The seeds of this book are sown one sweltering afternoon when the red liquid in the wall thermometer hovers just under the forty-degree mark. We are crowded into the small departure lounge at Alexander Bay airport waiting to see my mother onto the Johannesburg flight which has been delayed several hours. To add to everyone’s discomfort there has been an electrical power failure since our arrival. The fans are still, puddles of water seep from under the fridges, the cheese in the sandwiches looks as if it has been under the grill, while the tea water is cold and cool drinks warm. Not the sort of conditions to suit the group of American tourists who have just ‘done Africa’ and are raring to get back to civilization. They sprawl in their chairs and talk in twangy accents of what they’ll do first when they finally shake the dust of Africa off their feet. They apparently found nothing to their liking from Malawi to South West Africa, from Victoria Falls to Oranjemund, from where they had just come.

Behind the small counter a dragon-lady flicks a duster and hisses poison from an aerosol can every time a fly settles. On the tarmac the waiting plane shimmers in wavy outlines in the heat haze. Nobody can tell us what is wrong nor how long the expected delay. Morning becomes afternoon and the shadows are beginning to lengthen by the time the crew board the plane bringing with them the hustle and bustle of imminent departure. The exasperation in my mother’s hissed stage whisper renders her sentence somewhat enigmatic but I get her meaning all the same “You had better write all this down otherwise nobody is going to believe half of it.’

Originally the book was intended as a detached and objective appraisal of Namaqualand and her people. Instead it has emerged as a raw, unvarnished account of life as it happened to us in the seventies while we lived in Port Nolloth. The local, commonly used foul language, has been toned down, a few names have been changed, criminal activities expunged and certain family secrets which would make no sense outside Namaqualand are respected.

It is essentially an account of a young ‘Uitlander’ (foreigner) family who, in the beginning, was reviled, stoned and spat at because we had been awarded the 'most-hated-nation-status' – English. The animosity had nothing to do with us personally and everything to do with the Boer War which the Afrikaner we encountered had neither forgiven nor forgotten. In this part of the world where time marches to a slow beat the events of the war are cherished by the old-timers and are as lucid and lurid as today’s headlines, with an extraordinary power to stir emotions, to inflame hearts and overflow tongues.

The fact that my husband, Lyndon, had grandfathers who fought on opposite sides in the conflict went unremarked since by his name he was obviously descended from the hated English. They treated us accordingly which was worse than I’d treat a rabid dog.

Over the years the picture gradually changed, we became accepted as part of life in ‘Die Poort’(the port) and in the month we left Lyndon was invited to run for Mayor of the town, a major triumph for a ‘bliksem se rooinek’.(bloody redneck)

In the intervening years since we left we have seen films and a television series depicting life in Namaqualand, made with infinite care and not a little love they nevertheless fell short as it is almost impossible to convey the experience which is Namaqualand. The raw essence which provides a glimpse of her soul is elusive, not easily captured on paper and film and is more likely to be found in personal experience of her searing heat, hopeless grinding poverty and despair, the taste of her sandstorms and the sighing of her winds.

In the series made for television when the cameras went to Lekkersing we saw many familiar faces, long, lanky Lucas, William Cloete, Oubaas and others dancing a few shuffling steps dressed in their best Sunday clothes. We relived the reality behind the pictures, the stink of liquor in a confined space, the heat and flies, the raucous, drunken hubbub, the fallen bodies which would not move again till Monday or even Tuesday. We heard again their half-wild singing which had little to do with what the missionaries taught them and much to do with their Hottentot blood. Every picture on the screen only told half a tale and that is how most of us experience this exasperating land for to have encountered her is not necessarily to know her and to know her is not necessarily to love her. Like a woman of many wiles, no matter which face she turns to you, she seems to keep her soul to herself.

Mere man has not proved an ardent enough suitor for there is archaeological evidence that he has been courting her since his early days, digging with primitive tools and mining her treasures three hundred thousand years before the little yellow-skinned people who called themselves the Khoikhoi, or Men of Men, took possession of her shores or the coming of Jan van Riebeeck with his small band of sailors who were to become the founding fathers of the twin Afrikaans-speaking brown and white tribes of Africa.

Where then are all the big cities, the railways and the roads? Where are the signs she has been wooed and won by man? Nowhere! Only a few dusty 'dorps' (towns) dot the landscape, on main trunk road reaches across her vastness and a single railway ventures into her interior only to run out of tracks and hope at a place called 'Bitterfontein', the place of Bitter Water.

Namaqualand is an enigma, a law unto herself, eternally aloof. Man comes to mine her minerals and carry away her precious stones and for a time he is successful, but only for a time. Then she is wont to withdraw her favors and crushes the venture with all the force of her formidable arsenal, heat, distance, drought and apathy. All over the territory there are ruins bearing mute testimony to man’s blighted hopes and dreams, nothing spectacular, nor even interesting, only a forlorn heap of crumbling masonry, a rusted shipwreck, a weathered headstone or just a pile of bones bleaching in the sun. To some suitors she is an enchanting siren to be visited time and again, to others she is a vicious mistress, hard as flint, the two-buck whore up the road, but whichever face she turns and reveals, she elicits a response in the human heart which cannot be ignored.

Namaqualand stretches from south of the Orange River to north of  Van Rhynsdorp from Kenhardt and Calvina in the east to the Atlantic ocean in the west. This encompasses large tracts of land most of which is uninhabited by man and runs the gamut of scenery from the lush Orange River valley and the black, lunar landscape of the Hellsberge in the north down a four hundred kilometer scrub-desert coastline called the Sandveld, through the Hardeveld, Knechtesvlake, Bokkeveld, Kamiesberge and the mountains of the Richtersveld. Bushmanland is unique in that is is a desert within a desert consisting mainly of long ribbed red sand dunes and scattered heaps of dolomite outcrop.

