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DONALD TOLLNER BROWN
THE DAM THAT DONALD BUILT ... Not content with building a 150-million gallon dam with the help of his farm workers, an East Griqualand farmer is planning to construct an island as a bird sanctuary and also introduce game animals into a camp at the head of the dam. Mr Donald Brown of the farm "Con Amore" at Cedarville built the dam when the Minister of Water Affairs made an appeal to help conserve water during "Water Year". The dam, which is on the farm "Harefield", also owned by Mr Brown, and which covers about 65 acres, is now nearly full. It took him 7 months to build, and Mr Brown said that the biggest job of the whole project was the carting of stones from his homestead over a distance of 8 miles, as there were no suitable stones in the area of the dam. The work was carried out with 8 farm tractors, towing a load of about two and a half tons of stone each trip. When I asked Mr Brown the total tonnage of stone, he replied: "I really don't know ... it was an awful lot, and at one stage I thought I had bitten off more than I could chew. Time was against me, and I was damming a small stream fed from a catchment area of 19 square miles. If I had not finished before the summer rains, all our work would have been washed away." The earth wall of the dam is about 150 yards long, and Mr Brown took me along the wall in his farm truck. When I asked if the dam was not the largest owner-made one in the area, he declined to commit himself ... "I don't know if it is the largest, but you could say its one of the biggest." Speaking of the island bird sanctuary, Mr Brown said: "There are already ducks and wild geese galore ... hundreds of them on the dam." He went on to say that this area was the birds' natural habitat, and I felt that this was of great significance in view of the fact that the name Matatiele - about 20 miles to the north - is taken from a Xhosa phrase meaning "The ducks have gone". Matatiele, like Cedarville, has large tracts of flat open country, where vleis and at one time swamps were formed by the water from nearby catchment areas. As I was talking to Mr Brown by the side of the dam, spurwing geese flew by. Will the dam be instrumental in bringing these wild creatures back to their natural habitat? On the question of game, Mr Brown said he was keen on getting a pair of zebra as well as buck. From a farmer's point of view the dam was built to provide irrigation. Owing to the flat nature of the surrounding countryside, water from the dam will have to be pumped to the area to be irrigated. Mr Brown described the soil as being most suitable for irrigation. He said that in 1969 he had put down 4 boreholes and had to go to a depth of 90 or 100 feet before he struck stone. There is no soil erosion from water run-off, but there is a certain amount of wind erosion. The soil has a sand and clay content with trees, vegetables and mealies doing well. The farm "Harefield" has been under Eragristis Curvula grass for 7 years and only requires fertilizing and watering. When mowed it is stacked in bales for winter cattle feed. Mr Brown, who has farmed in the district for 31 years, said that it was an extremely healthy area for cattle. Mr Brown has built more than just a dam. He has also put up a small cottage at the side of the dam where friends and relatives may spend short holidays. BOATING Already the dam has proved popular with boating enthusiasts, with the Kokstad Boating Club having already used the dam for a boating Sunday. Other organisations are also interested in using the dam for boating events. Mr Brown told me that he was a "landsman" in the full sense of the word, but "now I'm learning to sail a boat". Already he has been tipped into his own dam when the boat he was in overturned. As he related the incident he looked towards the distant mountains, whose peaks were glistening with snow, and said "brrr... that water was cold".
APPROACHING THE DAM BY ROAD
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