Utrecht – a town steeped in history on our doorstep
This once thriving coal mining town is now in a kind of time-warp.
The Tourism Committee recently visited Utrecht, at the top right-hand corner of a triangle comprising Dundee, Newcastle and Utrecht, nestling in a horse-shoe of the Balele. Before being a thriving coal mining town, it was a major military base for the British forces during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, where the Prince Imperial of France is alleged to have had his roving eye on one of the Uys daughters.
This once thriving coal mining town is now in a kind of time-warp. One is forced to overlook the growing and thriving potholes, and instead be captured by the charm of the Pos en Telegrafie Kantoor, a magnificent Dutch Reformed Church (where the rafters were made out of the hull of an old ship), the imposing sandstone Town Hall and a number of gracious century-old houses
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The place has great potential to become another Pilgrim’s Rest! Local artists Danie Marais and his son Landman have for the past 10 years turned their century-and-a-half-old sandstone farmhouse into a studio.
Danie, who is ‘really’ a missionary, has always been passionate about art. He paints bold landscapes and portraits, and is a regular exhibitor at Talana Museum every October. Landman does the most exquisite steel art – and railings, door frames and banisters out of metal.
Another attraction in the town is the monument to a Pole named Captain Leo Pokrowski, in the grounds of the NGK.
Pokrowski had had the misfortune to get in the way of a bullet on Christmas Day 1901 during an altercation near Knight’s Hill. He came out to South Africa, first as a cook, to volunteer to fight with the Boers and his death turned him into a Utrecht legend.
There is a Wall of Remembrance at the church, commemorating the 170 or so volunteers representing 38 countries (including Bosnia and Brazil) who came out to fight with the Boers. Another gem in the town is Nico Moolman’s private museum.
A published author of 16 books (historical and children’s), Nico calls his museum, originally the stables of a Boer War period farmhouse, Cordite and Colonge.
It is crammed with “stuff” in no particular order, ranging from the Emmett diaries to Jack Churchill’s bow – a World War 2 legend who captured 42 Germans armed with only a sword, killed a Nazi with a bow and arrow, and escaped from a concentration camp. A movie was made about his life, called ‘Mad Jack’. His bow and knife are Nico’s pride. Nico is also a self-confessed hippie from the 1960s and is proud to have met Jimi Hendrix, who was playing in Scandinavia while Nico was touring Europe.
See here for a gallery of photos from Utrecht
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