Thoughts in a Karoo Graveyard.
Story and Pix by Chris Marais
It's not like the old pirates say. Dead men do tell tales. Dead women too. On one of those perfect autumn mornings in the Karoo, we find ourselves strolling about the Cradock cemetery, where thick mist swirls about the old gravestones and statues, some headless. We recall a story just picked up from a long-time local. There was a man who lost his wife and was inconsolable.
On most nights after she was buried here, he would take a camp chair, a lantern and a book out to her graveside. There, he would sit and read to her until bedtime, when he would pack up and leave.
Cradock used to have two movie houses in the old days. Every so often, the bereaved man would drive down to the cemetery dressed in his ‘going-out clothes’. He would ‘escort’ his wife from her grave to his car, help her in and drive off to the movies. There, he would open the door for her, let her out and buy two entrance tickets. During the movie, he would offer her chocolates. And afterwards, he would take her back to the cemetery, open the passenger door and allow her spirit to alight. Cradock has many hard stories, some of them still in progress. But this one lifts the soul very high.
Here’s a simple black stone in the ground that only says:
“Harry Edwin Wood – Astronomer” Mr Wood, history records, was the official Astronomer and Timekeeper for the Union of South Africa. He is also famous for his discovery of a comet recorded as “1660 Wood”.
In 1941 he retired and came to farm in the Mortimer area near Cradock. Legend has it Mr Wood, the one-time National Timekeeper, used to drive all the way in to Cradock (30km) to synchronise his wristwatch with the time on the steeple clock of the Dutch Reformed Mother Church. The one that looks like St Martins in the Field, Trafalgar Square, London. Nearby stands the imposing stone belonging to General Pieter Hendrik Kritzinger, who fought the British in this district during the South African (Anglo-Boer) War. General Kritzinger was one of the Boer warriors who led their British pursuers in a ‘devil’s dance’ from the Free State through the Karoo Midlands, from Graaff-Reinet to Willowmore, Aberdeen all the way across to Cradock.
This intrepid Boer guerrilla fighter also farmed around here, and later became a member of the Cape Provincial Council. Although a fine soldier, he was also known as a ‘gentlemanly general’, and after the war his attitude to the British softened considerably. In fact, the good General was a bit of an agricultural guru to young British immigrants arriving in Cradock to set up a farming life. You used to be able to find the graves of the four Cape Rebels who were executed in Cradock in front of the Victoria Hotel, and buried here. However, the devastating floods of 1974 washed them away. Nearly 70 British soldiers lie buried on these grounds. Some of them came back to Cradock after the Anglo-Boer War and made a life here.
One of them could have been a Harry Potter. It’s quite weird, really. Everyone seems to know something about most graves in this cemetery. No one, however, can tell me anything about this Harry Potter grave right in the centre of what a local chap calls “The Valley of the Stiffs”.
All we know is that this Harry was a beloved husband who died on July 27, 1910 at the age of 46. Some say he was once stationed here with the British forces and liked it so much that he spent the rest of his years in the area. Either way, JK Rowling needs to find out about this particular gravesite, for obvious reasons.
The tall heaven-pointing plinth with the Freemasons’ mark at its base belongs to the Koettlitz couple. Dr Reginald Koettlitz was famous for being, according to his description: “An explorer and traveller, surgeon and geologist to Expeditions North Polar and Abyssinia and with Scott to the Antarctic”.
Best known for his trip with Captain Scott on his first mission to the Antarctic, the story goes that Dr Koettlitz somehow neglected to add enough Vitamin C to the polar pioneers’ diet. This was attributed by some critics as having led to the Scott Party being in a weakened state before they perished on the second expedition. Dr Koettliz was exonerated some years later – after all, Scott himself should have realised that, after the first trip, there would be a good chance of getting scurvy if they weren’t fed enough Vitamin C.
Look again at the Koettlitz stone, and you will notice that he died on January 10, 1916, and that his wife, Marie Louise, died a scant two hours after him. They are both interred at this site. Along the path, there’s another large memorial to the Brothers Botha, who died on October 25, 1918, of Die Spaanse Griep - the Spanish ‘Flu.
The word “’flu” does not really do descriptive justice to this dreaded infection which killed 20 million people around the world – 500 000 of them being right here in South Africa.
The Johannesburg Star records:
“Now there were more than 1,000 dead in Kimberley. And they’d run out of coffins in some towns;
A man called William Hill working at East Rand Proprietary Mine collapsed across the machinery in the winding house at 3am one day while the cage was coming up. It crashed into the headgear, killing 19.
Doctors and nurses were dying. People checking on relatives living on the platteland found farmhouses as silent as the grave.”
The Spanish ‘Flu epidemic of 1918 (and the fateful Black October in particular) was judged at the time to be the “single most devastating episode in the demographic history of South Africa.” At the children’s section of the cemetery, wistful cherubs with downcast eyes guard the graves of babes, the pained messages of their parents on the stones almost too poignant to bear.
And as the mist clears, we see vandals have beheaded many of the little statues.
Frontier life took its toll on the offspring of the pioneers and settlers along the Great Fish River. The Spanish ‘Flu was but one of the many causes of infant death. Stephen Mullineux, a neighbour, knows quite a lot about Cradock’s history. He meets us down at the cemetery one day, where he indicates the graves of the four suicides buried in the cemetery.They face west. All the other graves face the rising sun. Stephen shows us the grave of one Louis Levenstein, who has an etching of a rugby ball on his stone. The inscribed dedication tells one that Louis died in Adelaide during a rugby match.
Nearby is another sports fan’s grave, that of Luzarian Vernon Holland. The stone is green and the base depicts an entire rugby field.On the way out, we notice the stone of one Peter Sidey, buried in 1864 with the help of the Cradock Teetotal Society.
Hmm. Cradock has a Bridge Club, a 4X4 Club and an Afvalgilde (The Guild of Honorable Tripe-Eaters), but who knew we had a Teetotal Society? There certainly isn’t one around these days…
MORE FROM THE AUTHOR.
For an insider’s view on life in the Karoo, get the Three-Book Special of Karoo Roads I, Karoo Roads II and Moving to the Platteland – Life in Small Town South Africa by Julienne du Toit and Chris Marais for only R720, including courier costs in South Africa. For more details, contact Julie at: julie@karoospace.co.za
