Mortymoose's Backyard!

[Mortymoose]

Whats the fishing like over there, that part of the coast must be untapped?

Not allowed to fish along the coast here, due to it being a restricted area and the fact that it is a National Park of sorts.

However, down in the southern corner where I live, the general public have access to about 5km of the North bank of the orange river and a further 4km of Beach.

Over the months of November to March, the fish run here....

The anglers catch Yellowtail and barbel on the River side and on the Sea side it is mainly Cob, Steenbrass and Kebeljou.

I ain't into the fishing scene, but I do know that the fishing is extremely good here.

When the fish run over december, a lot of folk move tents onto the sandbar at the river mouth and spend days camping out...

The below picture is taken from the north bank over towards the sandbar where the mob are fishing...

 

[Mortymoose]

So back to Bogenfels we go....

We stayed over at the Pink House. This bulding use to be a clinic at the German mine and is the only building that was restored by the current mine owners.

We arrived at this rustic and lonely building just as darkness approached from the east..... this just gave us time to light a fire in the dune sand outside front door of the building...

A nice evening was to follow, an evening that I would not be able to sleep....... It was not long before the night jackals arrived to scavenge ..... but we cared not as the fire roared and the 1st bottle of Jagermeister was cracked....

what a sight we must have made, this flickering fire in this vast desolate spot.....

the history and tales would flow into the wee hours of the morn that night...

 

[Mortymoose]

The following morning we started early, heading south, this time along the beach, we were heading for a place called Bakers Bay. There was no real road to get there and we were going to follow an old track that ran along the beach.

A neighbour of mine had worked for a number of years in the Mine's survey dept. He had carte blanche on the area and would often spend days out in the area, alone, just him and his work bakkie loaded with instruments and a quad bike.

Often during our late night Sunday alcohol fused drinking sessions next to a fire at my house, he would always turn to me and say, "Morty, when I die, they must scatter my ashes at Driemeisters Bay, it's ****in beautiful up there", well i was about to see the place for myself, and you know what? He was'nt wrong.....

The flat Pan mentioned in one of the snaps, is massive, The Onyb pan, when we stopped there we recalled the tale of how a surveyor was killed here in the 70's. Got blown up , there were two guys to surveying in the area and the belief was that the dry pan actually covered a treasure of diamonds, so they needed to blow up the ground to see what lay beneath, well things went south and one of the chaps got blown up..... As a youngster I had heard the old folk lament about the incident...

You have to know how to drive 4x4 dunes out here, often the track would vanish into a dune..... you would have to guess where drive next....

About 12km north of Bakers Bay, the Islands that scatter this coast start to appear, some of you old timers might recall a TV series called "The ISles of Dead Ned!" ? , well this would be them......

 

[Mortymoose]

To be honest i was pretty excited to be returning to Bakers Bay, yep! returning, When I was an electrical apprentice back in 1989, I was sent up to Bakers Bay with some electrical motors that needed to used in the mining Plant that was in operation at the time.

The plant was down by the pans near the beach, and had been operational for the last 13 years.

The actual camp at Baker's bay was built to house the men that worked at the plant. There was a rec room, A church and a mess to feed them all....

When the diamonds came to an end , the mine actually demolished the plant but left the buildings.... it has always been said by the old timers that the pans up here were loaded with diamonds and if anyone could ever figure out how to remove all that mud and slush to expose the bedrock beneath, you would be very rich!

From a personal prespective, I always hope that the Bakers Bay concession would come up as I would like to open a tourist stopover camp here.... but our gov works very slow and nothing has come to light....

Another point of interest, the actual Baker's Bay is not the big bay we see in the pics, but rather a smaller bay around the corner.
Back in the mid 1800's these islands along the coast were mined for guano.... a very lucrative trade at the time.... there are a few abandoned stone huts on some of the islands.... I know that there is a researcher living on one, been there for years living a hermits life......

 

[Mortymoose]

Here is an interesting tale that some of you might find of interest.

Back in the day's before mobile devices, communication was lacking out in this wild expanse of desert.

In the 60's and 70's the mining company had a number of surveyors and geologists scouring the area for new deposits of diamonds.

