Page 49 - Bulletin 14 2010

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Further, he suggested that a road to Muizenberg had been constructed only in the 1770s by
Martin Melck and he supposed that Melck might even have been responsible for the heavy work

on the pass above Steenberg farm; he stated that the coast road from Fish Hoek to Simon’s Town
was completed later by Jan Fischer around 1780.

A sequence of photographs in the article illustrated what he claimed to be the remains of the Ou
Pad ascending Steenberg Mountain, but there are none of its path across the plateau or its descent

towards Silvermine Valley. Figs. 2.3 - 2.12 show his photos with his original descriptions.

Wallace’s supporters

Twenty years later, in The Cape Argus of 26 August 1957, The Wanderer penned a lengthy

supportive statement in his column TALK at the TAVERN of the SEAS:

Another historic Cape road forgotten on mountain top

Who would have the brazen effrontery to ask for an international example of erosion to be
declared a national monument? I went in search of an old road yesterday, a road older and just as
historic as the first road over the Hottentots-Holland Mountains. I found the oldest Cape highway
deeply scarred into the Steenberg plateau.
In the earlies the Dutch East India ships could not use Table Bay in the season of the nor’-
west gales. They ran for Simon’s Bay for shelter, and the company’s ox-wagons had to link Table
Bay with Simon’s Bay.
The road went from Cape Town via Wynberg Hill and Tokai, up the Steenberg mountain
to near where the plateau reservoir now lies among the pines.
From that ridge the wagons, sometimes hastening with loads of anchors and chains to
save ships in peril, travelled down the Silvermine valley to Clovelly, past Skildersgatkop and
then over Brakkloofrand to the Elsiesrivier and Elsiesbaai (now Glencairn).
And so they fared south to Simon’s Town.

Kleintuinkloof
I found the historic old road where it crossed the pipeline on Steenberg Plateau. What a
gaping piece of erosion that historic road is today. It is four feet deep at its worst spots. And there
the district forest officer has been doing his best by filling the ever-deepening donga with pine
thinnings and brushwood.
I traced the ancient highway right down the Silvermine river bank. Look at my picture of
the valley looking down across Kleintuinkloof to Fish Hoek. You will find few footprints in the