About 2 km south of the cache, opposite Althorpe station, you can see a low ridge. During the Second Boer War (1899 – 1902), the British established a lookout post and heliograph on the ridge.
At the foot of the ridge, a field hospital was placed with an ambulance wagon, drawn by a span of mules and kept in readiness. Canned provisions such as meat, butter, milk, jam and biscuits in long cylindrical tins were kept. As the contents were used, the tins were thrown into the stream next to the hospital and eventually washed downstream.
When the national road (N4) was built between Komatipoort and the Witwatersrand in 1923-1927, road workers discovered the rusty tins and named the stream ‘Jam Tin Creek’, a name which it has retained until today.
(Pioneers of the Lowveld – Hans Bornman 1995, ISBN 0-9583165-8-9)
This is a very busy road:
DO NOT STOP NEXT TO THE CACHE, BUT RATHER CONTINUE TO THE END OF THE ARMCO BARRIER AND PARK THERE.