For many a year, in the dark Namib nights, just on the edge of the sprawling township, if one gazed towards the coast in the direction of the Yacht Club, you could always see the Orange glow of the eternal light down at the sailing basin...... It is with a great sense of sadness , I had to photograph the eternal light, still shining, hanging from her mountings..... no longer will she shine on through.....
there are great plans for that place, you just wait and see
Are you talking about the impending tsunami?
image201
Are they going to buy boats and things fill it with water and sail again?
There are great ideas for the Angling club to take it over, I figure they have great plans to resurrect it for other uses.
I presume the Angling club is going to fix everything and will they fill it with water again?
Get one of the Salt Companies to supply a few hundres tons of rock salt & return the pan to its original Salinity, why it may even begin to turn Pink again
Hi
Before the days of the yacht club, the pink pan was just that - pink with salt and hundreds of flamingoes. There was a sole yachtman by the name of Mr Gerika (sp) who I believe was the first one to enjoy the sailing. He was a teacher and aging in those days but sure had spirit.
Mmmh! Here;s a snap from the Yacht club in busier times!
The gentleman sitting at the helm of this little boat where the children are boarding with spectacles on looks like Oom Peet Buzedenhout?
what do you think
Wandering through the archives brought me to this intrigueing topic: The Yacht Club.
It was once a weekend Mecca for most oranjemunders, whole famlies, young and old, frolicked in, on and even under the water in sail and power boats.
All that's left today is an abandoned yacht club building and an almost dry lake.
What happened? Does anyone know? What happened to the water, why did it dry up? Did they stop pumping? And if so why?
I could so easily and cheaply be resurrected. All it needs is a waterhole next to the beach and a pump to begin filling the pan again. If the pan needs deepening, this can easily be done in a few weeks with a dragline. Surely there's a surplus of these machines on the mine?
As for the pink colour, that will quickly return as the salt water evaporates from the surface and increases the salinity of the remaining water.
Do you really want to know what happened....... nothing that's why it's the way it is
I do recall a story that curtain members could not handle the salt water in there eyes so they filled it with river water and the weeds took over sailor's where complaining the dagger boards would get tied up in the weeds.
another reason the clubs had to sustain themselves with out assistance from the company the cost of pump and water was not feasible.
The cost of pumping and dredging was borne by the CDM in those days. Was there some kind of cost-saving/retrenchment that stopped it? If so, it was surely a very short-sighted view of what was indeed a tremendous community facility.
On that score, does the community theatre still operate? And what happened to the Recreation Club, the town cafe, Katie's Bar and Casey's Bar?.
I get the impression there were some radical changes to Omund since CDM left the scene.
I think that it was more to do with a lack of members.
To put it bluntly, the yacht club was the domain of the european expat community.
After independence occurred the expats who sailed started to leave as the new Namibian government wanted previously disadvantaged Namibians to fill the positions....
Between 1990 till 2001 the club saw it's membership dwindle, the older seadogs that had managed to hold out, eventually retired and moved out of the township....
The same occurred to other institutions in the town like the Cricket and tennis club to name but a few...
If more previously disadvantaged Namibians had been interested in the disciplines, we might have been sitting in a different situation today....
Just my two cents...
Michael, did the white expat community do anything proactive about raising interest amongst those who were not only disadvantaged but actively prevented from participating in community activities, let alone economic activities except as labourers and a few higher up? I recall Oranjemund as a social experiment that would have made Verwoed proud.
Michael, when you going to claim on the roof again
hahahah! Milo! Until my dying day, I shall always remember the day a bakkie pulled up in the Yacht Club and this big Yugoslavian lumbered out of his company vehicle and chased myself and my beerdrinkers off the Yacht Club roof with the words, "GET OFF THE ROOF!"
In retrospect, I think you were just pissed off because it was a sunny wednesday afternoon and you were not allowed to join us for a few cold ones.....
ha ha
Mike Thurtell's statement: " I recall Oranjemund as a social experiment that would have made Verwoed proud."
Hmmm, sounds as if political correctness is still alive and well even in these times when crime, corruption and inefficiency break all previous records.
Unlike Mike, I remember Oranjemund as a totally crime free model community in which indigenous values were not only protected but also enhanced. Mine workers were housed well, fed well and - in terms of their home economy - paid well. My artisan's helper told me he could afford to retire for life after seven years of work on the mine, not something any of the white expats could ever aspire to.
They were also given choices of work from pick and spade level to skilled use of the latest earthmoving machinery. IQ and dexterity tests were applied to select workers at each level, not too different from the written tests required from appentices who wanted to learn a trade.
There was also training in first aid to advanced levels, tuition in reading and writing their own language, free cinema shows and free air travel to and from the homelands. All this plus medical attention in a modern hospital second to none and dental treatment to first world standards.
On occasion medical treatment led first world standards, one highly advanced maxilla-facial operation on an Ovambo patient to correct a dentigerous cyst of the jaw - a possibly terminal condition - was the subject of a paper read to an international dental congress in Paris (see p393 of Brian la Trobe's book "Of Diamonds and Dentistry"). Incidentally, the Ovambo Hospital was staffed by the same top nurses and doctors who ran the main hospital plus Ovambos who had chosen to be trained to nursing level.
As for the other occupation - house servants - these as often as not became valued members of the family, some returning time after time to work for the same family. Mine was with us for 14 years but for short breaks. It was a sad farewell for us all when we left.
That was my Oranjemund. It must have chanced radically in Mike Thurtell's time. Posts to this thread indeed indicate how much the town deteriorated since then, and no thanks to the long dead Dr Verwoerd.
Also tend not to agree 100% there with Mike.
In the late 70's at the height of apartheid, DeBeers/CDM took the initiative to start integration at OPS, with black teachers and students.
The School to this day still has a high standard and the majority is black.
In a sense us that grew up amongst black Namibians as our neighbours were the lucky one's , our kids are today benefiting from this and do not see race as an issue.
I sit in my office and without mentioning names, watch how a black SWAPO veteran and a White Afrikaane who served on the border, laugh and joke with each whilst sharing a meal.
I digress.... back to the Yacht club, the Yacht Club was by no means an exclusive club, the majority just were not into certain disciplines, like Rugby and cricket.
As the expats left town, certain institutions battled (or are in stages of battling) to survive as the majority don't support them.
But clubs like the Golf Club, Squash, Badminton, Netball, Soccer still thrive.
The Hockey club was at death's door, but due to integrated High School at Oranjemund, Hockey is thriving....
Perhaps in the 50's and 60's race was an issue, but the cracks formed in the 70's and today the town's population is majority black, as it it should be I guess!
Fascinating response from Bob.