Page 206 - Bulletin 9 2005

193

What did I know about Camps Bay then? Less than I knew about Kalk Bay. After all,
my grandmother lived in Muizenberg for nearly fifty years, I lived in Muizenberg

opposite the station when I was a toddler and I even spent a forgotten term in
Muizenberg junior school before moving to Kimberley. But Camps Bay? All I knew

was that it was windy, and consisted of very pricey real estate and a beautiful beach, and

that, like Kalk Bay, there were excellent restaurants and a ‘good vibe’.

Now what do I know? That Dr James Barry planned to turn Camps Bay into a leper
colony, that Lord Charles Somerset’s daughter was born there, that Somerset only

rented the Round House, belonging to Horak the butcher, now a restaurant, but he lived
down-hill with his family in an upmarket residence, now a bowling green . That it was

the traditional site for picnics at which emancipated slaves celebrated their freedom, that

the future King George V came there to watch Fingoes dance, that brothel madams
would hire horse carriages for Sunday drives along the beachfront while their girls

handed out visiting cards, that the tramway’s power station, now a theatre, heated the

waters of the swimming pool, now a park.

All this I have put in my book, a bouquet of words and pictures of Camps Bay. This
book is also the Story of an African Farm. The farm, Ravensteyn, at Roodekranz on the

Kloof, belonged for a short time to a sailor, Frederik Von Kamptz, third husband of
Anna Koekemoor. Frederik’s Koekemoor had been the third wife of Johan Jan

Lodewyk Wernich whose father, Johan Lodewyk Wernich, farmed what had

traditionally been the summer grazing grounds of the Goringhaiqua.

Through the vagaries of history, this book is about the stretch of land that became
known not after the Goringhaiquas, nor after the Wernichs, but after Von Kamptz, a

man called by the Dutch East India Company “this troublesome and annoying person”.

I firmly believe that if you do not record something, it gets lost. For example, in this

book is the story of how the Camps Bay cricket club got started. When the tram sheds
were being cleared out one day, a cricket ball and bat were found. A box and a rock