Oudtshoorn

(Oudtshoorn museum, built during the feather boom)

Cape History
The Cape of Good Hope was found by Europeans near the end of the 15th century, with visits by Bartolomeo Dias and Vasco da Gama providing early accounts of the area. By about 1600, there was a permanent Dutch settlement located as a supply depot for ships passing around Africa to reach the East Indies, and over the following century the settlement prospered. Black Africans had not yet reached the Cape in their long expansion southward from central Africa, and the region was populated only by Khoi-San hunter-gatherer peoples who were rapidly enslaved or displaced by the Europeans (There is a fascinating chapter in Guns, Germs, and Steel discussing how ideal the Cape region was for Europeans to gain a foothold in Africa--with a Mediterranean climate familiar to the Europeans but alien to black Africans, the white population swelled rapidly).

During the 18th century, European explorers penetrated the interior and came into contact with the indigenous civilizations in Zulu-land and Zimbabwe. A turning point came in 1803, when Holland itself was threatened by Napoleon. The British, being generally terrified of Napoleon, chose to pre-emptively occupy Dutch settlements around the world. Over the next fifty years, Dutch settlers and farmers came into conflict with their new British masters and chose to leave the Cape colony to go it alone in the African interior. This "Great Trek" has a lot of parallels with the westward expansion in the United States, complete with land grabs, warfare against the indigenous population, and declarations of various independent "republics."

One of the settlements in the interior became known as Oudtshoorn (pronounced something like "outs-horn" or maybe "oats-horn"). The town is located in a picturesque valley between soaring mountain ranges, and today is about a seven-hour drive from Cape Town. We spent two days there relaxing on our trip to Cape Town, and learned a bit about its unique history.

Ostrich farming
Oudtshoorn came into its own in the 1870s. A number of early settlers had learned to farm ostriches, and, lucky for them, the whims of European fashion turned ostrich feathers into the height of style. Typically the feathers would be made into plumes for hats, though apparently they could be used in a wide variety of applications (on boots or sewn into wedding dresses or as fans or dusters). The British obligingly built a railroad to Port Elizabeth and soon the "ostrich feather boom" was on. At the height of the market, Oudtshoorn ostrich feathers sold for more than gold, by weight, and the speculative boom in the area reached the usual bubble proportions. Award-winning stud ostriches could be sold for several thousand pounds (more than an automobile). Within a few years the town had a hospital, several banks, a pharmacy, a railroad depot, and nine architects building mansions for the newly wealthy ostrich farmers.

The usual story with economic bubbles followed. New settlers flowed in, banks offered vast loans at too-low interest rates, and there was a total absence of regulation or quality control. The resulting oversupply (and low quality) resulted in the first crash in the feather market in the 1880s. Fortunes were lost, lenders went bust, and thousands of ostriches were slaughtered.

The whims of fashion, however, ensured that demand for the feathers endured, and after some consolidation and introduction of local production controls the ostrich market was soon back on its feet for another go. Oudtshoorn had some of the earliest automobiles in South Africa, and the new round of feather-baron mansions were often built entirely of materials imported from London.

The first decade of the 20th century saw a slow decline in the ostrich market, however, as fashion began to move away from large feathers (the Oudtshoorn museum blames automobiles for changing tastes of European women toward smaller feathers). The outbreak of war in 1914 finally killed off the market, however, and the second "feather crash" proved to be the last. The years since the crash have seen attempts by the farmers to revive the feather market, various attempts to introduce ostrich meat to the world (it's very good, it's red meat, and it has little or no cholesterol), and the launching of ostrich tourism. None has been very successful, though there is still a large population of ostriches in the area.

(Feather baron's car, once worth less than a prized ostrich)

(Feather baron's house)

One of the interesting aspects of the bubble is that Oudtshoorn was, very early on, a very cosmopolitan city. Speculators from around the world poured in, including a large population of Lithuanian Jews (who were populous enough to have their own schism, resulting in two Jewish communities and two bickering synagogues in the late 19th century). And later the town was host to 500 Polish orphans during World War II, most of whom still live in the area.

We visited an ostrich farm for tourists and learned about the farming techniques, about the feathers, about feather fashion, et cetera. The absolute highlight, however, was the chance to ride an ostrich. You have to weigh less than 75 kg, so I was ineligible, but Becca took her opportunity and rode that ostrich around the pen like a champ.

(Ostrich riding)