Mossel Bay

"South Africa's Gas Fields"

Mossel Bay, a colourful hillside town and port lies on the sloping promontory of Cape St Blaze, overlooking the spacious bay with a backdrop of the Outeniqua range. The harbour has berths for coasters, trawlers and oil rig supply ships and a lighter handling service for larger vessels that stand off in the roadstead.

Mossel Bay holds the distinction of being the first part of South Africa to be seen by Europeans. Bartholomew Dias, after doubling the Cape of Good Hope, sailed into the bay on 3rd February 1488. He saw Hottentots with their cattle and called the place Angra dos Vaqueiros (bay of the cow herds). Dias disembarked and found a good spring to replenish his water supplies near an old milkwood tree, but the Hottentots were unfriendly. This happened fifteen years before the first ship entered Table Bay. Since Dias had landed on the day of the Saint, the Portuguese subsequently changed the name to Aquada de Sao Bras (watering place of Saint Bras).

Nearly ten years after Dias, on 20th November 1497, Vasco da Gama landed here and made friends with the Hottentots, purchasing a bull for a few trinkets and thus carrying out the first known commercial transaction in South Africa. The transaction was most acceptable to both parties and legend tells that de Gama was thereafter entertained by the Hottentot reed-flute players.

After da Gama, ships frequently took shelter in the bay. Water was replenished from the perennial spring and fresh meat bargained for from the Hottentots. The milkwood tree marked the place where messages were left to be delivered by those voyaging in the other direction. In 1501 Joao da Nova found a message here, left by Pedro d'Ataide the year before. In thanksgiving, da Nova erected a shrine, the first place of Christian worship in South Africa. Some messages were carved into rocks and an example of one may be seen in the local museum. So it was that the milkwood tree became known as the Post Office Tree. The tree and the spring are national monuments, still to be seen in an area attractively laid out with lawns and flowers. Old cannon, a copy of a Portuguese padrao, a handsome plaque and a letter box in the shape of a navigator's boot are all in keeping with the simple setting.

Letters posted here bear a special postmark. This historic feature of Mossel Bay is opposite the inlet named Munro's Bay, where Dias and others came ashore.

Mossel Bay received its present name in 1601 when the Dutch navigator, Paulus van Caerden came upon a great collection of mussel shells in a cave at the headland of Cape St Blaize. The name of the cape is apparently a corruption of the Portuguese Sao Bras. When Mossel Bay became a separate magistracy in 1848 an attempt was made to change the name to Aliwal South to commemorate the success of Governor Sir Harry Smith, in the battle of Aliwal in India prior to his coming to the Cape - but the name Mossel Bay stuck.

Mossel Bay the resort is best known by the Karoo farmers and their families; year after year in the summer season they return to the expansive beaches, gently sloping and safe for bathing. Deserted for nine months of the year, the camping and caravan sites become an enormous tent city. The classic example of the Cape farmers holiday resort. Mossel Bay like Stilbaai and Kleinmond, is for the season a scene of absolute carefree fun in the sun, with the traditional competitive games, singsongs, braaivleis, traditional concertina and guitar music and dancing.

During the summer holidays boat trips are arranged to Seal Island where thousands of the fascinating mammals can be seen at close quarter.

On the crown of Cape St Blaize is the picturesque lighthouse with its twenty thousand candle-power beam, and the Bat's Cave where van Caerden found the floor covered with mussel shells. Mossel Bay remains famous for its mussels and its oysters and some of the biggest catches of tunny and black marlin are made on this coastline. Tunnel Cave, a 60-metre passageway through the headland, emerges on a stretch of wild coast, where the surf thunders against a cliff. The beaches are notable for the variety of sea shells and the local shell museum is an outstanding contribution to conchology.

Said to be a miracle of modern technology, PetroSA, the oil-from-gas megaproject was started in 1987 and comprises two key components....