A land with more faces than Eve, she splashes herself with an abundance of color, from the dun or red sand of the desert floor to the variegated hues of the rocky 'kranse' (cliffs), black as the hobs of Hell, various muted shades of yellow, mustard and red ochre streaked through with spectacular shades of brilliant green, the result of millions of years of water action on natural copper deposits. Here and there the rocks are streaked by patches of white guano where birds of prey have nested along the rocky ledges for centuries.

Through this stark landscape wind many dry riverbeds on their futile journey to the sea, flanked by stunted vegetation and all the while criss-crossed by a network of tracks like the seams on an aged face. Many of these nameless roads lead nowhere, travelers faithfully following a map are often faced at a journey’s end with nothing but a straggle of reeds beside a brackish waterhole or a salt pan named for someone who passed that way a hundred years ago. One river which always has water is the Orange, named by the Hottentots as Garieb, simply, The River. Whether it is five miles wide taken at the flood or a sluggish, dun-coloured trickle during the drought years it is nonetheless one of South Africa’s great rivers.

In the few areas of Namaqualand tamed by man where wheat ripples in the wind, where windmills pump out subterranean water for flocks of sheep and goats and patches of green surround the farmsteads, life treads to order through the seasons but, for the most part, it is a land given over to desert scrub, desert adapted fauna and flora, large stretches of wind-swept sand, guarded by brooding, rocky outcrops, a lonely land communing with itself in the vastness of space.

But, this slumbering giant can be transformed almost overnight by the rains which come infrequently. The rivers become raging torrents and the earth cloaks herself in a super abundance of flowers and grasses such as the rest of the world has seldom seen. The whole process of germination flowering and producing seed is speeded up into the space of a few days. Instead of taking all summer long, insects come in the droning swarms to play their part in pollination, then the scene fades as suddenly as it appeared, the plants die, the seed falls into the burning sand often to remain dormant for several years till the next rains come. This tantalizingly brief display of nature brings people from all over the world to see the miracle of Namaqualand in flower.

There is too an ethereal side to the land as she is wreathed in myriad haunting myths and legends. Peopled by ghosts of history, of bloody battle and death by misadventure, the canvas if covered in war, death and the systematic decimation of entire tribes.

This was the cradle of the Coloured nation, home of the founding fathers who were once fierce frontiersmen. It is the home of the clan who proudly took the name Bastards, the descendants of white farmers and traders and slave women from Java, India, China, Mauritius and Mozambique. To this day there are many descendants of European missionaries and Bushman and Hottentot women. The region is rife with tales of adventure which is hardly surprising when the inhabitants can trace their lineage back to the bloodthirsty pirates of the Orange River islands, back to convicts, rebels, traitors, mercenaries, outlaws, deserters from several armies, men who recognized no law but their own, who lived and died by violence, spilling their blood in an uncaring land.

There are still traceable descendants of the legendary Adam Kok, Jager Afrikaner, Hendrik Witbooi, Barend Barends and Andries Waterboer who will tell you hair-raising tales of the past. Today, white and brown descendents share a common language in Afrikaans and share a common religion in the sternly Calvinist Dutch Reformed Church although, here and there, scattered across the land are pockets of Roman Catholic missions, remnants of the London Mission Society and the Rhenish Mission Society which flourished last century and after whose director, Dr. H. Richter the Richtersveld is named. A vast, barren tract of land which sprawls across Namaqualand, quite awesome in it’s lonely, windswept wastes and one which Dr. Richter did not live to see. There are also one or two Church of England missions but the theology being such a close cousin to the Catholic church there would appear to be some confusion in the minds of some of the parishioners as to the essential schism between them and worshipers turn up to both Catholic and Protestant services with equal enthusiasm.

By and large an unhappy atmosphere prevails between the white Afrikaner and his brown brethren. While the white despises his darker offspring the brown mistrusts the white and nurtures a deep, angry resentment to the white man who, having bred him, now disowns him. Ironically, they can both sink their differences and close ranks against the “Uitlander’; someone born south of Van Rhynsdorp or north of the Orange River. There are, as yet, no black Namaqualanders.

Hardy sons of the soil both white and brown Namaqualander takes pride in his battle to wrest a meager living from his desert soil. He is proud of his poverty, drought, endurance and tenacity. Within days of our arrival we heard the same story repeated several times over, roughly translated from their earthy, idiomatic patois it goes like this. The Lord created the world and all that is in it in six days and on the seventh He rested. Lucifer was green with envy and decided to try his hand at creation too but before he could complete his handiwork, he fell from grace. Namaqualand was the result, and unfinished, diabolical land which mocks humanity in it’s sheer perversity.

And so it was, when we came to exchange our house on the slopes of the Helderberg in the Cape for the siren song of adventure in an old mining house on the edge of the desert in Port Nolloth, Namaqualand turned a different face for each of us. For Lyndon it proved a happy opportunity to expand his horizons in exploration, prospecting and his knowledge of the quarrying and mining field. For our two sons, Andrew, aged eight and Duncan, aged six, it was a whole spectrum of new-found freedoms. Once they were accepted by their peers they found themselves free to roam the desert behind the house, the beach in front of it, to dive off the pier and jump off the towering sand dunes behind the fish factory. In short, they had a new lease on childhood, going to school barefoot and spending long happy hours in carefree pursuits. In Afrikaans, they learnt a new language – expletives first, naturally.

