This outing is only for paid-up members. A renewal fee or initial annual subscription of R150.00 is payable on the day. We will be leaving from KLCBT at Crossing at 07:00. Email moviesol@iafrica.com to book your place. Anybody in need of a seat or with space to offer in a vehicle please mention so with your confirmation. Note that only 4 seater 4x4 or high clearance vehicles will be allowed so as to allow as many passengers as possible. This is due to the lack of stopping room along the road. A reasonable level of fitness is required as we will be walking down the “Staircase”.

The first stop will be at the Hendriksdal dam, after which we will travel to Misty Mountain Inn where Dr. Gerrit Haarhoff will give a presentation on the history of the road and the day’s sights.

Dr. Gerrit Haarhoff writes:

The Old Harbour Road started off as a game- and footpath a long time before the gold rush in 1873 which necessitated the building of a road. The Bokoni used a winding trail across the mountain to trade with the Indians and Arabs at Delagoa Bay. The old Boer Emigrants used the same trail to move their sheep from the Highveld during wintertime to the more moderate climes of the Graskop Plateau. The men whiled away their time hunting in the Lowveld, while the women tended their flock. In 1849 Albasini build a trading post close to Misty Mountain Inn, which was used until 1852. This was also used as a resting place for his porters which came all the way from Delagoa Bay and later used as a stage coach stop-over.

President Thomas Burgers visited the new Bendigo diggings in August 1873 and had to travel on horseback from Lydenburg to the diggings, which he named the New Caledonia fields, but which quickly became known as MacMac. He realised that a new road was very important, and Abraham Espag landed the contract for £500. Espag came from a wealthy Voortrekker family, and he and his brothers farmed in the valley below Misty Mountain Inn. His sister worked for Emma McLachlan, wife of the pioneer prospector Tom. As Burgers stayed with the McLachlan’s at MacMac, she no doubt introduced Abraham to President Burgers.

Equipped only with gunpowder, pick and shovels, Espag and his team went to work, and by the winter of 1874 Macdonald and his band of merry men could use the road to collect gunpowder at Delagoa Bay. The road was very difficult and all travelers feared it. Charles Warren described the road to Sir Bartle Frere, Governor of the Cape in these words:

“From Leydenburg a district road has been laid out as far as Macmac with some care, with numerous cutting in the rocky sides of the mountains, extending for several miles. Along this road the road to Spitzkop extends for about 20 miles, until the Macmac road passes near the Devil's Knuckles down by the Sabia river and the Spitzkop track leads on over the mountains.

This road to Spitzkop at present is not much used, as the diggers at Spitzkop communicate with Pilgrim's Rest over the Spitzkop pass via Macmac; it appears, however, to be used by the Boers to some extent.

No attention has been paid to draining or metalling that portion cut in the steepmountain sides, and consequently there are gutters running along and cutting up the roadway often two feet deep, making travelling with waggons very dangerous.

It has been laid out with due regard to the requirements of a Boer waggon-road, that is to say, it is carried along the sides of the hills at a slope of about 1 in 20 or 1 in 40, and on reaching a very steep place is carried straight down it. In some cases these passes resemble a series of broken staircases with steps two feet high; in other cases they are simply steep slides. The road, as it at present exists, is only available for the transit of the strongest kind of South African Waggon…”

Descriptions such as “steep as a wall of a house” or “a series of broken staircases” were used to described the road. The dreaded “Devils’s Knuckles” were the most difficult part of the road. EA Sandeman wrote in his “Eight Months in an Ox Waggon”:

These infernal knuckles consist of four steep hills, standing boldly out by themselves, and joining each other; and the trek of necessity leads over and down, each of their almost vertical summits. The sides are too steep and stony for any amount of cutting to make a safe road. When on top of one of these points, the waggon looked as if it were stuck on a sugar-loaf, and that any attempt at descend must result in a headlong roll, down many hundred feet over the rocky precipice on either side. The ascents were so steep that we had to use both spans to each waggon; and the spanning them in and out took a considerable time…”

The last descent towards Spitzkop was called the “Hell’s Gates”, where the wheels of the wagons had to be tied up with reims, and the two after-oxen strained against the weight of the wagons. The return journey was so steep that the drivers had to outspan at the top, naming it “koffiehoogte”

In 1914 a new road was built with the express idea of bypassing the Devil’s Knuckles which became known as the Old Lydenburg road. This road was in use until 1953, when the new road was opened, following the line of the Old Harbour Road. The road was again improved from 1959 to 1963 at a cost of R1 189 420 or R36 540 per mile and was 47.7 miles long compared to Espag’s oringinal road of 42 miles.

Picnic lunch will be at the Horseshoe Falls (a nominal entrance fee is required).