Grootvadersbosch is a historic farm in the

Overberg __NOTOC__ Overberg is a region in South Africa to the east of Cape Town beyond the Hottentots-Holland mountains. It lies along the Western Cape Province's south coast between the Cape Peninsula and the region known as the Garden Route in the e ...

, and the surrounding area is currently a nature reserve in the southern portion of the

Boosmansbos Wilderness Area The Boosmansbos Wilderness Area of is situated north of Heidelberg in the eastern Langeberg mountain chain of the Western Cape Province, South Africa. ''Boosmansbos'', i.e. 'angry man's forest', is named after a resident hermit of the early 19th ...

, in

Western Cape The Western Cape is a province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , and the third most populous, with an estimated 7 million inhabitants in 2020 ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

Location

Grootvadersbosch is in the foothills of the

Langeberg The Langeberg Range is a mountain range in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Its highest peak is Keeromsberg at 2,075 m that lies 15 km northeast of the town of Worcester. Some of the highest peaks of the range are located just to ...

, east of Oude Post and the Tradouw Pass to

Barrydale Barrydale is a village located on the border of the Overberg and Klein Karoo regions of the Western Cape Province in South Africa. It was named after Joseph Barry, a well known merchant of the 19th century. It is situated at the northern end of th ...

and north of the gravel road from

Swellendam Swellendam is the fifth oldest town in South Africa (after Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Simon's Town, and Paarl), a town with 17,537 inhabitants situated in the Western Cape province. The town has over 50 provincial heritage sites, most of them b ...

over the

Buffeljags River Buffeljagsriver (Afrikaans for "buffalo hunt") is a river that originates where two other rivers meet, one being the Grootvadersbos River (Afrikaans for ''Grandfather's woods'') and the other the Tradou River. The confluence is just east of a sm ...

Suurbraak Suurbraak is a settlement in Overberg District Municipality in the Western Cape province of South Africa. The village was established in 1812, when the London Missionary Society established a mission station to serve the Attaqua Khoikhoi K ...

and

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...

. Both the Slang River (not the one in

Mpumalanga Mpumalanga () is a province of South Africa. The name means "East", or literally "The Place Where the Sun Rises" in the Swazi, Xhosa, Ndebele and Zulu languages. Mpumalanga lies in eastern South Africa, bordering Eswatini and Mozambique. It ...

) and the Duiwenhoks River spring from the region.

Nature reserve

Grootvadersbosch is the largest remaining native forest in the Langeberg. Both a foot trail and a

mountain bike A mountain bike (MTB) or mountain bicycle is a bicycle designed for off-road cycling. Mountain bikes share some similarities with other bicycles, but incorporate features designed to enhance durability and performance in rough terrain, which ...

trail have been developed in the reserve.

Animal life

The

Cape bushbuck The Cape bushbuck (''Tragelaphus sylvaticus'') is a common and a widespread species of antelope in sub-Saharan Africa.Wronski T, Moodley Y. (2009)Bushbuck, harnessed antelope or both? ''Gnusletter'', 28(1):18-19. Bushbuck are found in a wide ra ...

was first seen by European scientists in this forest in 1776, when the Swede

Anders Sparrman Anders Sparrman (27 February 1748, Tensta, Uppland – 9 August 1820) was a Swedish naturalist, abolitionist and an apostle of Carl Linnaeus. Biography left, Miniature of Sparrman at the time of his travels with James Cook. By unknown artis ...

visited. After searching for more than 50 years, herpetologist John D. Visser finally found eggs of the

frog A frog is any member of a diverse and largely Carnivore, carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the order (biology), order Anura (ανοὐρά, literally ''without tail'' in Ancient Greek). The oldest fossil "proto-f ...

species known as the

Eastern ghost frog The eastern ghost frog (''Heleophryne orientalis'') is a species of frog in the family Heleophrynidae. It is endemic to Western Cape Province, South Africa. Its natural habitats are forest patches surrounded by mountain fynbos heathland. Adult ...

