Page 56 - Bulletin 14 2010

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sand there nowadays because it is all too far from tarmac and bowsers. Few people visit the
Silvermine waterfall.

More historic
I discussed the road with Mr. Francis Watermeyer, the provincial road engineer. He
confirms that this is indeed the road cut by the V.O.C. wagons. He knows this country well. He
lives at Boschbeek, Sweet Valley, and his ardent desire is to see ancient things preserved and
open spaces kept for flowers and game.
A 100-ton boulder stands next to the old V.O.C. road as it takes the plunge into the
Silvermine valley. That rock can hardly have changed since the first wagon ground past it on the
pioneer journey to Simon’s Bay. There we could have a plaque commemorating the old highway
which is every bit as historic as the early road which preceded the present Sir Lowry Pass.

Too congested
Mr. Watermeyer thinks that sooner or later we shall have to have a highway to the South
Peninsula running over the old route chosen by the pioneers.
The present way via the Millionaires’ Mile (the main St. James – Kalk Bay Road) is so
congested on a week-end such as we have just had that traffic is almost at a standstill from the
Trappies to Muizenberg robot when all the cars start homing at sundown.
A road via Silvermine valley would save the Millionaires’ Mile from being desecrated to
make a 100-foot throughway of it.

What support?
I would like a little support, please, for an historic monument plaque on the great boulder
by the old V.O.C. road. Who will champion the cause of the Cape’s first interport highway?
Who will come with me to the Historic Monuments Commission and ask that pioneers of
the first mountain pass in the Union be commemorated?

He was quite definite about the significance of the road: “the oldest Cape highway”; “the Cape’s
first interport highway”; “the first mountain pass in the Union”. In 1961 he again asserted that

this was the natural route pioneered by the DEIC engineers three centuries before, and therefore

the first highway in South Africa. (Cape Argus, 17/3/1961.) In 1968, local historian Eric
Rosenthal embraced the idea of an Ou Pad when describing Simon van der Stel’s journey to

False Bay in 1687.

“The road along which the expedition travelled – destined to become “Die Oude Kaapse
Pad” – followed more or less the course of the present railway line to Muizenberg. Thence it cut