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Quite a walk up a koppie in Willem Conradie Park, Florida Hills. One can see two other cache locations in the distance (White Thing and B+). Quite a few muggles but don't think many will venture to this altitude.
JOBURG shares the distinction of not being built on a river or harbour with one other major city in the world - Birmingham in England.
But that doesn't mean the city doesn't have any water. Far from it. A number of streams meander through the suburbs, and form the source of two of southern Africa's mightiest rivers - the Limpopo and the Orange.
If you look closer, you'll see that a myriad of small streams or spruits, trickle through the suburbs, particularly the northern suburbs. Most of the springs from which many of these streams emanate are now covered in concrete and canalised, accounting for the fact that the names of early farms in the area often end with "fontein", meaning"spring" in Afrikaans. Braamfontein, Rietfontein, Zevenfontein,Doornfontein, Zandfontein and Randjesfontein are some examples.
When the first white settlers reached the area that is now Johannesburg, they would have noticed the glistening rocks on the ridges, running with trickles of water, fed by the streams - giving the area its name, the Witwatersrand, "the ridge of white waters". Another explanation is that the whiteness comes from the quartzite rock, which has a particular sheen to it after rain.
Long stretches of streams have been canalised - the canal at the beginning of Barry Hertzog Avenue contains some beautiful stonework- but in the process the city has lost valuable natural streams.
The city's longest and most popular stream, the Braamfontein Spruit ("Braamfontein" means "spring of brambles"), is covered and canalised near its source, but once the river runs out of the Parkview Golf Course, it runs through parkland, right to the edge of the city, so that Joburgers can still enjoy it in its original state. Walkers, runners and cyclists use a path along its banks every weekend.
It's a beautiful river, with waterfalls in places, tumbling over masses of large boulders, and grassy banks, planted with dozens of weeping willows, gum trees and reeds, and just recently, guinea fowl wandering the grassy verges. There are remnants of the city's first white settlements - several finely crafted stone weirs attempt to collect the water, with broken bridges in places.
But there's something of a conundrum concerning the two great rivers, the Orange and the Limpopo. One would think that the water that flowed south out the city would end up in the southern Indian Ocean, and the water that flowed north, in the Atlantic Ocean. But this is not the case.
Johannesburg, particularly the northern suburbs, consists of a series of broken ridges, the most significant of these being the Hillbrow / Linksfield /Roodepoort ridge.
The ridge's significance stems from the fact that it is the watershed ridge - all rain falling south of this ridge will eventually flow into the Atlantic Ocean; and of course, rain falling north of the watershed flows into the Indian Ocean.
A SMALL DAM FOUND IN THE WILLEM CONRADIE PARK IS THE SOURCE OF A RIVER WHEN ONCE CONVERGES WITH A NUMBER OF OTHER SMALL TIBUTARIES EVENTUALLY FORMS THE MIGHTY LIMPOPO
The source of the Klein Jukskei is a small dam in the Willem Conradie Park in Florida Hills. Several small tributaries bolster this stream as it moves north towards Olivedale, but at the Veldskoen Drive-In it is joined by the Pampoen Spruit, which rises in Constantia Kloof, north west of Florida Hills.
From the confluence of these streams, the river surges on as the Klein Jukskei River and meets the Jukskei at Chartwell, and flows north as the Jukskei, which then meets the Crocodile River 3-4km north of Lanseria Airport, from which point it is referred to as the Crocodile, and flows into the Hartebeespoort Dam.
The Crocodile River rises in Roodepoort, from 5-6 springs above the Witpoortje Falls in the Walter Sisulu National Botanical Garden. It runs through Muldersdrift and out towards Lanseria where it meets the Jukskei.
The Crocodile flows out of Hartebeespoort Dam and meets the Marico River, which runs along the border with Botswana. They merge with another tributary, the Lenkwane River, in Limpopo, and at this point, near Olifants Drift, according to Mike Silberbauer, senior specialist scientist at the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, the Limpopo River begins.
It surges on, flowing north east, forming the border with Botswana and Zimbabwe, through the border posts of Pont drif and Beitbridge and exiting South Africa just north of the Kruger Park gate, Pafuri, into Mozambique. Then it flows down through western Mozambique and reaches the Indian Ocean just below Xai Xai, about 200km north of Maputo, as a mighty river. It's a journey of about 1 800km, and at its mouth the river is about 800m wide.
Bodman, writing in 1981, bemoans the disrespect the City and their citizen’s have shown Joburg’s environs, and concludes her booklet with the following sobering assessment:
"In the interface between people and the environment, it is usually the environment that must change. People are learning, however, what is 'good' change and this must be encouraged. A new dimension has come into technological thinking, viz: the knowledge that old mistakes need not be perpetuated and can in fact often be corrected. Our rivers and our little mountains are a precious natural heritage to be conserved for the future."
********FTF Honours go to mossdg 8th Oct 2008********
*********Well Done 1st FTF on 1st day caching********
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
1. Lbh jvyy arrq gb tb gb Xraln gb trg urer
2. Ebpxf, ybgf bs ebpxf
3. Jvgu lbh onpx gb Abegupyvss lbh jvyy svaq gur pnpur