For me the venture roved an unmitigated disaster. I like my mountains clad in trees, my trees in leaves and my birds to sing. I like water in my streams and neighbours who are more friend than foe. The constant battle to secure fresh produce, just the bare necessities of life like bread, milk, butter and fresh drinking water wore me down. When these commodities finally arrived in the port after being transported across the plains from Springbok the milk was often soured solid, the bread twice baked and the vegetables wilted and only fit for the stockpot. These vicissitudes aside, there was no park, no theatre, no shops to speak of and only a cupboard of a library containing fifteen English books, a far cry from civilization. It took months for me to learn to come to terms with life in that lonely old house between the desert and the sea.

The decision to move came when Lyndon completed a business trip which took him all over South West Africa and Namaqualand. He returned with a far-away look in his eye and a new love in his heart – the desert. Fortuitously, he had also arranged by means of a casual encounter with the quarry owner in Port Nolloth’s Scotia Inn, to take over the running of Diamond-Quartzite Holdings’ two quarries in the Richtersveld outside Port Nolloth.

The die was cast, but if we are to believe the old adage, ‘Coming events cast their shadows’, then the wheels were set in motion decades before when, as a small boy in a geography class, Lyndon’s teacher asked her pupils to choose a spot on the map of South Africa where they would like to live and write a few lines to explain the choice. Lyndon’s pencil hovered over the big cities but eventually came to rest in the top left hand corner of the map ringing Port Nolloth. His explanation; ‘I would like to live in Port Nolloth because it has a lighthouse and I have never been there.’ Twenty years later he was to remedy that omission when he led our small convoy into the port.

The move came at the end of an idyllic Cape summer, blue and gold days spent in happy exploration of 'veld and vlei',(field and marsh) of forest trails, beach-combing and wild flower collecting; picnics beside mountain streams and paths for we lived on the Helderberg in the purple shadows of the craggy Hottentots Holland mountain range which cradle the village of Somerset West. It had been a summer of dew-fresh strawberries in wooden punnets brought to our front door by cheerful farm-hands, small pots of cream delivered by the farmer himself along with baskets of delicate mushrooms and huge bunches of protea which filled every available vase and brought the wild scent of the mountain into our home.

But now, once again the Cape winter was almost upon us with it’s cold damp mists and piercing wind making the verbal magic Lyndon wove all the more enticing. He told us about ostrich eggs used as water bottles and buried in the sand, of small brown men with poisoned arrows, of a salt pan with half a million flamingoes. Even the names on the map had a lure of their own, Bushmanland, Nababeep, Soebatsfontein, Gamoep, and O’Okiep. It was time to pack.

The evening before we left George came to see me. He was the Coloured gardner we’d inherited with our present house and it was from him I got my first impression of Port Nolloth. George was something of a mixed blessing, short, ugly and irascible. His language was foul and he drank like a fish but only after midday to prove “I’m no alkie(alcoholic), I can do without it.” His one claim to fame was a foot long scar along one leg caused by flying shrapnel when he served as a stretcher bearer “Up North” during the Second World War. He referred to this weathered old scar as if it were a thing apart from the rest of his life as ‘my wond’ (my wound) and made it the excuse for every type of negligence and absence on his part. When he was drunk on the job it was ‘my wond’ which needed easing, when he took time off without permission it was dictated by ‘my wond’ and so on through the gamut of misbehavior.

On our first meeting he laid down the guidelines for our relationship. ‘I’m the gardener, nobody from the Transvaal is going to tell me what to plant in the Cape. I know. Also, I don’t take orders from a woman. I’m like the good God, I work when I work and I rest when I rest’. Thoroughly intimidated I thought about asking him to leave there and then but he beat me to it. ‘If you think you can do better than old George, you’re 'blerry' (bloody) mistaken. I’ve grown all the flowers in this street, go take a look. Besides I’m related to the king of England.’ ‘Queen’, I corrected. ‘Blerry King George, that’s who. My surname is Rex and I’ve got a certificate to prove it.’

The matter was closed, this was on royal personage who brooked no argument. I had to accept him warts and all as he really loved the gardens under his care and in time I learnt to take his brusque manner in my stride but never got used to his language.

He had a habit of leaning over the bottom half of the stable door in the kitchen and bellowing into the house whatever piece of information he thought appropriate at the time. Invariably visitors brought out his choicest offerings. He sent a rattle through the teacups one morning by yelling into the house, ‘Dem boggers' (those buggers) is in the lettuce again. Where's the poison.?’ But he almost put the entire party of teachers from Duncan’s Sunday School to flight by announcing the delivery of some bags of fertilizer in a booming voice over the tinkle of the teacups, ‘The shit’s here. Where shall I put it?’ Of course, his best exhibitions were reserved for the times when he had not been able to resist the brandy bottle in the heat of the morning and was very much the worse for wear long before his supposed midday deadline. Then he would mutter to his flowers in both language and breath so foul it was a wonder any of them survived. He waved his old hat viciously at the birds and threatened death to any thing which moved in the garden which unhappily included all the neighborhood dogs and children.

So, on that last evening, I braced myself for one more encounter with George, he’d already told me when I broke the news of our departure that he was ‘blerry furious’, I wondered what was to come.’ At my approach the old man doffed his hat in an exaggerated flourish almost losing his grip on his bicycle. Eventually, both propped at crazy angles he started on his prepared speech.

‘Well, Merrem,(madam) I suppose you know what you are doing going to blerry hellengone. But I’ll tell you this for nothing Port Nolloth is 'boggerall' (nothing). No shops, no people, the fishing’s gone to hell and besides there’s no flowers. What will Merrem do without flowers?’

Secretly I had been wondering the same thing but he had more to get off his chest and rattled on apace eventually delivering his parting shot. Port Nolloth is the end of the world but if you are going then I’ll tell you how to get there. You take the old main road up the coast and you ride for something like nine hundred miles, 'doer' (over there) en gone, there you come to a place called Steinkopf just before you come to the South West Africa, O.K. there you turn left and take the shit road till you hit the sea.’ I was touched by his concern but he put me firmly in my place ‘Don’t thank me, I’m the arse who was born there.’

