Page 55 - Bulletin 20 2016

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The intervening years

It can be said that none of the farming ventures undertaken at this southernmost section of the
Cape Peninsula would prove to be an unqualified success. This is nowhere better evidenced
than in the history of Bufflesfontein and Uiterstehoek / Cape Point Farm. Through the efforts
of John Osmond these two farms became effectively, but not officially, consolidated in 1816
and thus, the largest property south of Simon’s Town. Given its size, resources and important
access to the landing place at Buffels Bay, therefore, it can be assumed that Buffelsfontein /
Cape Point Farm offered its various owners the best chance of becoming a financial success
before the founding of the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve.

John Osmond never seems to have had any intention of developing his property into anything
more than a country estate and therefore his impact extended hardly further that the
immediate vicinity of the Buffelsfontein homestead. Osmond’s children, but for a daughter,
Agnes, all predeceased him and in the end he left Buffelsfontein to his grandchildren who,
some six years before Osmond’s death on May 9th, 1847, sold it to a wealthy property
developer from Cape Town, Johan Wicht (80) . Like Osmond before him, Wicht seems to have
been for the most part an absentee landowner with an overseer in place looking after what is
reported to have been as many as forty horses kept there for breeding purposes (81) .

Wicht in turn sold the property in 1857 to an immigrant from Argyle, Scotland, John Turner
McKellar. If there was ever anyone who could have made an economic success of these
farms, it was McKellar. We know a good deal about McKellar, his farming and other
activities and his surrounding neighbours at this time due to the fact that he would prove to be
someone who would not hesitate to defend his land rights and, on occasion, ended up in court
because of this. His first altercation on record was not with his neighbours but, in fact, the
Colonial Government. While plans to establish a lighthouse at Cape Point were initiated as
nd
early as 1854 it was not until February 2 , 1859 that the final decision as to where exactly
the lighthouse should be placed was taken and the Clerk of Works / Resident Engineer,
Robert Booty Cousins, was given the go-ahead to begin transporting materials to site (82) .

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