if you turn off the n10 at marydale between prieska and upington you'll end up
at this place one of the only true ghost towns in south africa i don't know about
actual ghosts but it certainly is an abandoned town it was a thriving railway community until
about 2000 so it's not that old so the story goes that a gentleman by the name of dawid ockhuis lived
in the days of the trek boers he had a well which produced good water now in afrikaans
put as a well and when the trekkers came past asking for water he didn't want to share it so
you would say "die put is sonder water" meaning the well is without water and that's how
we get the name putsonderwater there are other stories but that's the one i like the best
it's not that far from marydale to putsonderwater it's about 35 kilometers
on a pretty good gravel road there are the odd corrugations but mostly it's quite decent
i wasn't actually surprised to find somebody living here i had read about the unofficial mayor
of putsonderwater before and it was such a pleasure to meet blackie swatr he's incredibly hospitable
the first thing he did was to offer me a cup of coffee and some rusks the man really is a mine
of information about the area and this is where he lives he's got two tents pitched inside the
old general dealer solar power gas you don't need a lot more than that so see that was the
old police station and this was the post office in the postmaster's house
it was a thriving railway town there was
a school a police station a post office a general dealer a hotel
it's one of the casualties of the death of the railways in south africa although a train does
come past here every second day it's quite sad to see these little communities that were once
thriving and which are now deserted or almost so in the case of putsonderwater
so this was a wishing well the station gardens actually won a trophy in 1989 for the best kept
station gardens in south africa although it's hard to picture that now some of the station buildings
are a bit newer built in the 60s but the old village the hotel the general dealer
the police station post office were built in the 1940s there was a school in the village
the primary school actually only closed its doors finally in 2004 when the last resident left
this was the new police station interesting story that's the jail ex-south african
president bj vorster was locked up here for a couple of nights back in the second world war
in the post office with the postmaster's house next door and that's where i'm going to leave
putsonderwater and blackie swart if you enjoyed the video please do give it a thumbs up and
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