Paint splash

High speed capture of paint rebound.  In this briefest instance, a small weight was dropped into a paint solution.  

The resultant recoil of the paint mix was recorded 5 milliseconds after impact.  To catch the moment, a camera needs to be able to film at more than 200 frames per second.

Turning the clock back, we all have fond memories of Millikan's oil drop experiment.  In this extra-ordinary work, Millikan and his colleague Harvey Fletcher, calculated the electrical charge of a single electron.  Because an electron is very small, the corresponding electrical charge is also very small.

Back in 1909, high speed photography was not in wide use and our two scientists had to use a microscope and stop watch arrangement to measure the speed of oil drops falling between to electrically charged plates.

Grey water - Edward Grey

When water is scarce, our gardens take strain.  One of the ways to stave off parched lawn syndrome is diversion of grey water to the thirsty garden parts.  Just in case there is some confusion, grey water is any used water that has not been part of the food preparing or digesting process.  It is mostly clean, in fact very clean because it would contain quite abit of soap, shampoo, toothpaste and anything else that lathers.  There will also be a small amount of organic material in the form of skin cells and even smaller amounts of bodily extrudate.

For life in the soil, grey water is a mixed blessing.  Although the liquid component is very welcome, the attendant du parfum toilette presents a puzzling conundrum.   In grey water there is very little organic material that is of use to microbes living in the soil.  Although there are some nutrients in the grey water and phosphorous is one of these, the quantities far exceed the demand.  Soap is the ticking time bomb.  Most soaps contain active ingredients that act as solvents in water.    When soap loses its active functionality it very quickly dissolves and in so doing increases the baseline conductivity of the water.  In other words, the water becomes brackish.

If there is not a decent rain water flushing regime a soil could become saturated with dissolved salts.  Most plants shy away from salty water and it is not surprising that low plant density areas, such as found in the Karoo, are also areas in which ground water is distinctly brackish.

Salt water poisoning is a slow process – it could take a lifetime.  Some soils are more forgiving than others.  In many instances the effects of dissolved soaps will not be registered.  If there is any doubt, our recommendation is to install a grey water treatment system that pays attention to conductivity.  Conductivity is the yardstick by which engineers measure the salt content of water.

“The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time”, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey remarked to a friend on the eve of Britain’s entry into the First World War.

Non sequitur – or perhaps there is some light in the grey after all.

Scotty Smith

All countries have their share of scallywags and scoundrels.  Lucky us for we had Scotty Smith.  A tall Scotsman of well heeled family, he came to South Africa to serve in a regiment based in the Eastern Cape.  At the time, and here we are referring to the 1870's, the frontier wars of the Eastern Cape were slowly coming to an end.  In 1877, Scotty was stationed in Kokstad, his commission - Military Farrier.  His regiment - the Frontier Armed and Mounted Police.

A few years later, and after the ninth frontier war, Scotty was stationed in King William's Town where his formal military career came to a halt.  Possibly bored by inactivity, Scotty absconded with two of the best Police horses.  This was to be a repeated preference of his, clearly showing his love of healthy horses.  Slipping away from King William's Town, he based himself in Fort Beaufort - not terribly far away from his regiment and possible disciplinary repercussions.  With his charm and good manners, Scotty quickly found a well-paying job as an assistant foreman to a construction company tasked with the building of roads around Fort Beaufort.  

As was often the case, the road would pass homesteads where the construction crews were billeted.  In one instance, Scotty found himself staying with a rich old couple, hospitable they were as was the custom in those days.  During his stay, the old man died of causes unknown.  The widow was shocked to discover that in a fit of magnanimity, the entire estate was left to the lawyer who was managing the old couple's affairs.  In lightning haste an auction was convened and the estate was wound up for a discounted 10,000 pounds - a substantial sum in those days.  The payment was duly deposited in the lawyers account at the local bank.  When Scotty heard of this he considered the affair to be very suspect.  Applying his charm, he managed to obtain a copy of the will and discovered, as suspected, it to be a forgery.  With attention to detail, Scotty outlined his hypothesis to the bank manager who agreed that the will was indeed a forgery.

The lawyer was found wanting, possibly punished and the authorities agreed to return the substantial sum to the old widow.  In the meantime, Scotty, possibly not certain that the money would in fact be returned to the widow took the matter into his own hands.  On a suitable night, he broke into the bank and made off with the widow's money.  The following day, the town was in a flurry of excitement.  This sort of drama did not happen every day.  Scotty was not in anyway deeded suspect.

