Am I alone in noticing a rise in the Scottish proportion of our valley’s population? Far be it from me to complain, mind you, especially since our editor is proudly Caledonian and I’ve seen how he savagely butchers a large sausage.
The Scots, bless their wee, pioneering natures, are but the latest in a long line of our valley’s colonizers. The Bushmen arrived 8000 years ago. They survived unforgiving weather and hard livelihoods from before Adam and Eve – they even escaped Shaka and Dingaan – but they came short from when the white man arrived.
Then, the first Voortrekker to venture into our valley was Gert Maritz, who set up his laager in June 1838 where Loskop stands today. Mr Opperman started farming in our valley soon after, but he moved to the Free State, probably in a bit of a huff, after the British annexed Natal.
Scottish settler David Gray arrived in 1855, buying Opperman’s Kraal from an Englishman called Charles Green, and it was then that the slow process of indigenization began.
He started by renaming the farm Cathkin, after Cathkin Braes (from this, Cathkin Peak was named). This is a park in southeast Glasgow close to his home town of Paisley, hence the derived name, Cathkin Park. It is the highest point in the city, with panoramic views across it. ‘Brae’ means ‘hill’ in Scotland, although the word was later South Africanized to mean ‘the burning of meat on fires while drinking copious amounts of beer’.
Later, the farm Cathkin was to become The Nest Hotel, but the Grays continued to farm and, more importantly, populate our valley. Today, David Gray’s ancestors have almost completed his original vision of a mini-Scotland under the African sun. Look at the picture, imagining him sans enormous beard, and there is an eerie resemblance to someone we all know and love.
Despite the name, Cathkin Braes is flat; the Highlands are far to the north. Rather, it is a moor, with a few trees and a golf course, and it is surrounded by Scots.
Which, to David Gray’s credit, and somewhat to my surprise, sums up our valley rather neatly, I think.