(''Heleophyryne orientalis'') here.

History

Dutch East India Company The United East India Company ( nl, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the VOC) was a chartered company established on the 20th March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies into the first joint-stock ...

soldiers began cutting trees in this forest early on.

Trekboer The Trekboers ( af, Trekboere) were nomadic pastoralists descended from European settlers on the frontiers of the Dutch Cape Colony in Southern Africa. The Trekboers began migrating into the interior from the areas surrounding what is now Cape ...

s settled in the area, and in 1724 Roelof Olofsz founded Grootvadersbosch farm. Later, it would be owned by Jacobus Steyn. In 1744,

Dutch Cape Colony The Cape Colony ( nl, Kaapkolonie) was a Dutch United East India Company (VOC) colony in Southern Africa, centered on the Cape of Good Hope, from where it derived its name. The original colony and its successive states that the colony was inco ...

Governor

Hendrik Swellengrebel Hendrik Swellengrebel (Cape Town, 20 September 1700 – Utrecht, 26 December 1760) was the first and only Dutch East India Company governor of the Dutch Cape Colony who was born in the Cape. Life Swellengrebel was governor from 14 April 1739 ...

founded as school here where Abraham Schietekat worked as a teacher and ministered to the local Boers.

Benjamin Moodie Captain Benjamin Moodie (1789 - 2 April 1856) was the 10th Laird of Melsetter who led a party of 200 Scottish immigrants to the Cape Colony in 1817, three years before the arrival of the 1820 Settlers. Moodie served in the Ross and Caithness Militi ...

purchased the farm in 1817, and the Moodie family cradle in

Southern Africa Southern Africa is the southernmost subregion of the African continent, south of the Congo and Tanzania. The physical location is the large part of Africa to the south of the extensive Congo River basin. Southern Africa is home to a number of ...

would become one of the leading farms in the Overberg. It supplied

wood Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin th ...

wheat Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus ''Triticum'' ; the most widely grown is common wheat (''T. aestivum''). The archaeologi ...

fruit In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants that is formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which flowering plants (also known as angiosperms) disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in particu ...

tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...

wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...

, and

brandy Brandy is a liquor produced by distilling wine. Brandy generally contains 35–60% alcohol by volume (70–120 US proof) and is typically consumed as an after-dinner digestif. Some brandies are aged in wooden casks. Others are coloured with ...

. The farm was visited by several famous people over the years: the botanists

Carl Peter Thunberg Carl Peter Thunberg, also known as Karl Peter von Thunberg, Carl Pehr Thunberg, or Carl Per Thunberg (11 November 1743 – 8 August 1828), was a Swedish naturalist and an "apostle" of Carl Linnaeus. After studying under Linnaeus at Uppsala Un ...

and

Francis Masson Francis Masson (August 1741 – 23 December 1805) was a Scotland, Scottish botanist and gardener, and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Kew Gardens’ first Botanical expedition, plant hunter. Life Masson was born in Aberdeen. In the 1760s, he ...

in 1772, traveler and explorer

François Levaillant François Levaillant (born Vaillant, later in life as Le Vaillant, ''"The Valiant"'') (6 August 1753 – 22 November 1824) was a French author, explorer, naturalist, zoological collector, and noted ornithologist. He described many new species of ...

in 1782, the missionary botanist

James Backhouse :''See alsfor two other James Backhouse botanists and nursery owners of York.'' James Backhouse (8 July 1794 – 20 January 1869) was a botanist and missionary for the Quaker church in Australia. His son, also James Backhouse (1825–1890), was ...

, and the missionary John Philip in 1830.

Bibliography

* Burrows, Edmund H.: ''Overberg Outspan: A chronicle of people and places in the south western districts of the Cape''. Swelllendam: Swellendam Trust, 1988. {{ISBN, 0-620-12930-1

External links

Official website
Nature reserves in South Africa