This is part of a series of posts following the LookSouth Road Trip from September 2023. Click here to read Part 1.
A bit off the beaten track, but we couldn’t resist doing a detour to Nieu-Bethesda at the foot of the Sneeuberge, approximately 50 kilometres north of Graaff Reinet. It was founded in 1875 as a church town, with the name of biblical origin meaning ‘place of flowing water’. Today it is a scattering of white-washed period houses and no street lights.
After her father’s death in 1945, a Nieu Bethesda-born teacher, Helen Martins, began transforming her home into a work of art. Together with employee Koos Malgas they constructed cement and glass statues inspired by biblical texts. In 1976, aged 78, Martins took her own life by swallowing caustic soda. Her house, now known as The Owl House, is run by the Owl House Foundation.
It was also a time during which the first land inhabitants, primitive amphibians, evolved. James Kitching, vertebrate palaeontologist became famous for collecting specimens in Nieu Bethesda for the South African Museum.
In 1970 he was the first person to collect and identify a specimen of a Karoo therapsid in Antarctica, which demonstrated that Antarctica and southern Africa were once connected.
Kitching’s work is stored at the Kitching Fossil Exploration Centre depicting the setting around Nieu Bethesda, some 253 million years ago during the Permian Period.
You can see the remains of these creatures in sediments where they died and can also be seen in spectacular fossil collections on nearby farms.
Click here to continue reading Part 3 of the story