Hotel of Memories Traditional Cache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(regular)
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The cache is placed on the grounds of the hotel. The cache will be accessible in the day-time and it will be easiest to walk through the gate that leads to the parking of the hotel (it might not be accessible during the night).
Permission to place the cache was granted by the owner. Hotel staff is aware if the cache, but will not assist in any way in finding the container.
The original cache was replaced with an ammo box and the contents include a little swag that we obtained from the local store, a logbook and a pen.
Happy caching!
The Hotel in Bethulie was established in 1873 and is the oldest in the Free State. Part of the building was originally a trading store operated by J B Robinson and his partner Maurice Marcus, both of whom went on to make multimillion pound fortunes from diamonds and gold.
In 1878 the hotel was acquired by the Gibraltar-born William Dobbin and his wife, Emma Kirkham. William’s brother married Emma’s sister in Bethulie and their son ‘Uncle’ Dobbin became a rugby star. As such he was a member of the South African team that toured Britain in 1906 – the first ‘Springboks.’
For their part William and Emma produced a daughter, Nellie, who married a Dutch-born doctor named Jan Gunning. Gunning had a practice in Bethulie and as a keen naturalist was appointed the first director of the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria. He was also the founder of Pretoria Zoo.
During the Anglo-Boer War, the Dobbins resolutely supported the British. As General William Gatacre’s troops galloped into the town after the Battle of Bethulie Bridge, William ran up a Union Jack while Emma played ‘God Save The Queen’ on an upright piano pulled into the street.
For several weeks at the end of 1900 the hotel served as General Charles Knox’s headquarters as he tried to prevent Christiaan de Wet’s commando from crossing the Orange River into the Cape Colony. The hotel also hosted General Herbert Kitchener as he supervised the erection of blockhouses along both the river and the railway.
In 1901 the hotel became the favourite watering-hole of Russel Deare, superintendent of the Bethulie concentration camp, and his assistants. As the death toll in the camp became a scandal, Deare and others left the camp and moved to the hotel permanently. Disgusted camp residents accused them of drinking away their ration money.
In 1903 William Dobbin died while on a trip to Port Elizabeth. His widow sold the hotel to South African Breweries. Further rooms were added, and the establishment served as the heart of the town.
By the 1950s the hotel was owned by David Marks, a keen cricketer. He taught the game to various youngsters in the community including a farmer’s son named Ewie Cronje. Ewie went on to play for the Free State, and bequeathed his talents to his son Hansie who later captained South Africa.
Both in the 1950s and 1960s the hotel was occupied by contractors involved in bridge construction. In the 1950s the old railway bridge was replaced by a modern concrete construction. In the 1960s both that and the road bridge gave way to the present structure, South Africa’s longest.
The flooding of what’s now Lake Gariep removed much of Bethulie’s economic base. For many years the town was a backwater and the hotel fell on hard times. By the 1980s guests were few and far between, and there were fears the business would not survive.
During the 1990s the hotel’s contents was sold at auction. All that remained was a bottle store. Then in 2005 the empty shell was acquired by the present owner and the hotel has been refurbished from top to bottom.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Nebhaq gur pbeare. Ybbx hc.
Treasures
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