Richards Scrapbook

Well if you are here, you probably know who I am and are looking for something I have told you about.

The Jail House, the ongoing renovations or some picture or other.

I have added some macro pictures. Please be aware that some pictures are slightly larger than the ones I have used in the rest of the website so downloading will take a bit longer.

New is a lightning tour of the Eastern Cape

And also new the completed painting of the Jail House

And some new piccies that include Amanda!

A trip to Langebaan to see the flowers.

A trip to Namaqualand to see the what the Namaqualand biome looked like.

Another trip, another page. This time to KwaZulu Natal. I visited the Memel Seekoeivlei Reserve.

And for those who know me and the shape I am in, it is my time to crow. Take a look at the Wolfberg page providing proof positive that I climbed up to the Wolfberg Cracks and made it all the way through and down again (with a lot of help from my family and friends - thanx people).

If you are here purely by accident or thanx to a search engine, may I offer a small caveat. This is a website for communicating with friends and relatives. It isn't fancy, it hasn't any gee whizz stuff, it just is.

There is a brief tour of the cells.
The pictures show the inside of the cells and the graffiti.
The Graffiti
If you are of an artistic or other type of sensitive nature, be warned! The art is TERRIBLE and the language equally so. Mind you, locked in a corrugated cell with a hangover in the heat of summer is not really condusive to brilliant art and deathless prose. Anyway, if you wanna look, be my guest. However, you will need a fairly active imagination with an ability to see beyond normal proportion, and a smattering of coloquial Afrikaans will be usefull too.

What? are you still here? And you want to know how I own a jail?
Oh well, Ok

I saw an advert in the property section of the local scandal sheet for a house in a small town called Riviersonderend. (Roughly translated it means River without end.) Riviersonderend is about 160 kms (100 miles) from Cape Town on the N2 freeway which ends up in Port Elizabeth, Republic of South Africa. See the following map.

It isn't a particularly large town and doesn't have a huge amount going for it, but I liked it and a few days after seeing the house, I decided to buy it.
"Sorry! It is sold." said the Estate Agent, and then as all good estate agents would she said, "But I have another house at almost half the price of the original house you saw. How about..?"
The next week I went through again and found that the place that was for sale was the old magistrates court and holding cells.
It turns out that in the 1950's the local farmers agreed to build a police station, magistrates court and holding cells if the government would provide the manpower.
When the policing requirements in the area expanded, larger premises were built, this time by the governemt and the house was sold to the general public.

I am the second owner since the place was sold. The holding cells are intact and there is still graffitti on the door jambs.

If you want me to tell you when I update this site, please write to me at: iti00593
at
mweb.
co.
za

Thanx. Sorry for the broken email addy, but spammers love websites for finding new and exciting emails. Just stick it all together and there I am.

Last updated 2nd October, 2005.