I waved him on his wobbly way, his old hat jammed on his head, his jeans cut off at just the right height to display ‘my wond’ and his good leg kept free to lash out at his enemies – every dog in the street.

From the gate I wandered up the path and round the garden stopping at a half finished construction which was to have been a Japanese stone garden. A project which had taken all summer and never quite materialized. The making of the Japanese feature had necessitated many trips down to the banks of the Lourensford stream which ran busily past a supermarket. While I picked up the groceries Andrew and Duncan happily hunted for large smooth pebbles on the bed of the stream.

Because we always went on the same day of the week we encountered the same people in the parking lot, some of whom took a great interest in the project and tended to gather on the banks of the stream pointing out ‘good’. We had to move the operation upstream when on elderly gentleman got over excited and pointed out a stone with his walking stick, lost his balance and fell headlong into the icy water. By the time we had him wrapped in blankets from the store, found his wife and calmed down the spectators we’d lost much enthusiasm for the project. Anyway, I doubt if our version would have looked as attractive as the illustration in the Japanese gardening book as George would have it ‘That’s going to look like a blerry dogs grave.’ I went round the little vegetable garden and past the wall George had built while under the influence, the only compost pit in history to be screened by a wavy wall full of artistic holes and topped by broken green glass. As I went up the steps into the house I took a last look at the mist threading through the mountain crags, the white horses way out on the inky Atlantic and the leafy lacework of the old oaks lining the street. Tonight the curtain was to ring down on one scene and tomorrow would rise on another.

Next morning, Lyndon led the convoy on the long haul driving a Ford 'bakkie' (truck) with Andrew beside him in the cab. Next came the furniture removal van with all our worldly possessions and I brought up the rear in the baby Fiat with Duncan beside me and a sedated dog called 'Chatty' on the back seat. Our long-suffering vet had advised us to sedate the dog because of her various neurosis. Chatty was pavement special, the result of a misalliance between a Dachshund and a Fox Terrier which reduced her to incontinence and incapacity; men, mice, loud noises and people with things on their heads. The vet advised us to keep her away from men but if the meeting was inevitable then the man should remove his hat and address her in falsetto. It was not the easiest rule to impose on our friends but we had managed to get the postman trained, before starting up our drive he would remove his cap and yodel shrilly. However, that was going to prove one worry less in the port as there were no postal deliveries.

Our arrival in the port went unnoticed as the huddle of houses and shops was shrouded in mist and in the grip of a sandstorm. Lyndon stopped at the first light in town to ask directions and a thumb jerk later we resumed our crawling pace, nose to tail, through the swirling mist and flying sand till we came to the last house in the port. To me, at that moment, it looked as if it was perched on the edge of the known world.

As the wheels stopped my car sank gently up to its axles in a sanddrift outside the front gate. Chatty scrambled around in her box, took one groggy look at her new surroundings and moaning loudly sank back into oblivion. It was not going to be so easy for the rest of us. We trooped into the empty house tired and hungry. Lyndon read mutiny on the faces of the removal men and cheerfully decided, ‘What we need now is a hot meal, I’ll take the flasks to be filled as well, there must be a take-away open.’ The orders flew, hotdogs, hamburgers, Russians and chips with everything.

The men unloaded the van noisily, spirits revived after the nine-hour haul from the Cape by the thought of food and drink. But Lyndon was absent far longer than expected and the men assuming I could not understand what they were saying in Afrikaans were unguarded in their frank appraisal of our situation, our ninety-two cartons, our peculiar taste in furniture and even more peculiar choice of place to live. The talk grew more lively and I realized they had already found some liquid refreshment as they sipped expertly and passed the bottle between them. They reduced the situation to farce, only the supervisor and driver, Mr. Peters, remained aloof and dignified while the other three clowned it up.

‘Jisliak,(damnit) this is spooktown, eh?’ (Ghost town)

‘Ja, my ma told me it was boggerall. She was here as a child, you know.’

‘Well you can tell her it is still boggerall when you get back.’

‘Have you tried the blerry water?’ It tastes like a dose of salts.’

‘More like sewage.’

‘That’s what comes out of our taps in Cape Town’

‘Yes, but this is unrecycled.’

‘Where do you think the boss has gone?’

‘The Wimpey in Adderly street, man.’

‘Nay, man, if he’s got any sense he’s gone home.’

I wanted to laugh out loud but Lyndon had been gone over an hour and I was beginning to wonder what had happened to him. I went into the living room to watch for his return and noticed for the first time the walls of the room were painted a hideous green, not a pale peppermint wash or fashionable avocado but dark institution green. It was just too much, tears began to squeeze out of my eyes and down my cheeks. Mr. Peters offered comfort of a sort. ‘Never mind, Lady, if I had to live in a place like this I’d cry too.’ At that moment a loud blast of sound reverberated through the house and had the effect of drawing us all closer together. It sounded like something between a factory hooter and a wounded bull.

Job’s comforter remarked, ‘Not to worry, that’s just something they have in these parts.’ ‘Something for what?’ asked Andrew apprehensively. The second blast caused Duncan to jump frog-like into my arms, Chatty to make a puddle and Andrew to announce ‘I think it’s getting closer.’ But before the last echoes had died away and there could be any more debate about the matter Lyndon appeared in the doorway and gave us the bad news.

‘That noise is the foghorn and it is repeated automatically every three minutes once the fog reaches a certain density. We’re going to have to learn to live with it as we are only a stone’s throw from the lighthouse.’ He realized from the ring of faces turned to him we were waiting to hear what had taken him so long. ‘The natives are not friendly. The truck slipped off the hard surface of the road into thick sand and I couldn’t get anyone to help me push it out, there were lots of faces at the windows watching but no volunteers.’

