A Very Special Place

A Google satellite image of Langebaan Lagoon

Lee R. Berger’s book In The Footsteps of Eve – The Mystery of Human Origins  deals with the discovery of the fossilised footprints left in the sand on the western shore of Langebaan Lagoon on the West Coast of South Africa about 130 000 years ago. The girl, who has been named Eve, represents one of the earliest anatomically modern humans. The discovery of her footprints in 1995 was of huge significance to paleoanthropologists and forms a vital link in the history of mankind.

Eve's footprints

Reading the book brings back memories of Langebaan, where I used to spend most of my winter holidays (and occasionally a summer vacation, too) in the 80s and early 90s. It is one of the most hauntingly beautiful places I have ever spent time in, a place of deep serenity where time seems to fold in on itself, so that a few minutes’ walk along the eastern shore and away from the town takes one into a timeless peace. Here it is easy to imagine what it must have been like when the Dutch reached the place in the 17^th century, what it must have been like even earlier when the San and Khoi people lived here, or even in Eve’s time.

Swallow and I on the lagoon

Pulpit Rock 

I spent many a day sailing my little dinghy Swallow here. We often packed a picnic lunch aboard and sailed across to Kraal Bay on the western shore where we spent the day on the beach near the Preekstoel (Pulpit Rock). It is on the shore of this bay, not very far from where we had our picnic lunches, that Eve left her footprints. And here, too, did the sailor and hermit Frank Wightman finish and fit out his ketch Wylo.

Frank Wightman and Wylo

Graham Young (l) and Frank Wightman aboard Wylo

Frank in later years

Frank Armstrong Wightman was born in Johannesburg in 1896 and moved to Langebaan in 1940. He finished his yacht and after the war set out to sail around the world, but things did not work out well and he and his friend Graham Young only sailed as far as Trinidad, where Young left the boat. Frank sold Wylo there and took a steamer back to Cape Town where he wrote about their adventures in his book The Wind is Free. But he missed Wylo too much and wrote to her new owner to find out whether he could buy her back. The answer was yes, for free!

Kraal Bay today. The village of Langebaan is in the
distance beyond the far point of the bay.

Kraal Bay and Constable Hill from the eastern shore of
the lagoon

He spent the next two years sailing the Bahamas and to Baltimore. By 1950 he was back in Kraal Bay, where he lived on Wylo for 15 years. A short spell back in Cape Town followed, but he soon returned to his “paradise on earth”, living in a cottage of the farm Oosterwal (also known as Oesterwal or Oesterval) on the eastern shore of the lagoon, where he died in 1970. He is buried on the farm, his grave marked by a single rough rock on which a plaque depicts Wylo under full sail.

Frank Wightman's grave at Oesterwal

I understand Wightman’s abiding love for the place; it creeps into your soul and never leaves again. All I can hope is that I will be able to dip my hand in the turquoise waters of the lagoon once more before I, too, set sail on the ocean of eternity.

Note on the images: I do not hold nor claim copyright for all the images, except the one of Swallow. These images remain the copyright of the original photographers.