. Clements was born in Middelburg, on June 19, 1872, and shortly after…
Read MoreA Picnic in Cradock, 1850
The Somerset East/Cradock area was a dangerous place in the mid-1850s ,yet this did not put locals off. They often set off to enjoy a day picnicking in the veld. And so it was that on one Saturday in February, 1853, a group of 50 youngsters accompanied by “ten gentlemen” gambolled off into the veld…
Read MoreLocal conflict in Graaff-Reinet, 1786
When Graaff-Reinet was established in the horseshoe bend of the Sundays River on July 19, 1786, that part of the Karoo was far from peaceful. Things were so bad that the first magistrate, Mauritz Otto Woeke, took to drink. His successor Magistrate Maynier was inefficient and caused great discontent throughout the district. A medical man,…
Read MoreA Narrow Escape: Robert Pringle and the stock thieves
Robert Pringle narrowly escaped death when a stock thief fired at him. Bullets hit him in the face, arm and shoulder. According to a report in The Graaff-Reinet Herald on Saturday, November 7, 1851, rascals one night stole some sheep from Thomas Pringle’s kraal. When this was discovered a commando of 14 men – including…
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