Die waterhuis loop droog, en die droogte breek

1949 · regional · Beaufort West

By OCTOBER 1949 the waterhouse was empty. Rationing was imposed - two hours of water a day, domestic use only - announced over loudspeakers, with irrigation, street-damping and building washing forbidden. The council was preparing to truck water from Paarl, some 400 km away. The drought broke in NOVEMBER. These are BEAUFORT WEST's records, about 91 km from the centre of the ground this project maps, and the article makes no statement about Klaarstroom or the Koup farms. What makes them worth having is that they are the same rainfall regime and the nearest place where somebody wrote the weather down year by year. Read as regional context, not as a record of what fell on these farms. [SRC-262]

Bronne

• Wessel Visser, "Between drought and deluge: A history of water provision to Beaufort West, ca. 1858-1955", pp. 1-21 pp. 1-21; supplied as the PDF 31-61-1-SM.pdf