Piesang Valley in 1966
This article appeared in Saturday’s edition of the Weekend Argus and shows the immense change that has taken place in Plett since the mid sixties.
Both these pictures of the Piesang River valley in Plettenberg Bay were taken by Johann Hahn, who grew up in Cape Town but now lives in Canada. The family spent their holidays at a beach house in Plett and Hahn, a first-year student at UCT, took the ‘then’ picture of his 15-year-old brother Wilhelm in July 1966.
Hahn, now 69, says he spends a few months a year in South Africa, at his house in the Wilderness, and decided last week to go back to the spot where he had taken the first picture. ‘I wanted to see what it looked like today. Plett has changed fundamentally since I was a child in the 1950s and 1960s.’
Not only is the area in the ‘now’ picture considerably more built-up but the houses are more upmarket – note the pool patio and loungers in the property on the riverbank. But the aloes are still there on the hill and so is the triangular piece of open ground in the centre of both pictures.
The Piesang River is first mentioned in written records, although not by name, in 1630 when the Portuguese ship Sao Concalo, which had been anchored in the mouth of the river, was wrecked on Robberg.
According to Wikipedia, the first European residents of the area were 100 sailors from the ship who spent nine months there until they were rescued by a passing ship. Early Portuguese explorers called the bay Bahia Formosa – ‘beautiful bay’.
The article was shared to us by Plett resident, Steve Crutchley
