Heritage - News
Update for 19th January 2008
The brief at the moment is to get the Mill ready for the Open Days in two weeks time. This includes making the most of the area of the water wheel itself. The invitation includes this image:
Heritage - News
5th January, updated 19th January / 26th January
Jump to the update;
5th January 2008
Hello all,
Firstly I have to report on the passing of paterfamilias of Compagnes Drift, Raoul Beaumont in this last week. He had been gravely ill and in hospital for nearly two weeks and gave up the struggle on Thursday. In him I have lost my No 1 fan of these reports. He hung on every word I wrote, always saying how much he enjoyed reading them! His last year was buoyed by two things; one his Harley Davidson and getting well enough from a previous set-back to be able to drive it again. The other was progress on his mill. I am pleased that we had reached the milestone of finishing the planks on the water wheel in time!
Any collector and restorer of Stationary Engines is always on the look-out for unusual pieces of equipment to drive with his engines, so making them more interesting to the general public. It cannot be often that the occasion arises to drive a whole mill house! I have had this fortunate opportunity recently on the farm Compagnes Drift in Bot River, which dates back to 1750 and was an outpost of the Honourable Dutch East India Company (VOC). The farm, home to the Beaumont family, is situated about 100 km due East of Cape Town, and luckily only 23 km from Elgin where I live.
The farm gate post.
Keith Wetmore eventually managed to track down the cold-climate pine planks we’d been promised. Commercially, these used planks sell for R28 per metre.Some horse-trading was involved here!
Out of these planks, I must make the trunking for the main elevator, the delivery chutes from the top of the main elevator to the mills and grain cleaner, and replace some floorboards. I have a feeling I will still run out!