Groot Trek

To Visit South African caches, especially the 18 Tonteldoos Series caches.
Please post pictures at museums.
Tonteldoos caches already visited;
VI - Jacobs Konsentrasie Kamp.
XVI - Howick.
XI - Machadodorp.
XIV - Krugerhoff.
VIII - Vredesboom.

The history of the "Groot Trek"
The emigration of some 12,000 to 14,000 Afrikaners from Cape Colony, in South Africa, between 1835 and the early 1840s, in rebellion against the policies of the British government and in search of fresh pasturelands. The Great Trek is regarded by Afrikaners as a central event of their 19th-century history and the origin of their nationhood. It enabled them to outflank the Xhosa peoples who were blocking their eastward expansion, to penetrate into Natal and the Highveld (which had been opened up by the tribal wars of the previous decade), and to carry white settlement north to the Limpopo River.

The migrating Afrikaners, called Voortrekkers, left in a series of parties of kinsfolk and neighbours, with an almost equal number of Coloured dependents, under prominent leaders. Though they all crossed the Orange River in the first instance, they were soon divided as to their ultimate destination, between those who wanted an outlet to the sea in Natal and those who wished to remain on the Highveld. In both areas, after initial setbacks, they were able to defeat powerful African military kingdoms through the skilled use of horses, guns, and defensive laagers, though in later years they were to find the problems of maintaining control over Africans and establishing stable politics more intractable.

In Natal they established a short-lived republic, but, after its annexation by the British in 1843, most rejoined their compatriots across the Drakensberg Mountains, where, apart from a short period, the British government was reluctant to pursue them. In 1852 and 1854 the British granted independence to the trekkers in the Transvaal and Transorania regions, respectively. In Transvaal several warring little polities were established, and factional strife only ended in the 1860s. In Transorania the trekkers established the Orange Free State, which, under the double threat posed by the Basuto (Sotho) and the proximity of imperial power, settled down in more unified fashion after the British withdrawal in 1854.