Water pump

Die een se dood is die ander se brood.  A lovely catch-all phrase that offers cheer when life deals a crumpled card.  Road works on the Vissershok road in Durbanville re-directs traffic through convoluting avenues in landscaped suburbia.  And here the crumpled card triumphed.  Amidst the trees and barely noticeable stands a windmill.  Known today as Onze Molen, this once working windmill is surrounded by modest homes and tidy roads.

Usual sources don't reveal an exact date of construction, but based on limited fact, it is most likely that the mill was built sometime between 1810 and 1840.  In the scheme of things, this is not a terribly ancient mill.  Certainly younger than the more famous Mostert's mill which was built in 1796.

Windmill technology was brought to South Africa by the Dutch.  In the Dutch Zaandam district of 1800, there were approximately 600 windmills in operation.  Figures vary and some sources quote many more windmills in operation at that time.  The windmills fulfilled a multitude of functions such as pumping water, milling wheat and slicing Scandinavian timber.  The life of a Miller was sometimes dangerous.  In high winds the noise would have been frightening.  Gearing from the wind turbine to mill drive was mostly fashioned in wood.  Friction in the gearing mechanisms would sometimes build up enough heat to spark a flame.  The cap at the top of the mill was designed to rotate, thereby optimizing wind power.  For practical reasons that cap was covered in thatch. A light rotating and flammable cap.  It is reported that 1 in 20 working windmills caught fire each year.

An American in Paris.  Here we have an American in Holland.  Zaandam to be more specific.  This is a drawing penned by none other than James McNeill Whistler.  Although born in the United States, Whistler spent some childhood time with his family and engineer father in Russia.  He was educated in America, but returned to live an adult life in Paris and London.  In 1877, a few short years before William Duncan Baxter set sail for South Africa, Whistler engaged John Ruskin in a financially devastating court room brawl.

Turning the clock back a few short years, Monet spent time in Zaandam.  At the time of the Franco-Prussian war, Monet moved north on an urgent painting quest.  So prolific was his output that today some 24 of his Zaandam paintings still hang from sturdy hooks.