Nieu Bethesda- Cape Travel Guides - Accommodation, Safaris, Adventure

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Province: Eastern Cape
Region:
Town: Nieu Bethesda

NIEU BETHESDA
Nieu Bethesda is a mountain village 55 kilometres to the north of Graaf-Reinet, situated in a lovely valley with the Kompassberg, South Africa’s highest free standing mountain as a backdrop. The village was established by the Dutch Reformed Church in 1875 to enable the inhabitants of that rugged area to have a congregation of its own without having to make the arduous trek to Graaf-Reinet. The name was sugested by the Rev Charles Murray, the dominee (pastor), of Graaf-Reinet who insisted on a name with biblical connotations.

In the twentieth century the village began to wither as people left the rural areas and moved to the towns and cities, For a long time Nieu Bethesda was so quiet and there was so little traffic that the local council leased certain streets for the growing of potatoes and lucerne, (alfalfa). During this time a lonely inhabitant of the town, Miss Helen Maartins began to express her individuality by creating fantastic concrete sculptures in her house and yard, often of owls, and other creatures and forms as well. She changed the interior of her little house by embedding crushed glass into the walls in an effort to bring more light into her otherwise drab existence. The other members of the community sometimes looked askance at her eccentric activities. She committed suicide in 1974 because of her failing eyesight, but her creations saved her village.

The famous playwright Athol Fugard wrote a play about her life called The Road To Mecca, which was later made into a movie. As a result people flocked to the village to see her house, now known as the “Owl House” and they discovered that there is a lot more to Nieu Bethesda, than the owl house, such as the stunning setting, the idyllic townscape with its pear tree lined streets, the beautiful church, and the dry river bed where fossils of dinosaurs can be seen.

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