In the interest of safety , they ran a telephone line for 120km up along the dirt track and at the end of this line they placed a telephone. A telephone in the middle of nowhere.

This line was connected to the telephone exchange back in Oranjemund, where an operator would man the switchboard 24 hours a day.

As the years rolled on, and the mining folk left the area, the phone remained, nobody even bothered to turn off the phone and this proved to be a lifesaver a mere decade into the 80's....

One year in the 80's ,During the night shift, the telephone operator was astonished to see a light blinking on his silent board, a call was coming through from a phone he had no prior knowledge of..... He answered the call , only to be greeted by some fellow speaking pidgin English..... it was the phonecall from the middle of nowhere.

The mine security team were alerted and a convoy of vehicles departed for this remote phone.

On arrival at the location, the security officials were astounded to find 6 ( Not sure on the exact figure) black chaps from Ghana, dehydrated and tired...

It turns out that this motley crew were in actual fact stowaways on a ship that had left Ghana a week earlier.... on being discovered by the ship's captain, he ordered a wooden raft to be thrown overboard with a bottle of water onto which the stowaways were dumped.... their fate now in the hands of the notorious Namibian coast.....

The group were indeed fortunate to make it ashore..... on the beach, they discussed what to do, where to go, they had no idea where they were or even in which country they had landed....

Surrounded by a bleak hostile environment, the decision was made to trek inland.... after walking in total despair for about 12km, with nobody in sight.... the desert neverending, by pure chance they stumbled apon the phone in the middle of Nowhere...... if they had walked a mere 1km north or south , they would have missed it and surely have perished in this vast wasteland.....

 

[Mortymoose]

Just behind the hill at the Bakers Bay camp, is a small seal colony, we went to have a look, I was amazed at how the Jackals walked freely amongst the Seals, seeking out unattended seal pups to dine on.... at one stage I counted 14 Jackals......

This was an amazing experience.......

 

[flarkit]

Thanks for the epic thread, Mortymoose. You've given us a glimpse into a stunning part of Nam, which very few would be able to experience.

 

[Mortymoose]

Thanks for the epic thread, Mortymoose. You've given us a glimpse into a stunning part of Nam, which very few would be able to experience.

Cheers, happy to share the pics and tales with you guys!

Plenty more to follow and we have'nt even touched on the 500 year old shipwreck!

 

[genetic]

I really enjoyed reading this!

Thank you Mortymoose!

 

[Hemi300c]

Great read and insightful, thanks Morty.

 

[Shake&Bake]

Thanks Mortymoose - what an epic read!

Been threatening for years to make a trip up North.
Pity we can't make into those beautiful places you've shown us - but it only serves to inspire me more to start running the numbers on making a trip

 

[Mortymoose]

To be honest I was a bit sad to leave Bakers Bay behind, for some reason or other I felt a connection to the place.....

One has to remember that there are actually no roads in these parts. What we are following are old prospecting and security tracks that in some cases have not been used in years .... you point the vehicles nose south and follow the beach where you can....

Besides the Jackals back at the Pink House in Bogenfels, I had not seen any sign of wildlife on the entire dry journey.... but on this windswept stretch between Bakers Bay to Fort Reef, we spotted a lone Gemsbok.... I was use to seeing the Gemsbok back in our town, on rolling green lawns, to see this beast alone on the sands, you start to wonder where he got water and food from..... the drive was long and hard, luckily for me, I was not driving, I was the man running the Coolbox bar in the back, and boy oh boy! did those ice cold Tafel's and Windhoek's make a welcome taste to our dusty and dry mouths.... and that was only at 08h30 in the morn....

I again looked forward to seeing the fabled "Fort Reef", not for the building, but from a historical perspective .... a scene of a nautical tragedy back in the late 60's and a story that would change ocean diamond mining forever....

 

[musha]

NOOOOOOO. Why is it over so soon Damnit. Waiting on MOAR!!!!

 

[Mortymoose]

Fort Reef is a little prefab structure that sits on a rocky outcrop overlooking a rather large bay called Chameis Bay.

The actual structure is about 120m from the sea and has a commanding few out over the coastline.

The building was used many decades ago by the Diamond security patrols as an overnight stop.

