Stories, scenic splendour sweeten platteland pot

The skipper of the boat taking us on a jaunt around Loskop Dam on Sunday had a splendid tale to tell.

If you think about it, you have to wonder how one of this country's most important bodies of fresh water came to be known as "the Absent-Minded Dam".

Throughout my childhood I was regularly yelled at by one or both parents for being "so blerrie loskop". Now that I am a parent of children who are strangely incapable of coming home from school with both shoes, blazer and lunchbox, I find myself shouting the same thing at them.

But Loskop is, you have to admit, an odd name for a dam.

In case you're wondering, Loskop Dam is in Mpumalanga - but only just. I think. The border between Limpopo and Mpumalanga is a movable feast because the locals often can't decide which of these deadbeat provincial administrations they would least like to be governed by, so they not infrequently resort to a bit of arson and stone-throwing to demand that they be ruled by the other lot.

Wherever it is, Loskop Dam is a place of great beauty and it has, in great abundance, the skipper assured me, delicious little kurpers. (He told me, in no uncertain terms, that Loskop is home to bream that weigh in at 9kg.)

As with all those who are custodians of local knowledge, the captain of our boat had all the answers. He explained how the dam had been built in the 1930s, and raised to its present height in the 1970s.

Back in the 1930s, he explained, the Union government voted the funds to dam the Olifants River but couldn't find anywhere in the country a civil engineer qualified enough to do the job. And so they recruited a Pole called, of all things, Roberts.

I am only a journalist so I had to take it on the captain's good (and self-assured) authority that there were loads of Poles called Roberts. Be that as it may, this Polish engineer named Roberts came out in the 1930s and set about building a mighty dam, one that would have a wall almost 500m long.

And then the Polish Mr Roberts died. The knowledgeable captain was unclear on whether it was cholera or malaria that got him, but died he did. His co-workers were much moved by the death of their chief and got it into their heads to cut off his head and bury it in the dam wall. So the name of the dam actually means "detached head" not "loose head".

I was very taken with this rather ghoulish story, as were my children and the other day-trippers on the boat. A grand yarn but, unfortunately, it is completely untrue.

If you want to know from where any place in South Africa got its name, you read Raper - which is what I did on my return home that evening. After I got out my well-worn copy of Dictionary of Southern African Place Names, the good Dr Peter Raper disappointed me terribly. I was rather hoping he would confirm the head-in-the-wall yarn, but he holds that, in fact, the name refers to a koppie that was set apart from those around it - even before the dam was built.

It's not nearly as sexy as the captain's story, a version of which, it seems, is very much part of local dam lore.

This weekend, I am led to believe, there is a marathon at Loskop. I am told by a business associate it is one of the best long-distance runs in the country: gorgeous scenery, enthusiastic supporters lining the road from Middelburg, and all of the other things that go into making a really good marathon, whatever those may be. Sadly, I shan't be taking part as I have committed to defrosting the fridge on Sunday.

But I do plan to return to Loskop Dam very soon. Aside from the scenic splendour of the place and all those delicious little fish waiting for me to feed them worms, I want to find out about poor Mr Roberts (I have reason to believe he may have been a Lieutenant-Colonel Roberts), where he came from and what really happened to him.

Our platteland is full of fascinating stories, some of them true, some of them not so true.

Do yourself and your family a favour: for your next holiday head to the platteland and not Sun City or Amanzimtoti.

The local entrepreneurs will appreciate it.