Now all our eyes were riveted on the surprisingly small packet in his arms. Slowly Lyndon unpacked the supper, two tins of bully beef, two tins of condensed milk, four packets of biscuits and a handful of bananas. ‘That’s it, folks. There was no bread, no butter, no fresh milk, no tea and certainly no sympathy.’ It appeared there had been hot pies in the port last week but not this week.

The comments of the removal men were unprintable to start with but deteriorated still further when they discovered weevils in the biscuits. One worker decided this was where Noah had parked the Ark and these were the animal’s leftovers.

We made tea from the brack tap water which had to be coaxed from long-dry pipes and which yielded up their vile liquid in a series of explosions which galvanized Chatty into action. She tore round the kitchen in demented fashion till she took cover under the old-fashioned gas stove where she promptly got stuck and tore up the linoleum in her efforts to release herself. Two of the men kindly lifted the stove off her but such was her panic she sank her teeth into the nearest ankle drawing blood and blasphemy.

Eventually, exhausted, we retired for the night but not to sleep as the shuddering blast of the foghorn kept up it’s mournful sound at regular intervals only to be echoed by a feeble howl of protest from our semi-drugged dog.

Halfway through the night Lyndon announced, ‘I know what’s been bugging me about those men, on of them was wearing my Italian shoes. Never mind, I’ll get them in the morning.’ But it was not to be. In the morning we stared in disbelief, the van had disappeared in the night along with the Italian shoes and a box marked ‘treasures’. The joke, however, was on the would-be thieves as that carton had been packed under the personal supervision of our resident rag-and-bone man, Duncan. It contained a hoard of his personal treasures, y-shaped twigs and rubber for catties(catapults), marbles, a selection of dead bugs and his toy drum for which Lyndon and I gave silent thanks that it had been silenced forever. The air must have turned blue when the stolen carton was opened.

The storm raged two more days, the howling wind whipped and gusted round the house depositing a fine layer of sand over everything. Grit worked its way into everything we ate and drank and also found its way into our eyes, ears and mouths. Deposits of sand piled up against the doors making them difficult to open from the inside, it drifted gently down the window-panes and formed little pyramids tills the next gust sent it flurrying away. We found ourselves prisoners in a weird and unique world. When the storm abated and we went outside for the first time shock followed shock, the garden consisted of a dry dust bowl where the lawn should have been, a dry fishpond and a solitary Norfolk pine. There were traces of an established garden but the delicate flowers and shrubs were only a memory and all that remained were clumps of hardy desert succulents and a wild honeysuckle rambling over a rickety wooden fence.

Being the last house in the village we had an uninterrupted view of the desert and of the hazy horizon shimmering and dancing in the heat, sometimes nearer and sometimes further in a light which played tricks with the normal rules of distance.

One of my early adjustments was not so much to what was there but what was missing. There were no sounds of traffic on the street, no sound of human laughter and voices, no children on bicycles or skateboards. No singing birds, no cricket nor cicada, nothing but the restless murmur of the ocean and the sighing of the wind in the dunes.

My first shopping expedition was a disaster. There was a choice of three outlets for food, each a miserable excuse of a shop compared to anything I’d encountered before. I chose the busiest looking and went in to place a milk order of twelve pints a week. The shopkeeper looked at me in disbelief surely I mean twelve pints a month? When he saw I was not joking he turned to the locals all staring at me, saying Afrikaans, ‘What does she want to do with it? Bath? I was to learn in Namaqualand milk was only considered fit for nursing mothers and babies, the rest of the population drinks a strong brew of coffee sweetened or with a good pinch of salt. My enquiry for lettuce and spinach was more cause for hilarity as these are considered ‘bok kos’, (goat food)  or only fit for goats, not the manly Namaqualander. Later I would learn to rely on the ubiquitous ‘boerrepampoen’ (farmers pumpkin), sweet potatoes and the occasional cabbage. But in those early days everything was made more difficult for me by the incredulous derision with which all my requests were treated.

Leaving that shop I went to the next to see what I could get in the way of tinned food. If anything, this shop was worse than the first. The sagging shelves supported flyspecked tins, dusty and rusty, many of which were blown and obviously gaseous. Perishables, 'mielie-meal' (maize), flour and rice stood in open sacks which held ample evidence of rats and the atmosphere was musty with human odours and stale tobacco smoke as the door was always kept closed. While I browsed around a small Coloured girl took a tin of fish from a shelf and went to pay for it. The lid was bulging and the contents obviously poisonous so I asked the shopkeeper to replace the purchase with a newer tin. The man took offence and slowly and deliberately gathered his spittle and spat on the floor at my feet.

I exchanged the tin for the child and then proceeded up and down the rows of shelving methodically knocking every blown tin from the shelves with the tip of my umbrella from where they fell to the wooden floor with a satisfactory clanking noise.

A group of locals watched aghast as the cans rolled in every direction. An ancient crone, bent, weather-beaten and dressed in black from her 'voortrekker' (pioneer) 'kappie' (cap) to the skirts which swished over her 'riempie' (leather thong)  sandals moved swiftly in spite of her age, slipping out of the door and into her waiting donkey-cart before the mad Englishwoman could do her a personal injury. In no time at all the village was agog and Lyndon had word on the quarry his wife had gone berserk and was running amok on the streets of the port.

