This story is exclusively available on Substack. This work is AI-assisted - read about how I work.
A makeshift truck assembled from Chevrolet and Buick parts helped fill the gap left by a cancelled road service. They called it Plaatjie.
The transport business would grow far beyond Namaqualand. It began with a problem the copper mines had faced for generations: moving people and material across a district where traffic was sparse and distances expensive.
The Nama had known the copper before commercial extraction began. When Phillips & King started mining at Springbok’s Blue Mine in 1852, recognising the ore was no longer the principal difficulty. Getting it to a buyer was.
Export ore travelled by wagon to Hondeklip Bay. Teams struggled across the Hardeveld, through mountain passes, river crossings and deep coastal sand to a surf-bound anchorage where workers ferried ore offshore. In 1857, government geologist Andrew Wyley reported that carriage to Hondeklip Bay cost nearly as much as all the other costs of producing the ore put together.
The colonial government began engineering a road through the dry country. From February 1867, convict gangs worked on the Messelpad–Wildeperdehoek route towards Hondeklip Bay. The Cape Copper Mining Company supplied their transport and accommodation. The road programme was overtaken by another solution: a railway from Port Nolloth.
Port Nolloth offered a better anchorage.
In 1869, the company obtained authority to construct a railway and jetty there. The first rails were laid that September. By January 1876, the line reached Okiep: roughly 150 km of narrow gauge connecting the Atlantic coast to the mines.
Mules provided the principal early traction. Two small locomotives tried on the lower sections proved unreliable and were withdrawn in 1876. Steam returned gradually as stronger rails were laid, and the first steam-hauled train completed the full journey to Okiep in 1893. Ore could travel from the inland workings to Port Nolloth, then by ship to Britain.
Ore travelled towards the coast; food, coal, machinery, tools and explosives moved inland. The distance remained, but the time, cost and risk of crossing it diminished.
The line needed station staff, mechanics, platelayers, muleteers and, later, locomotive crews. The harbour needed boatmen and cargo handlers. Moving copper created work far beyond the shafts. It also made the mining company responsible for much of the infrastructure through which the district obtained supplies and reached overseas markets.
For Springbok, being “far away” shaped who could earn a living, reach services and markets, or supply a mine.
In 1930, South African Railways withdrew its uneconomic Bitterfontein–Springbok road service. Local traders responded. Joe Jowell and Jaap du Plessis had opened a Chevrolet dealership the previous year. Du Plessis assembled Plaatjie from Chevrolet and Buick parts, and the partners began carrying passengers and goods.
Jowells grew into a national carrier and developed into the group later known as Trencor, with interests extending into trailer and shipping-container manufacture and international container leasing.
The mining railway had connected the district to the sea. A business responding to another local transport gap found customers far beyond the mines.
Its first truck had been assembled to replace a service that no longer ran.