Page 215 - Bulletin 9 2005

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Mills and Pauling

Then came another businessman called Mills, Samuel Mills, no relation. He was a
builder who had bought Clifton House and turned it in to Clifton-on-the-Sea and started

eyeing Daniel Mills’s land. Daniel Mills was getting old, the children had grown up, it

was getting a nuisance for Mr Mills to ride in his carriage up the Kloof in the mornings
to his mill, although he had bought a new-fangled bicycle for his wife. Samuel Mills,

the builder, met a railway engineer, George Pauling, and told him about the beautiful
inaccessible bay belonging to Daniel Mills, the miller, and they started thinking big.

Camps Bay would be perfect for a large scale development except for two major

problems. There was the wind of course - but if you told people that the southeaster was

an invigorating health-giving breeze instead of, like my Grandfather, calling it a
howling gale, you could get around that one. It was a minor matter of re-education.

The problem was that Camps Bay was too inaccessible. It was too isolated. It was too
inconvenient for would-be home owners. The end of the 19th century was approaching

and with it the threat of war. Pauling and Mills had a good idea. What if they were to
build a tramway? Then people could travel by tram to work in the city, and Camps Bay

village would become near and convenient instead of far and inaccessible.

The other problem, also solvable with money, was that there was no water for a major

development. Mr. van Breda who owned Oudekraal had a river. He also owned
Oranjezicht where he had water.

As war in the Transvaal seemed inevitable, the Randlords were keen to diversify and

were happy to buy into the scheme. So in 1901 three companies were registered in Cape
Town. These were the Camps Bay Tramways Company, the Oranzejicht Estates

Company, and Cape Marine Suburbs Limited. The secretary of all three was a man

named James Farquhar.