In further confrontation with the owner of the shop his only excuse was ‘What does a 'bliksemse' (bloody) 'hotnot' (Hottentot) know about good or bad fish? Nothing kills them’. This encounter set the tone for the first few weeks we spent among the Namaqualanders. Not only were they cruel and harsh with each other but everyone turned on the ‘uitlanders’ in their midst. Matters deteriorated rapidly to the point where it affected our children. From, happy, healthy and confident boys they turned into pale introverts not wanting to venture outside the house. Andrew returned from school with torn clothes and bloodied nose day after day and even Chatty learnt not to put her nose outside the garden gate for fear of being stoned. Matters came to a head when I laid a charge of assault on Andrew by one of the school bullies only to discover the child was the son of a policeman. Eventually Lyndon had to take matters into his own hands and dealt with the situation in true Hollywood style. He systematically called on the head of every household in the port, wherever he could find him at work, in the pub or on the street and could tackle him alone. He spelled out in graphic detail what would happen to him personally if one member of our family was assaulted, insulted or spat at again. This all took place without my knowledge and I was amazed and delighted to find the aggression towards us abated suddenly and rapidly. It was only months later when I asked why Lyndon was known as ‘Die Kwaai Engelsman’ (The Angry Englishman) did I hear about the events which led to a change of heart in the locals. In a life filled with minor problems I was very grateful when life returned to normal and we were able to take up the threads of daily living without outside interference.

To add to our problems at this stage we were still thinking in terms of fresh water and obtained it from Cape Town by sea on one of the coasters or imported it from the Orange River. There was also a rainwater tank beside the house with a few feet of water in it. We saved this for tea until the boys climbed onto the tank on day and peering in saw hundreds of tiny skeletons of frogs, lizards and birds. It must have been rich in calcium but we quickly turned to the use of the brack tap water after this. Of course, many Namaqualanders refuse to leave home without their own supply of water, saying the sweet water so highly prized elsewhere is without body or flavor and does nothing for their brandy, whisky or coffee.

The electricity supply proved somewhat temperamental and the only day of the week I could get a decent power supply and enough water pressure to run my washing machine was on a Sunday when everyone else was congregated in the large Dutch Reformed church down the road. As a direct consequence the dominee branded me a ‘Godelose Vrou’ a Godless woman and someone to be avoided at all costs. He himself assiduously crossed the street at my approach thereby setting a good example to his flock.

Born without a drop of pioneering blood I was all for returning to our Cape home in it’s lovely surroundings and more importantly to the gentle, cultured Cape people we had come to know and like so well, both English and Afrikaans. Backed by the polish and courtesy of centuries of European culture they epitomized all that was civil in civilization.

But Lyndon was waging a war of his own on the quarry and the boys were gritting their teeth and getting on with life, even Chatty seemed to be containing her hysteria, I could do no less. Slowly, over the weeks and months I found the rhythm and pulse beat of life in the port, adapted to the weird weather, the weirder people and peculiar life-style but never enough to say ‘I am a Namaqualander.’ For all the years we spent there we were to remain ‘Die Uitlanders’.

The description most often applied to Port Nolloth is ‘ghost town’ so it is not inappropriate the first sight your eye falls on as you drive into town is the old graveyard on the left of the road. The graves tumble into each other in crazy profusion, headstones lean drunkenly, sandblasted and illegible, useless slabs of stone shipwrecked in a sea of shifting sand. Depending on the direction of the wind the graves were either buried under the sand or blasted open and exposed to the elements. It was not uncommon for a passerby to retrieve a skull or bones in the main street and carefully replace them within the sagging fence of their earthly home.

Here lie the bones of the sailors off the tall ships, trekkers, travelers, miners, muleteers, diamond diggers – adventurers all, for they were a hardy breed of men who left their bones in Port Nolloth.

We found ‘ghost town’ an apt description because the place is haunted by past events and peopled by legendary figures more colourful and larger-than-life than the people who exist there today.

Port Nolloth came into being in 1855 when the name was changed from John Owen Bay to Port Nolloth after Commander M.S. Nolloth of the Royal Navy. He had been charged with finding a suitable landing site for the ships which would export the copper ore from the mines at O’Okiep. He spent the best part of a year sailing the West Coast in his ship the H.M.S. Frolic before he chose Port Nolloth. The mines in the interior were said to be the richest copper deposits in the world at that time and it was frustrating for all concerned that transporting the ore proved to be such a problem.

For a time 'Hondeklip Bay' (Stone dogs bay) in the south-west took some of the ore but the ships calling there found the bay too shallow and without adequate protection so when Port Nolloth came into being everyone heaved a sigh of relief but it proved somewhat premature as it was to be several years before the operation ran smoothly.

In 1869 the first rail was laid in the line to Port Nolloth from O’Okiep, a distance of 147 kilometres and the little port first appeared on the map of South Africa.

Copper ore from the Concordia complex also found its way to the Port via Steinkopf while an ambitious scheme was launched to ship some of the ore from the Richtersveld by boat down the Orange River and then have it carted by wagon to the roadsteads in Alexander Bay.

It would appear the perversity of Namaqualand ran true to form and the copper export was plagued by one setback after another. Sand covered the railway tracks and caused endless delays, the boilers on the steam engines blew up in the extreme desert heat and there was a chronic lack of water. In desperation in 1876, mules were brought in and the whole line was worked by animal traction for the next ten years,. By now the government had spent two hundred thousand pounds of the scheme and still the transport costs almost exceeded the cost of mining the ore.

The copper train took forty to sixty mules to draw it, two or three to each coach or truck. There were of necessity quite a few out spans along the way where the animals were fed and watered. The journey was long and tedious with many stops to change animals, to sweep the tracks of sand or to halt altogether while the sand storm blew over. The tortuous route claimed the lives of many of the sturdy little draught animals who had been imported to do the job and who died of heat-exhaustion and thirst along the way. Nor was it any easier for the men who accompanied the animals. The muleteers were mainly stolid Afrikaners, sons of the soil, who were used to the land and the animals and who could withstand the rigours of the journey time and again. They didn’t ride the train but walked alongside, encouraging, cursing or whipping as the case may be. In his old khaki drill clothes, bush hats and handmade 'velskoen' (rawhide shoe) they cut a poor figure compared to his contemporary, the gunslinger, Romeo of the American West.

