Pieter the Librarian

Pieter the Librarian

Pieter the Librarian

I set off early to meet up with Pieter van Wyk the librarian who was going to give me a tour round some of the interesting parts of Alex Bay. What an amazing young man – a virtual walking encyclopaedia of facts, plant names and history. A librarian, photographer, writer, museum curator, ornithologist and conservationist and he is only 21 years old!!  He was born, schooled and raised in the area and his family has lived in the Richtersveld since the 1800’s. He has been writing a book for the last 6 years and it is due for publication soon.

Lichen fields

Pieter’s biggest passion are the Lichens of the area. There is a huge field of them, now declared a world heritage site and one of the largest collections in the world, that overlooks the town and that is where we started.

Lichen flower

Pieter’s passion for what he is doing - research, conservation etc - is so strong that it becomes infectious. The field is surrounded by a fence but the lock on the gate has been broken and all and sundry have unsupervised access to the plants which then get walked on, driven over or stolen. They can’t survive dust and while we were there about 6 police cars roared through the field, on the way to a shooting range. Even I was upset by that.

After spending some time in the field it was off to the Museum which is situated in the security area of the mine and I had to be signed in and a security card issued.

Pieter the curator of the museum

Pieter’s knowledge of the history of Alexander Bay and surrounds is quite staggering and we spent a good few hours going from section to section of artefacts on display, some of which he had put together himself. He has been appointed by the mine management to look after the museum and run tours but finds it very difficult to do justice to the work as he is employed full time at the Library. This was the 1st time he had been in the museum for 2 months and there was dust everywhere. I felt very privileged to be given the tour all on my own.

Time was running short as Pieter had to be back at the library by 1pm so we took a quick drive to the restricted boarder crossing into Namibia to get a photo of the longest bridge in South Africa.

Bridge over the Orange River

On our way back to town we came across some more flamingos and I learnt that the area is also a Ramsar site.

Flamingos

My time was up and we said our goodbyes.  I went to the restaurant to have a bite to eat and ponder on all I had heard and seen from this very knowledgeable young man and work out how I was going to try and capture the essence of it all on this blog. I have tried my best.

More about Pat

Pat Bromilow-Downing is a semi-retired freelance photographer who lives in Noordhoek, Cape Town. His long term plan as a photographer, blogger and fisherman is to try and cover as much of the South African coastline as possible in his old Sprite Sport caravan, with both camera and fishing rod.

Pat shares the stories and images of the people and places he encounters on his trips along the West Coast of South Africa on his increasingly popular blog, ‘Gone Fishing’.