Limpopo, LETABA 1 district, Mooketsi, Jachtdrift 190 LT, graves and ABW Monument

31 January 2016 3 images

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Cemetery information:- Received from Charles Leach, author of "The Legend of Breaker Morant is DEAD and BURIED": It is the cemetery that was at Blass Perreira's Store on the main transport road from Pretoria / Pietersburg to Lourenco Marques, via the Letaba Gold Fields. The store was also a small inn, or lodge. The previous shop owner, a young German named Thilo Auerswalt died of Malaria and is buried in the cemetery under the slate slab. Many years later when the bridge over the Kudu's River - about 50m behind Thilo's grave - was being constructed, a large front-end loader was sent to collect stones for the approaches to the bridge. In his ignorance, the driver decided that the little piles of stones lying in neat rows would be easier to load than individual stones in the surrounding veld. George, the farm owner, arrived on the scene just too late to save anything but the Auerswalt slab, which still bears deep scrape marks from the front-end loader's steel bucket. The other piles of stones represented several old graves as well as those of the Grobler Boys, whom we know were buried at Blass Perreira's Store - but are now embedded in the earthen approaches to the bridge! With Louis Changuion and others, we decided to erect a monument a few paces from Thilo's grave, in remembrance of the Grobler Boys and also Floris Visser, who was executed "on the banks of the Koedoe's Rivier", not far from the shop. It is the only reference to Floris Visser's and his 'grave', as not even Heroes Acre Monument at Duivelskloof makes any mention of the man. From the graveyard one can clearly see the nearby Modjadji mountains and Frank Eland's Raven's Hill as well as the range behind which Medingen Mission Station lies. Lt. Hannam's patrol attacked the party of mainly women and children about 4kms away as they celebrated the birthday of one of the Grobler boys. Album complete. eGGSA captions by: Gail Röthlin and Riana le Roux The GGSA Cemetery DVD only has information on the location of the cemetery Cemetery ID: 3814 Google Earth Project Information:- GPSID: 4528 GPS: -23 29.982, 30 12.584