Intrigued by the story of the ghost train which rattles along non-existent tracks we explored the route and discovered the ruins of a couple of staging posts and some rusted, twisted metal at the bottom of a chasm. Derailed coaches lying like giant discarded toys in the vast, empty landscape.

The railway line took a steep path up the Annenous Pass and stopped on the crest of a mountain to allow crew and passengers refreshment at the Klipfontein hotel. Today there is nothing to be seen but concrete foundation slab and a couple of heaps of crumbling masonry. But, ‘Die Ou Klipfontein’ lives on in the folklore of the land and many and old-timer will tell you with a chuckle in his voice and a twinkle in his eye about the ‘opskops’ the monumental drinking bouts which delayed the copper train on yet one more count.

From this point the train was allowed to descend to Port Nolloth by the force of gravity alone while the muleteers now became brakemen. At the rear of the train rode the passenger ‘special’, a simple ore carriage converted to passenger status by the addition of wooden benches and a canvas covering, the side of which could be rolled up for ventilation in the stifling desert heat. It was only in 1909 that the whole trip was finally brought under steam, but the Cape Copper Company did not do away with the mules entirely as in a drought they would take over from the locomotives because they used much less precious water.

To add to the colourful history of this small railway it was blown up by General van Deventer between O’Okiep and the Annenous Pass during the Boer War. This short-lived line came to an end in 1944 when the tracks were torn up and the ore re-routed by road and caused Port Nolloth to suffer the first of her many declines.

The copper export also brought another breed of men to the port. The deep-sea sailors, the crews off the barques and brigantines which rode at anchor outside the tiny harbor. Men from Swansea, Cardiff, Plymouth, who took the taverns of the town by storm, roistering, drinking, singing, fighting. Sadly there seems to be no written account of what these seafarers thought of the port and its people. But, in conversation with an 'Oupa' (grandfather) on his 'stoep' (veranda) he told me the sailors themselves were considered to be ‘The Wild Men of the Sea’ and very few of them could write.

Then of course there were the Cornish miners, ‘Cousin Jacks’ as they were called. They worked the copper mines, sweltering in the heat and dark underground, straining six days a week to bring the ore to the surface and resting on the seventh. They must have tramped the dusty little streets of the port, pockets fat with a month’s wages and very little to spend it on.

The men were there in plenty, Boer, Brit, Nama, all shapes and colours but all only passing through and in the wake of their passing there are many fair-haired coloureds who say with pride, My father or grandfather was from Wales, Cornwall or even Scandinavia

In a humble home with green washed walls filled with heavy old furniture there is a photograph on the wall framed in heavy, dark wood in which a bewhiskered gentleman glares stiffly into the camera. Underneath is a small row of books, none of the titles are familiar but one fat volume catches my eye, ‘The Practice of Surgery and medicine at Sea.’ ‘Those were my Oupa’s books.’ a young girl tells me proudly. ‘He was off the ships.’

For me, it was through the eyes of the grand old lady of the port that history leapt to life. Her descriptions were so vivid and detailed they had the power to capture the flavor and atmosphere of the times through which she’d lived. The secret of the sparkle in her eyes and the lilt in her voice was her great love for Namaqualand. To a stranger the desolate port held little attraction but seen through the eyes of someone who had known it in its heyday it took on a different aspect. Through her eyes past grandeur came to life and I was able to visualize a fleet of sixteen vessels riding at anchor on the inky Atlantic. Vessels crammed with men and materials for the mines and laden with delicacies for the tables of the mining magnates.

Mrs. Scholtz told me it was a time of strict social etiquette, for when the Victorian way of life was only a memory in England it was still very much de rigueur in Port Nolloth. It was a time of calling cards, ‘At Home’ days, of High Teas and late suppers, of soirees, glittering balls, of concerts and brass bands.

One evening as we strolled along the beach Mrs. Scholtz pointed out a sunken concrete slab just visible under the surging waves. ‘Here stood the bandstand. More often than not it was a military or police band, all the men in dress uniform. The band would strike up at dusk and as night fell the scene would become more and more romantic with the revolving light from the lighthouse playing over the water, moonlight splashing a ribbon across the sea and more often than not the faint tinkle of the bar bell buoys as they moved in the water. Oh it was so romantic.! Then there were the dances. We had dance cards which hung from our wrists and the young men would book the dance of their choice with the girl they fancied. Of course, in those days there was a proper programme for the dance. It always opened and closed with a waltz but in between there was many a lively ‘vastrap’ (quickstep).

As for the food, it would have done any international hotel proud, there were delicacies  from all of the world cooked by the best chefs and served in the proper manner. For me, it all seemed a far cry from the present when it was a bind to buy fresh bread, milk or butter. On another walk another day Mrs. Scholtz pointed out the location of the famous Chocolate Shop. Once, people traveled from all over Namaqualand to buy the exquisite imported chocolates in the shop. Near Christmas timeit was advisable to order well in advance as there were long queues to buy the chocolate imported from Switzerland, Sweden and England.

There was also at this time a Ribbon Shop which dealt exclusively with ribbons but also dispensed advice on social etiquette in the matter of what colours were safe to wear and what was considered the acceptable length for ribbons on a maid's cap. During those heady days the port boasted two social clubs, one for the gentlemen and one for the workmen, also two libraries with similiar exclusivity. And, perhaps most surprising of all the port was seldom without it's own newspaper. The first on record was called the "Busy Bee" which must have busied itself in business beyond it's concern because it was summarily closed down by the superintendent of the Cape Copper Company when it became too critical of the company. Then there was the "Port Nolloth Times", by all accounts a staid, prosaic little paper as befitted it's name. There is no record of the reason for it's demise except that it was sudden and was followed by the "North West Province Courier", a paper given to much social comment, dull records and pretentious editorials. these papers afforded a lively comment on the times and it seems a shame the wealth of memories recorded in their pages have been lost to us forever.

