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Pilgrims’ Rest…reliving the gold rush
Walk down the main street. Close your eyes and hear the rowdy celebrations in
the saloons of panners and diggers who found gold today. There’s loud music,
even louder voices, gambling, drinking and good-time dancing girls kicking their
legs high in the air. A digger walks into the Church Bar at the Royal Hotel, slaps
a gold nugget on the counter and orders drinks for everybody. He is loudly
cheered and a gun shot or two are even fired off in drunken appreciation.
Some of the less rowdy town folk are buying supplies in the general dealerships,
bakery and other tin-roofed, corrugated iron shops lining the street. Welcome
to Pilgrim’s Rest, the miner’s town still frozen in the time of South Africa’s
second gold rush in 1873.
In 1873 gold was discovered on the farm Geelhoutboom in present-day
Mpumalanga. The president of the Transvaal (or old South African Republic)
gave it the official name of the New Caledonian Gold Fields, but the miners and
farmers of the area preferred calling it Mac Mac because of the many Scottish
diggers at the camp that quickly sprang up. Within that same year, gold was also
discovered nearby at what was to become the town of Pilgrim’s Rest. The third
gold rush took place at Millwood in the forest outside Knysna in 1876, followed
by the Barberton gold rush of 1881. Only in 1886 did the great gold rush at
Langlaagte take place where the metropolis of Johannesburg stands today.
The mining camps and early towns of Mac Mac and Millwood have disappeared,
those of Langlaagte grew into one of Africa’s biggest and wealthiest cities. But
Pilgrim’s Rest, clinging to the side of a steep, forested hill near the Blyde River
Canyon, remained. It has hardly changed since the heady gold rush days, with
most of its old buildings restored to their original. Unfortunately the town has
not been well maintained the last few years and tourist numbers here have
fallen. But it’s still very much worth a visit, and perhaps the partial dilapidation
gives it even more of an atmosphere going back in time.
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After crossing the Joubert Bridge built in 1896 into town, you can visit the
many restored buildings still housing shops, pubs, restaurants, curios shops, a
hotel and museums, among others. At Alanglade House, an elegant Edwardian
house built in 1915 and furnished with period pieces, you can see how the mine
manager once lived. There are also a print shop, general dealers, hairdresser,
bakery and more.
In the Royal Hotel you can still sleep in a Victorian-era room, or have a drink
at the bar that first saw service as a Roman Catholic chapel in old Lourenco
Marques (now Maputo) in neighbouring Mozambique. It was at this very same
bar where Tommy Dennyson, the village laundryman, used to drink, before he
rode his horse up into the hills above the village to carry out South Africa’s last
stagecoach robbery. After the robbery he was arrested in the bar, busy paying
off his debts with his robbery haul, and Pretoria Central Prison became his next
home.
MZANZI TRAVEL| www.mzanzitravel.co.za|ISSUE 6 | 31
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