As the patrols stopped, a few bright sparks in the security dept decided to refurbish the establishment for a weekend retreat for their kin and would often have group parties out here on the weekends. This was fairly big during the 80's and early 90's.

The historical event that occurred here was back in the late 60's when a fierce Atlantic storm wrecked a few pioneering diamond barges and a few good men lost their lifes that night.

I will talk more about that night and the history behind a unique Texan called Sammy Collins on the next post...

Here are a few snaps of Fort Reef, the wreck of the infamous Barge 77 and a photograph of how the barge actually looked back in the late 60's

I have included a pic of the barge Pomona, which was part of the fleet and gives you an idea of the size of these vessels.

"Hope I don't bore you all with the history lesson, surely one or two of you might find it of interest"

 

[HapticSimian]

...

"Hope I don't bore you all with the history lesson, surely one or two of you might find it of interest"

Wouldn't be a third as interesting without the context you provide.

 

[Rocket-Boy]

Moar!1
Im in Ongwediva atm, on the beach you might say...
Its a pity you are so far away from here otherwise I would love to hear some of those stories.

 

[Mortymoose]

Enter Sammy Collins!

Before we discuss this Texan, let me point out how this American came to be on our coast.

Back in the early 60's the mine needed fuel to run their earthmoving fleet, which by the way was the largest private earthmoving fleet in the world.

Being so remote, it was decided to build the impossible, lay an undersea pipeline out to a platform on the ocean where tankers could pump fuel onshore to a Tank Farm.

The tankers arrived from Rotterdam and lined up with onshore beacons and pumped the fuel.

Experts arrived from around the globe to build this pipeline. One of them being a oil diver called Sammy Collins, all the way from Texas. It was he that realised the vast diamond wealth that lay below these waters, back in an era when the DeBeers geologists did not believe there to be viable deposits under the sea...

Here are a few snaps of the building of the Pipeline..... excuse the age.... but this was back before megapixels were important.....











For years we had the cheapest fuel on the subcontinent... the tank farm was demolished about 13 years ago and now we are trucking fuel in.....

 

[Mortymoose]

Moar!1
Im in Ongwediva atm, on the beach you might say...
Its a pity you are so far away from here otherwise I would love to hear some of those stories.

Cape Town is closer to me than Ongwediva!

Ok! Let me go to a meeting will try and post later...

 

[spiderz]

I think I must go visit the moose at some stage. Love the photos!

 

[Mortymoose]

Where were we, yes, Fort Reef and the wreck of the Barge 77.

Sammy Collins got his hands on a sea concession to mine for diamonds, I will not go into this too much as it is a topic on it's own and his life should be turned into a story with Leonard Di Caprio as the lead....

DeBeers never believed that there were viable diamond deposits in the sea, Sammy proved otherwise.... he had a small fleet of barges and tugs and started recovering 100's of thousands of carats from the ocean.... all was going well until a few mishaps occurred.... (I am too lazy to type, so I copied and paste)

"The wreck is definitely Barge77, it's at Panther Head at the southern end of Chameis Bay and was dumped onto the rocks by heavy seas in.

The a tug Collinstar, lies at the bottom of Chameis Bay, she capasized and sank taking 6 lives with her in February 1965 during a rescue attempt on the beached Collpontoon, which dragged her anchors in heavy seas.

Pomona was commissioned in June 1967 as the largest, heaviest and most complex vessel of its kind to be built in South Africa at a cost of R3 million. When Sam Collins turned his business focus back to the oil industry in the Persian Gulf he repurchased some of the tugs, barges and other craft in 1971, of which Pomona was one of them and used mainly for its extensive accomodation facilites.

Rockeater was an ex US Army coaster that was fitted out as an exploration and sampling vessel to search for the parts of the concession areas that would yield sufficient diamonds in payable quantities."

I was in contact with one of the chaps that was on board that fateful night and for those of you who have the time, please feel free to read the attached letter that I received from Lood.

After the entire episode, the MDC, Sammy's Company was ruined and had to sell out to Anglo/DeBeers.... a lot of his employees moved over to the land based operations at CDM . (COnsolidated Diamond Mines of South West Africa)