The cautionary tale of Klein Brakrivier

Writer: Dr Anina Lee.

There was a little picturesque seaside village called Klein Brakrivier, which in English means ‘Little Salt Marsh River’. It lay at the western end of the Garden Route in the Fairest Cape. My family travelled every summer holiday to this idyllic seaside spot to visit my paternal grandmother.

Ouma’s house was on top of a milkwood-covered dune, overlooking the broad sandy flood plain of the river. Upstream we could watch the trains crossing on the much-loved old iron railway bridge, while downstream was the sea, with sandy beaches and rock pools filled with marine life.

In the 1940s and ‘50s Kleinbrak, as we called it, was a tiny village with no more than 100 or so dwellings, mostly holiday homes. There was no electricity and no running water. We used oil lamps and candles, and collected rainwater from the roof in tanks and used a ‘long drop’. Every day an old man on a donkey cart came to collect the ‘slops buckets’ which he emptied at the slops pit on the salt marsh between ouma’s house and the railway line.

The concrete bridge, which was built in 1954 to replace the old railway bridge across the Klein Brakrivier, and the R102 bridge running parallel to it, which was built later when the road was upgraded, can clearly be seen in the centre of this photo.

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