Williston

When you read the book ‘Letters of Stone’ by South African author Steven Robins, which tracks the lives and fates of the Robinsky family in Southern Africa, Berlin, Riga and ultimately Auschwitz, you may be tempted to visit Williston to experience first-hand where one of the principal figures of this poignant story lived. Here you will find Robinsky Street, commemorating Robins’ great uncle Eugen Robinski who fled Konigsberg, East Prussia to become a successful businessman, hotel owner and one-time mayor of this small Karoo town.

But even if your interests are more mundane, Williston will not disappoint. Situated on the Karoo Highlands Route, the town and surrounding areas offer, amongst others, beautiful clear night skies, rock paintings, corbelled houses, remnants of the Anglo Boer War, artisanal cheeses, succulent Karoo lamb and the possible sighting of that rarest and most endangered of all South African animals, the Riverine rabbit. But for this author the main attraction lay in the Williston Cemetery.

Stuurmansfontein Corbelled House (South African Panorama)

The older and smaller Karoo towns offer the cemetery enthusiast some of the most historical and interesting tombstones in South Africa. Unfortunately, all historical cemeteries are facing similar problems; slow deterioration of tombstones due to prolonged exposure to harsh climatic conditions and then the more immediate and hazardous one, malicious damage...

Below are edited excerpts from an article titled 'Stone Beehive Dwellings of the North-Western Cape'. The piece was written by James Walton and appeared in a 1961 edition of South African Panorama.

The road from Carnarvon to Williston in the north-western Cape winds across the semi-desert sheep country stretching up to the Karee Range. Dusty tracks through rocky outcrops of black basalt, weathered into gaunt, fantastic shapes and polished by the wind, lead to the scattered farmsteads. It is a hard, relentless country and one which promises little of interest; but in the homes of its early settlers it still retains one of the most fascinating architectural features in the whole of Southern Africa.

Schuinshoogte Corbelled House (South African Panorama)

In this stony, treeless, semi-desert country the first settlers built themselves giant stone beehive-shaped dwellings. And to look down for the first time on a farmstead such as Stuurmansfontein (see main image), with its glistening white beehives standing out sharply against the black basalt amphitheatre in which they nestle, is almost as remarkable as first seeing the famous beehive villages of Alberobello in Southern Italy or Gordes in the Maritime Alps.

The huts are usually circular in plan,  having an internal diameter of up to 18 feet, although a few are rectangular. The walls rise vertically to...