The barnacles of history cling to Africa’s southernmost tip: from the early humans who eked an existence here to the fish traps of subsequent Khoisan arrivals, and, much later, the survivors of shipwrecks washed ashore on this wild coast. Millennia of human habitation give a nostalgic cast to the land: from Stone Age remains to fisherman’s cottages and grand Cape Dutch homesteads.
I started my Overberg journey more than 60 000 years ago. Klipgat Cave in Walker Bay Reserve has offered up the artefacts of Middle Stone Age people who probably used this ‘dwelling’ off and on for tens of thousands of years. The shell middens attest to centuries of survival off the inter-tidal zone by later Khoisan clans. Standing in the mouth of the cave, I imagined our ancestors combing through the rock pools, perhaps hunting the occasional seal and spearing fish.
Close to Klipgat is another cave, one that gives its name to the town: De Kelders (‘the cellars’). I entered the limestone cavern – helmet and head torch probing the darkness – with a guide. Bats clung to the ceiling and water dripped from stalactites. ‘Lady Anne Barnard was one of the first Europeans to visit here in 1798 and bathed in the mineral springs,’ said my guide. ‘The water temperature remains absolutely constant in both winter and summer, and the flow is not affected by drought.’
![De Kelders Klipgat De Kelders Klipgat](https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/De-Kelders-Klipgat.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=2000&s=d3cf78906795d7d644bf50ace33bbcfd 2000w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/De-Kelders-Klipgat.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=1800&s=35d8279be9e7e3fd780cb3945f07f115 1800w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/De-Kelders-Klipgat.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=1600&s=a6662c6328f35c1bf32e2e483e740c41 1600w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/De-Kelders-Klipgat.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=1400&s=8a1a198ae561474e6004f0b1e12d677f 1400w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/De-Kelders-Klipgat.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=1200&s=063df99d48a61213fed4b02fe0ada092 1200w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/De-Kelders-Klipgat.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=1000&s=d601b06764272da19b87ffcc2f505a68 1000w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/De-Kelders-Klipgat.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=800&s=a891ac1d9852f93deda9e449127bee22 800w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/De-Kelders-Klipgat.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=600&s=8770e4e658ba30b36214d130ebb64aa1 600w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/De-Kelders-Klipgat.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=400&s=f3c2a89356df14de8cbdc26411c3a195 400w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/De-Kelders-Klipgat.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=300&s=00068f16814f1993f9f8d3cf3814993c 300w)
📍: De Kelders Klipgat
📸: Justin Fox
My guesthouse for the night, Cliff Lodge, was on a nearby precipice overlooking Walker Bay. From the deck it seemed as though coastal artillery was in action, what with the booming of waves and puffs of spray from southern right whales. On the horizon, Cape Hangklip looked like an island cut-out against the setting sun.
Next morning, I headed further south, past Danger Point Lighthouse – overlooking the spot where the ill-fated HMS Birkenhead was wrecked in 1852 – to Franskraal’s quaint Strandveld Museum. It represents a humble Overberg cottage as it would have been in the 19th century. The museum has Birkenhead artefacts, moccasins worn by seal clubbers and old photos of Gansbaai when it was still just a cluster of fishing cottages. I learnt about the days when Dyer Island, just off the coast, was a UGGI (Union Government Guano Island): workers from throughout the district would gather at this cottage to be ferried to the island in a sailing dinghy. There they’d spend lonely months harvesting the guano, cut off from the outside world on a barren isle.
![Strandveld Museum 5 copy Strandveld Museum 5 copy](https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/Strandveld-Museum-5-copy.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=2000&s=49e879293291feb868252f306826dda8 2000w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/Strandveld-Museum-5-copy.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=1800&s=9e6117675a2cd62f315f3bc24def57bc 1800w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/Strandveld-Museum-5-copy.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=1600&s=e33d30bcbc3da3624eb9dcde2c0c3017 1600w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/Strandveld-Museum-5-copy.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=1400&s=1d6671cbef4dc978b51cc3f057ab9ed0 1400w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/Strandveld-Museum-5-copy.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=1200&s=f27d51edd276a2328e72261859c1bb90 1200w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/Strandveld-Museum-5-copy.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=1000&s=fe0cbd32ce4d1c3c40fce7cabf95cc77 1000w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/Strandveld-Museum-5-copy.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=800&s=c8d28f3a4d5cb5a05601e508d7d21b18 800w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/Strandveld-Museum-5-copy.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=600&s=3fdf22a77a9233aad824e0684b1e97be 600w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/Strandveld-Museum-5-copy.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=400&s=d2f62ebf09aa6b4b6cde1de437b89089 400w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/Strandveld-Museum-5-copy.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=300&s=594a36e81b24c2f8598d0149ea516396 300w)
📍: Strandveld Museum
📸: Justin Fox
My journey now took me inland past Baardskeerdersbos to Elim, a pretty Moravian mission village with rows of thatched cottages and an elegant gabled church with all-white interiors. Children played in the streets, ancient fig trees bent their boughs to earth – it couldn’t have changed much since the freeing of slaves in 1834, an event still commemorated in the town.
