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relocated the cemetery further inland, where it is today. However, with the failure of the
Foreshore Scheme, they still had the area levelled for the original cemetery, and onto

this land they pumped the raw sewage until they had enough money to construct the
bacteria beds further eastward. They hoped to cultivate forage here to earn revenue.

Opposition to the Kalk Bay Pumping Station

Once the initial construction problems had been sorted out, the sewerage system worked
quite successfully. But a problem developed at Kalk Bay which illustrates how relations

between a single hostile ratepayer and a range of municipal officials can cause extreme
disruption and lead to fruitless expenditure. This was the vendetta by Marthinus

Malherbe to have the Kalk Bay pumping station moved elsewhere.

Malherbe bought two properties on the north side of the Pumping Station from a Mr van

Blerk in May 1919 and November 1920, respectively, fully aware of the proximity of

the ‘P.S.’ or ‘P. Station’, as Malherbe called the pumping station. In 1919 he
constructed a block of flats, now called False Bay Flats, right up to the boundaries of his

site, with the doors and windows positioned overlooking the pumping station property.
Access to the back property was across the property of his neighbour Charles Smuts of

Millwood House. But that dispute is a separate epic of Kalk Bay suburban life!

In December 1920, Malherbe began a campaign to have the 13-year old ‘P. Station’

removed on the grounds that smells and noise from the premises were devaluing his
property and affecting the residents’ health. No doubt there was some smell from time

to time, which Municipal in-house reports explained away. No doubt the staff did leave
the doors and windows of the ‘P. Station’ open at times, and no doubt when the stercus

cart with its team of mules came to remove solid waste from the site at night there was a
lot of noise. But on the other hand, Municipal officials repeatedly visited the property to

check on Malherbe’s complaints and found nothing exceptional in the way of smells,

and finding no-one who could substantiate his complaints, they concluded that the
complainant had developed an obsession, was hypersensitive to the alleged smells, and