Dollie Scholtz, while still a schoolgirl experienced an adventure in the form of a dramatic rescue off the ship, the Frieda Woermann, a German ship in port on which she was due to sail to school in Cape Town. In earlier times children making the trip were hoisted on board in huge baskets which greatly added to the adventure of the voyage but on this occasion the gangplank was being pulled up when two gentlemen arrived breathless and agitated beside the ship. They were the Rev. A.D. Luckhoff and Major Mitchell of the Cape Town Highlanders who had been commissioned by Dollies father to rescue her from the Frida Woermann at all costs. Without explanation she and her luggage were bundled down the half-raised gangplank from where she had to jump into the arms of the waiting men. The explanation; the German ship had been given secret orders overnight to alter course and sail for South America. It was the start of hostilities in 1914 which went on the become the First World War’. A lucky escape for the young schoolgirl but it was really the sequel to a story which began much earlier during the Boer War.

In the process of interrogating the enemy, Major Mitchell tied Dollie’s father to a kitchen chair and managed to conduct himself in such a gentlemanly way the two became firm friends after the war.

The source of the tip-off about the change of plans for the Frieda Woerman was only pieced together long after the war. At great personal risk the German Consul in Port Nolloth had sent a coded message to Sollie’s father who in turn enlisted the aid of trusted friends to blindly obey the instructions in the message.

When I knew Mrs. Scholtz she lived in a little railway cottage on Wharf street surrounded by lovely old furniture and gracious heirlooms of a bygone era. When the train between Grinrod’s facility and the jetty rattled past under her windows, the cottage seemed to rock on it’s foundations even though the walls appeared to be about two foot thick in places. When the sun set in a crimson ribbon across the waters of the bay and we sat on her tiny stoep drinking tea and talking, surrounded by masses of potted white geraniums and enveloped in the warm glow of her memories, I almost liked Port Nolloth.

The port’s next boom came when Captain Jack Carstens returned on leave from the Indian Army and while prospecting discovered the first diamonds. His father was a storekeeper in the port and although the family tried to keep the find quiet for a while, in no time at all the news leaked out and the diamond rush was on. The area between Alexander Bay and Port Nolloth was now raked over by the strangest collection of humanity yet to reach these shores. They came in their hordes, prospectors, fortune-hunters, diamond dealers, 'smouses' (traders) and the usual riff-raff who rush to any event in the hope of a lucky break. A tent town sprang up but there was a scarcity of food and water and a very real danger of men dying of hunger and thirst before ever setting eyes on a diamond.

The whole area was rife with rumours of fantastic finds, of fortunes made in a minute by picking up a single rock. In fact, it is on record one prospector found 487 diamonds under a single flat stone. Astute bargaining between the diamond merchants and the government brought and end to these chaotic conditions and the government moved in and in 1927 prohibited any further exploration of the coast. Thus the State Alluvial Diggings were born and the individual prospectors rights to explore the area were curtailed forever.

But, that was by no means the end of the matter, the diggers became truculent and threatened to riot if no public diggings were declared. Port Nolloth now saw another influx of men as police were sent to quell the threatened armed rebellion by the diggers.

Excited crowds milled around yelling for action and fomenting trouble but being for the most part leaderless their anger and energy was diffused harmlessly in the pubs and on each other. No positive action was taken by the diggers so the richest alluvial diamond fields in the world were closed to public prospecting forever.

Namaqualand came out in favour of the authorities because she blew up a sandstorm of such ferocity and length it served to dissipate the collective energy of the men and is referred to till this day as the ‘Diamond Storm’.

No sooner had the diamond hunters disappeared and left the bleak little port to it’s two sandy roads and small cluster of buildings when rich fishing grounds were discovered in the area and fish factories sprang up to process the catch. The Cape rock lobster, or crayfish, became immensely popular on overseas markets, especially American and boosted South African earnings of foreign exchange considerably.

Now, once again, there was a new influx of people, mostly fishermen to work the boats, their families and the fish factory staff. They were mostly Cape coloureds moving up from other fishing grounds, men who knew the sea and boats. There came too some white traders and a top heavy contingent of policemen, diamond detectives to keep an eye on the new arrivals.

But, once again, the new-found prosperity was not to last long. The fishing grounds were overfished and the industry collapsed entirely. And, in the early seventies, that’s how we found Port Nolloth. Wrapped in an air of lethargic despondency, deserted streets, boarded up shops, fishermen’s cottages buried under the sand and at the fish factories row upon row of upturned dinghies and stretches of deserted jetties.

It was depressing in the extreme, signs of poverty everywhere, it was as if here, all joy had been extinguished in human existence. Most of the fishermen had left to pursue their livelihood at Walvis Bay, Luderitz, Saldanha Bay and Lamberts Bay leaving a disrupted community of fatherless children and husbandless wives. There was little or no money for food and the pervading atmosphere was one of utter despair.

While we were there a small home industry started in the harvest of kelp from the sea. The famous Cape Bamboo grow prolifically along the coast, each stem growing to a length of some five or six feet, glistening and shiny in the water. When it was cut and dragged up on the beach to dry it became rubbery, smelled to high heaven and was always covered in a blanket of sticky sand flies. When dry, the bamboo was ground up and used as concentrate for fertilizer. To the great relief of all who lived within smelling distance the industry was remarkably short-lived.

This then is the port as we found her, she reminded me of a ’Grand Dame’ who had known a few flings in her youth but had now settled down to genteel poverty and the pity of all who knew her.