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Gauteng - Magaliesburg |  |
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Gauteng Province, west of Pretoria. The village itself - the 'burg' - is tiny, little more than a hamlet nestled among the lovely foothills of the 'berg', a ridge that runs some 120 kilometres from a point west of Rustenburg to an area east of Pretoria. The Magaliesberg uplands, though they rise little more than 300 metres above the surrounding, flattish countryside, have a distinctive beauty of their own and, in the more precipitous parts, even grandeur. The summer rains are usually generous, and the wooded upper slopes a source of crystal streams that feed into the northward-flowing tributaries of the Limpopo River. The air in the park-like valleys is limpid, warm, even on winter days. The Magaliesberg range is barely an hour's drive from Pretoria and Johannesburg, many of whose residents escape the suffocation of city life each weekend for the relaxing tranquility of a region that, beyond the busy playground of Hartbeespoort Dam, is still largely (on the higher ground) unspoilt wilderness, a place where vultures wheel elegantly in the rising thermals, where there is solitude and the splendour of far vistas. Lower down, on the plains, there are prosperous looking farms, small-holdings and nurseries that meet the demands of the ever-demanding Witwatersrand market for peaches, oranges, vegetables and cut flowers.
Water, warmth and the lushness these created combined to attract a profusion of game animals to the region in bygone years. The elephants, in particular, were a magnet for the early white hunters, who came with their guns for the killing sport and knew the place as the Cashan Mountains. They were followed by Voortrekker pastoralists, hardy families bent on taming and settling the land, which they managed to do following a series of brutal and ultimately successful clashes with Mzilikazi's impis in the late 1830s. They then renamed the region after the local chieftain Mohali, or Magali. Later still came the prospectors - men had sensed that there was gold in the hills long before the massive Witwatersrand deposits were discovered to the east, and you can still see, here and there, the old stamp mills and machinery rusting away in the hot middleveld sun. A century and more ago, too, Paul Kruger, the Transvaal republican president, liked to holiday in the area: the cottage that houses the village curio shop served as one of the old patriarch's hunting lodges. And when war came in 1899, Boer and Briton skirmished fiercely in the hills and valleys, bequeathing posterity some stirring legends of valour and endurance.
A fair number of talented, slightly off-beat and highly individual people have chosen to make the small centre of Magaliesburg their permanent home. The arts and crafts thrive in the area, and, together with the scenic beauty and the scatter of excellent hotels and guest-houses, provide the thrust of the local tourism drive. Even more artists and craftsmen can be found at work along the Crocodile River just to the east - an active colony that includes painters and sculptors, cabinet-makers,, potters, cutlers, weavers and many others. Art routes have been organized; route maps are available.
Pretoria lies to the east, Johannesburg to the south-east, Rustenburg to the west. |
NOTE!
MAGALIESBURG Western Cape
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