Tales of Trekkers and Tortoises (2 of 10)

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TALES OF TREKKERS AND TORTOISES: If you want to get ahead, get a hat!

Norval’s Pont village was established on the farm “Dapperfontein” in the early 1840s. The Norval Family, recent Scottish immigrants, arrived in the Colesberg district from their native Glasgow hoping to ply their trade as comb makers which, when one considers what the early hard bitten pioneers had to put up with and how high on their priority list a tidy hair-do was, you might think this was an odd ambition. 

In fact, Colesberg at the time was poised to equal Oudtshoorn as a Mecca for overseas tradesmen. Where Oudtshoorn had ostrich plumes, Colesberg had tortoises; and in an age that lacked any kind of plastic, tortoise shell was the perfect thing for crafting all manner of fancy and delicate items for a lady’s coiffure. But, as it turned out, these early Norvals quickly saw their hopes dashed. No one wanted their combs locally and shipping them overseas was beyond their scope at the time.

“What you should make,” the pioneer farmers told them, “is hats!”  And so, in true Scottish style, the intrepid Norvals turned their hand to a new trade and their fortune was assured.

Everyone wanted a Norval hat. Made from fine wool felt, orders for them came in from all over the Cape Colony and even the young Orange Free State – as far afield as Kroonstad and beyond. And with this success the Family was able to look to creating its own raw material – Karoo lamb’s wool – and buying the Dapperfontein Sheep Farm was a logical step in ensuring both supply and quality.

Now in the ordinary course of events, the mists of time should have folded over and obscured this unremarkable spot on the Orange River forever.  Should have, but did not:  You just can’t keep an inventive Scot satisfied with what he had. No sooner had old John Norval got the farm running just so, then he started to eye the vagaries of the great river on his doorstep; one day he could cross with ease and on another he might wait weeks for a sudden torrential flow to subside:  weeks when he couldn’t send his precious loads of hats to markets on the Free State side. And if there is one thing a Scot can’t abide is the very thought, let alone the act, of losing money. Something had to be done. A bridge was out of the question, even a Pont or ferry would be an expensive thing to build and he certainly had little enough cash to have one constructed. Then fate decided to play a hand that would put the river crossing on the map forever.  In 1848 a brief but bitter war broke out between the British Empire and the Boer Republics to the North of the river and an army under Lord Harry Smith needed to cross the river to fight the Dutch farmers even more than old John wanted to sell his hats to them, and suddenly the cash was there to build the very first of Norval’s Ponts.

With a regular ferry operating across the river, other businesses, like Transport Wagoneers, seized the chance to shorten their journeys north, which had previously taken them all the way to Hopetown and up to seven weeks trek out of their way, making Norval’s Pont the river crossing of choice. With Celtic glee, the Norvals raked in the cash.

It is said that when the river was really in spate, up to five hundred wagons and hundreds of teams of oxen would queue all the way back to Colesberg waiting for the pont to ferry them across. And while it may never have been easy or all plain sailing, at a pound a wagon, old John and his doughty sons must have smiled at the thought of where their quest for humble Tortoises and the requisites for a Lady’s boudoir had led them.

Next time:  The Great Trek!

Article courtesy of Rod Mann, Owner of the 'Pont, 2005 - 2010