Page 30 - Bulletin 20 2016

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lodging houses for visitors – a select number of enterprising individuals were encouraged to
take up these business opportunities through grants of land. One of those so favoured was
Christina Diemer - the widow of before-mentioned Frederik Russouw of the farm
Swaanswyk. Through Russouw’s previous partnership with Antoni Visser it is likely
Christina had come to be well acquainted with the challenges one would face doing business
in the South Peninsula. She and Russouw also had twelve children, six sons and six
daughters, so it can be expected that in addition to the farm Swaanswyk she was looking for
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other business enterprises to involve them in. On November 26 , 1745, Diemer was granted
two and a half morgen of land above Simon’s Town which came to be known as Goede Gif,
or ‘Good Gift’, where she established a boarding house and fresh produce garden (38) . (Figs.
2.8 & 2.9.) It was probably at this same time that Diemer was allowed to graze livestock in
what would become part of the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve. This outpost was known
as ‘Diemerskraal’ at the Uiterstehoek or ‘Outermost Corner’ of the Cape Peninsula - located
along the Buffels River between the sea and the present day Buffelsfontein Information
Centre. How long Diemer utilized this outpost is not known. One Jacobus van Reenan
appears in the historical records as holding this grant of land in 1758 and there were probably
others before and after him (39) . In the meantime Diemer was also granted, along with Carel
George Wieser, in 1745, an area near present day Kommetjie, today known as Imhoff’s Gift
and where the Slangkop homestead was established. It was to this area that Diemer now
likely focused her most direct attention, being a more suitable place to farm and from which
to provide the fresh produce and other supplies she required for her lodging house at Simon’s
Bay (40) .

Another early resident was Jan Willem Hurter. In 1783 he married Martha Maria Munnik
and, thereby, into one of the oldest families in Simon’s Town. At the death of Antoni Visser –
probably in 1745 – Visser’s wife sold the house on the two morgen (1.7 hectare) site of
present day Admiralty House to Johannes Albertus Munnik. This property then passed to Jan
Hendrik Munnik, fourteen years later – who then sold it to his brother Gerhardus, who in
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turn, sold it to his son-in-law, Jan Willem - age twenty and a baker by trade - on January 12 ,
1785. Jan Willem carried on his work as a baker while he and Martha also ran their newly
acquired property as a lodging house (41) . In 1788 Hurter is on record requesting permission
to erect buildings for the care of his livestock on his “vergunning” ‘special grant’ “de
Olifants Bos”..... “situated behind the False Bay Mountains, towards the sea shore” (42) . What

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