I feel like there is this HUGE gap.......... Iris is on leave....... so our soapie is on hold. Maybe I will bore you with all my varied studies? :D I research everything........... doesnt matter if it is the teeniest thing, I always want to know why. I used to travel and search for wagon makers. Keiskamma Hoek here in the Eastern Cape, had one, and the man running it, (cant remember his name,) had inherited the business from his great grandfather. The undertaking to build a wagon was onerous, as it was more important to build the wheels correctly, as the body of the wagon was far more simple. This man, ? lets call him Piet, explained that he was constantly looking for timber that would endure, sneezewood, blackwood etc, which were the only hard woods available in the cape. (He sometimes used yellowwood for the bed of the wagon). The wagon maker was a combination of carpenter and iron-monger? :) Then he had to source the steel, and when he had all the components, he would make wheels, many of them, and sort out 4 that matched, which was how he decided on the size of the eventual wagon. If it was to be a transport wagon, he would brace the undercarriage, more solidly. If it was a living wagon, the would add an extra long piece of timber to take the tent. As we know, the wagon were always pulled by oxen, and other than family transport, the wagons where employed as a mobile fortification called a laager, such as was the case at the Battle of Blood River. In South Africa, the ox-wagon was adopted as an Afrikaner cultural icon. The ossewa is mentioned in the first verse of Die Stem, the Afrikaans poem which became South Africas national anthem from 1957 to 1994. When a pro-German Afrikaner nationalist organisation formed in 1939, to oppose South Africas entry into World War II on the British side, it called itself the Ossewabrandwag (Ox-wagon Sentinel).
Posted on: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 18:07:39 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015