muizes morning

I did a quick search on the history of Muizenberg, and found out a few interesting snippets:
Firstly, I've often heard people wonder where the name came from. Well wonder no more: in 1743 Sergeant Wynand Muis became the commander of one of the first Dutch military outposts which was originally known as Muisenburg (Muis' Stronghold). His stronghold wasn't strong enough to withstand the British and after the Battle of Muizenberg in 1775 they Anglicised the name to its current form.
Secondly I found out that the oldest European building in the Cape, Het Posthuys on Main Road, was built in 1673 (a year before the Castle was completed) and has been many things from a pub to a lookout post (to a tourist attraction).
There's lot of other interesting bits and pieces on the muizenberg.info website, and the Muizenberg Lakeside Residents Association's facebook page has notices and info and other interesting or useful stuff if you're a local. I really love living in Muizies: fantastic surf in walking distance (when the south-easter isn't howling and during the week when the crowds are at work, haha!), Shark Spotters doing a great job keeping us all out of the johnnies diet (and pointing out whales to tourists), walk-on/walk-off mountains for hiking and climbing, a great sense of community where neighbours are often delightfully odd but not strangers, and, best of all, a whole bunch of my mates live here in walking distance :)

One thing Muizies is not is quiet, so this is a very rare shot of the village without a soul in sight!


6am and all's quiet in the village (except for the south-easter of course, which was howling as usual and the reason I was out with my camera instead of my surfboard!)

seal pup

We were walking down to the Brass Bell the other evening (slitting our eyes against a howling south easter!) and we came across this tiny fellow, sitting on his own on a rock. When I hopped closer to him he asked me in a bleat: "Maaaa?" I'm not sure if Ma was anywhere nearby, but hope she was. Although he was strong and healthy, he's probably only a month old and will not survive without his mother. We saw another young cape fur seal bobbing in the wild waves just off the rocks, so there might have been more of them, as well as his Ma. I called a local marine wildlife officer, who suggested that we wait to see if he was still there in the morning, in which case he would call the SPCA, but I couldn't see him when I walked down after sunrise - I hope he did manage to get back to seal island in the middle of False Bay, but it's a long way!

Cape fur seal pup at Muizenberg

two ex arums

My yellow arum (featured before - see here) flowered again this year. I really wanted to photograph the beautiful lines they get after the smooth phase, but struggled to get the image I wanted, until I decided to pop them on my scanner bed and do them that way - so this entirely computer generated, no camera involved - and processed in photoshop.

Have a great weekend!

Spirit of Mystery

Happy 2009!! I hope you've all had a wonderful time over the holiday period, whatever you got up to!

Yesterday I went to see the Spirit of Mystery off from Simon's Town. She's a replica of the 37ft lugger, Mystery, that set off on a heroic voyage from Cornwall in the 1800's, bound for Melbourne. Times were hard in Cornwall, so over a few beers down the local pub (where many good ideas come into being) seven men - all related by blood or marriage and owning shares in the Mystery - decided to try their luck with the gold rush in Australia. One suggested that they sell the boat to get enough for the fare, but the captain decided, with a few beers under his belt, that they'd sail there and he'd navigate! Her hull was sheathed in Zinc, a deck was added, and on 18 November 1854, their voyage of about 11,800 nautical miles began. They only made one stop en route at Simon's Town, after rounding the Cape of Good Hope. They had made such good time that they were requested to carry the royal mail on to Australia, and pulled into port at Melbourne on 14 March 1855.

Now, 154 years later, Pete Goss and the Spirit of Mystery team consisting of his brother Andy, 14 year old son Elliot and brother in law Mark, have built a replica of the Mystery and are following in the wake of their countrymen. Pete has an excellent blog where you can find out more about Spirit of Mystery's story and keep up to date on their progress on the second leg of their voyage: www.petegoss.com/mystery

The very beautiful and rather small Spirit of Mystery sails out from False Bay under a light northwester into the Southern Ocean to catch the winds of the roaring forties!

Coincidently, my quintuple great uncle owned the Star Inn where the seven men first decided to make the voyage, and financed Mystery's decking. The men made their plans over the dining table at Vine Cottage, where relatives of my family lived, who where also related to some of the crew. According to my great-grandfather, some gold did make it back from Australia, and my aunt Pat now has the broach with the gold nugget.

After waving farewell to Spirit of Mystery, we went for a beer afterwards, where Vanessa noticed that the Mystery's story is illustrated on the Hansa Marzen Gold label:

Paul Moody, a friend of the crew who joined them to help out in Cape Town, and his Hansa.

See: it all began with beer, in a pub, and they sailed in a little boat with red sails around South Africa to get to the gold!

For the fandamily, and anyone else who's interested, more pics of Spirit of Mystery are at my flickr site: www.flickr.com/photos/girasolista/sets/72157604525089719/