As was the custom, a reward was offered for information leading to the arrest of the bank thieves.  And here we meet the Scotty of legend.  His co-foreman and close friend, name alas unknown to us today, was labouring with financial difficulties, debts accumulated for specialist medical attention administered to his very sick wife.  Seeing an opportunity, Scotty managed to convince his friend to arrest him for the bank heist.  As brazen as this may seem, Scotty was arrested, the reward money was handed to his friend, the old couple's estate money returned to the bank and ultimately to the old widow.  Scotty languished in jail, a prisoner by choice - but not for long.   Within a short week, Scotty slipped out of jail and put some many miles between himself and Fort Beaufort.

One cannot resist to ask - why did he do it?  That is knowledge Scotty took to the grave.  What we do know is that Scotty repeated this sort of combination of chivalry and chicanery for the rest of his days. 

Barboon, Bourbon, Boerboon

Schotia Brachypetala is the name given by the botanists.

When the 1820 settlers arrived in the Eastern Cape, the local farmers were found to be, in the main, friendly and helpful.  The difference in language between Boer and Brit was big.  To the one the Schotia Brachypetala was a Boerboon and to the other it was a Bourbon.

Charles Michell visited the Eastern Cape several times during his career in the Colony.  On his first trip to the Frontier, he used his travelling time to sketch and make notes.  Here is his depiction of the Baarboon, which he later correctly titled the Boerboon.  There is not much written about the Boerboon spelt Bourbon save for a brief mention in Dorothy Rivett-Carnac's volume"Thus came the English in 1820"

Like the more famous Harry Smith, Charles Michell fought for the Portugese against Napolean in the Peninsular Wars. Whilst convalescing from a war wound, Lieutenant Michell eloped with and married a 

Fort Beaufort, St Johns Anglican Church

Geography and politics.  Both play important roles in economics. To illustrate the obvious, the town of Fort Beaufort was established for this very reason.  Dutch speaking farmers of the late 1700's spent much effort moving away from the impositions of the "Company".  Finding good grazing lands was not always easy and for this reason they ventured further and further away from centres of administration and jurisdiction.


In moving away from the Cape, the dryness of the great Karoo generally forced the trek boers to seek land in the Eastern Cape.  At more or less the same time, in the area we now know as Natal, political machinations of a Zulu nature were afoot.  Waves of tribesmen were to be found fleeing in all directions.  Inevitably the trek boers were to meet the black pastoralists, who too were looking for land.

Meanwhile and in Europe, France was inching towards republicanism.  America had broken from England and the "Company" was in decline.  Fearing French supremacy in the Indies, England started to find value in the Cape.  By the early 1800's the Cape was in English hands and the trek boers were obliged to report to a new administration.

It did not take the English very long to recognize the intractable problems brewing between Boer and Bantu on the Eastern Frontier.  In one of many efforts to solve the dilemma, Lord Charles Somerset introduced the idea of immigration.  In 1820 his plans bore fruit and in that year roughly 4000 English aspirant farmers were disembarked at Algoa Bay.

The town of Fort Beaufort was named in honour of Lord Charles' father, the Earl of Beaufort.  This was a garrison town, established to protect the interests of Boer and Brit alike.  The Anglican church was built for worship and like it's name sake in Wynberg, it too served the military establishment.

John Campbell

John Campbell was a travelling director of the London Missionary Society.  A man short in stature and large in character, he kept on his person, a black umbrella to ward off the sun and a bottle of brandy to subdue a pestering thirst.  He visited South Africa twice, initially in 1813 and then again in 1819.   At that time, there was no mission station between Kuruman in the South West, the Great Fish River in the South East and the equator.  The LMS envisioned big pickings in this vast land.

Campbell's first destination was Dithakong, a collection of rustic dwellings, home to almost eight thousand people.  Through the hard work of Campbell and missionaries from Kuruman, an introduction was secured to Bechuana chief, Mothibi.  With diplomacy and determination, a missionary presence in Dithakong was arranged.  This  post was filled by the as yet not so famous, Robert Moffat.

Dithakong in 1801, a painting by Samuel Daniell.

The Touleier

December 1930, Aegidius Jean Blignaut (pictured below) and John Webb launched a literary magazine named The Touleier.  In the words of Blignaut "We had little experience and hardly any money, but were not scant of optimism and faith in ourselves. The consensus was that our dream was a nightmare"    One of the contributors was Pierre Bosman, an aspirant writer and younger brother of the now more famous Herman.  It was with Pierre's encouragement that Blignaut met Herman Malan.  Some years later that the reading public was to be introduced to Herman Charles Bosman..  In the first issue of The Touleier, Herman Malan contributed two poems and a short story - Makapan's Caves.