I pressed on south via Struisbaai to L’Agulhas to visit its famous lighthouse. Within the 30-mile range of Agulhas light, the coast is fringed with reefs on which more ships have been wrecked than on any other part of the South African coast. The limestone structure was completed in 1849, built in the style of the Pharos in Alexandria, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Today Agulhas is part working light, part museum, part coffee shop. There are old charts and keepers’ uniforms preserved down the generations, and a large driebeenpotjie used to boil sheeps’ tails to produce fat for fuelling the powerful lamp.
📍: L’Agulhas Lighthouse
📸: Justin Fox
I drove inland to Bredasdorp to visit its wonderful Shipwreck Museum. More than 250 vessels have been lost on this coast and the museum is a fitting tribute to those who perished beneath the waves. It’s crammed with figureheads, anchors, furniture, cannons and other artefacts that washed ashore or were dived from wrecks – fragments of Europe and Asia that have found their final resting place in an Overberg dorp.
About 20 kilometres southeast of Bredasdorp lies a town named after one of this coast’s most famous wrecks: Arniston. Centred around the 19th-century fishing hamlet of Kassiesbaai, it has an old-world charm that many of the rapidly developing coastal towns have lost. Highlight of each day is the bringing in of the catch, when brightly painted fishing boats surf ashore and are dragged up the slipway.
![Arniston1 Arniston1](https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/Arniston1.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=2000&s=f913fbb4ba0b343719fa1b918fbb4e3d 2000w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/Arniston1.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=1800&s=35651b6661b5e9017e2cf10ab99f2eb7 1800w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/Arniston1.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=1600&s=c28bf307f7b3bb7aae7bef8fff11407f 1600w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/Arniston1.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=1400&s=000c52893d6060779e50fd52dba5ec48 1400w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/Arniston1.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=1200&s=888ff295f168f7fc1a65d822efa53050 1200w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/Arniston1.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=1000&s=cbc4310d4b570a4ce18eb2b28cab20cc 1000w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/Arniston1.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=800&s=e2e8ae7668c97fcd3afbc2de247c61de 800w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/Arniston1.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=600&s=1e2e9054318992ba1cefa8095997dbe7 600w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/Arniston1.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=400&s=d922cdb31c5bc58674d0943a8a5f2ba7 400w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/Arniston1.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=300&s=c444415329f09d8d0dbb3b54a70aeea1 300w)
📍: Arniston
📸: Justin Fox
Next, I visited De Hoop Nature Reserve, following a lovely road through hills of limestone fynbos resplendent with proteas, ericas and restios. The beautiful Opstal manor house is fronted by Natal fig trees of outrageous proportions and a large werf. The ‘skew room’, built in 1738, is the oldest structure in the reserve. After the simple fisherman’s dwellings I’d admired in Arnison, the homestead evoked the grander elements of Cape Dutch design: central gables, imported materials, the fine workmanship of Malay slaves and rows of finely proportioned outbuildings.
![De Hoop 0006 De Hoop 0006](https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/De-Hoop_0006.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=2000&s=b6db6ba52aa2cd8c6f2d8621be8799ec 2000w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/De-Hoop_0006.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=1800&s=f30b1b369594498ed5224c80cf854353 1800w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/De-Hoop_0006.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=1600&s=0c1f55fc37f12b324ad1ad097f54e148 1600w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/De-Hoop_0006.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=1400&s=4231fb50fc3ad0c6e6b04e09eaf66881 1400w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/De-Hoop_0006.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=1200&s=ba50e24d78f55670e8b254679ba024e0 1200w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/De-Hoop_0006.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=1000&s=1fac2639098b333e7071d212177507b0 1000w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/De-Hoop_0006.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=800&s=795f77199df1dd0a998bf99543e9a091 800w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/De-Hoop_0006.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=600&s=05d12ef796e2f6f83ca91694a62bdcf5 600w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/De-Hoop_0006.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=400&s=3af8983ac60a1ee94766696239842f85 400w, https://wesgro.imgix.net/uploads/files/De-Hoop_0006.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&fit=clip&q=90&ratio=&w=300&s=0a7f8592b79d77b4e4d9fc5ead12ff0b 300w)
📍: De Hoop Nature Reserve
📸: Justin Fox
A short drive to the coast brought me to Koppie Alleen, a magical spot on a dune above a beach. Southern right whales and their calves wallowed beyond the breakers. It was an elemental, spring view: limestone cliffs, windswept dunes, myriad fynbos, shallows lined with shipwrecks … and bobbing whales.
Koppie Alleen marked the end of my meander. The journey had evoked the bygone ages of trekboers, fishermen, castaways and Khoisan hunter-gatherers. Like Cornwall, Terra del Fuego or Brittany, it had all the compelling elements of the end of a continent: a mood of melancholia, the powerful presence of the ocean, a recognition of lives lost, of the enormous breadth of time … and a sense of permanence.
VISIT IT:
Accommodation in the Cape Overberg is plentiful and varied. Here is where I stayed:
🏨: Cliff Lodgein De Kelders
🏨: Farm 215 near Baardskeerdersbos:
🏨: Arniston Hotel in Arniston