The artefacts of Pilgrim’s Rest’s heyday remain.

A sense of adventure grips you when you drive Robber’s Pass. It’s no wonder. This is where the old transport riders battled through to Delagoa Bay. It’s Jock of the Bushveld country. And evidence of the gold diggers of long ago is still visible everywhere. The landscape is beautiful, especially after the summer rain and with something of the Kruger National Park’s wildness that seems to affect the entire region. Drive slowly, because Robber’s Pass deserves your undivided attention.

There are various theories about the origin of Pilgrim’s Rest’s name. The one is that a digger exclaimed, “Now, at last, the pilgrim is at rest,” after striking gold. And the cliffs echoed back: “Pilgrim’s… rest… rest”.
Another is that a group of diggers from Pieter­maritzburg, among them Herbert Rhodes, brother of the im­perialist Cecil John Rhodes, named themselves The Pilgrims.
And a third is that newcomers were welcomed with the words: “Here comes another pilgrim to his rest.”

The town has a rich history and is regarded as the birthplace of South Africa’s gold industry.
The gold rush started in earnest when the area was declared a goldfield on 22  September 1873. For the first few years only alluvial gold was mined.
Underground mining started in 1881 when one David Benjamin obtained mining rights on a number of fields in the area. In 1895 the Transvaal Gold Mining Estates was established to formalise the industry.

Nothing is forever, and in 1972 the last gold was mined here and the shafts were closed.
In the Royal Hotel’s dining room you can see a photograph of the Perseverance Nugget on the wall, found on 16 December 1871 by George Russel. It tipped the scale at 119 ounces (a hefty 3,3 kg!), at the time the largest find of its kind in the country.

Also of interest is the robber’s grave in the town’s graveyard. The story goes that a thief, convicted for stealing a tent, was banished from the town and returned a few days later, only to be shot dead. To single him out, his grave was laid out in a north-south orientation instead of the traditional east-west. (But he’s not the same robber after whom the pass was named.)
If you have time to spare, wander around the shops, pat Churchill the Labrador, and stop for a beer at the Royal Hotel – it’s tradition when you visit the town.

The road twists through the hills, and many trucks use it. Take your time and keep to the speed limit.

The cemetery in Pilgrim’s Rest’s has 320 graves. Only about half of them have headstones, and many are the graves of children.

It’s the middle of summer and obviously there have been good rains – the hills are a lush green. We’re 2,9 km outside town and have just turned onto the R533 where the sign says Robber’s Pass.
The speed limit is only 100 km/h, but you have to keep your wits about you to negotiate the sharp turns and the occasional pothole. Large trucks use this road.
The cliffs to the left are rusty red, with tufts of grass sprouting at the top. To the right, the Morgenzon plantation stretches to the horizon. As the pass starts to twist and turn, the speed limit drops to 40 km/h.

At the 6,4 km mark, there’s a lookout point to the right from where you can see Pilgrim’s Rest in the distance. To the left of the road is a cairn with a plaque that explains how the pass got its name.

It’s an interesting story: “On 7 June 1912, at dusk, the mail coach between Lydenburg and Pilgrim’s Rest was stopped here by a highwayman and robbed of £129 in silver coins. The brigand was later identified as Thomas Dennison of Pilgrim’s Rest and, after having been found guilty, sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. It was the last mail coach robbery in South Africa.”
There was an earlier robbery on this pass, too. In 1899 another coach was ambushed and robbed of gold worth £10 000. A fitting name, then.

We drive on. Some distance further a sign on the right indicates the start of the Prospector’s Trail. According to the Komati Tourism web­site you can hike here for between two and five days, on trails that range from easy to tough. 

We’ve turned off into a plantation, careful not to scrape the undercarriage of our rented Polo. Our curiosity was piqued by the red sign next to the road, 9 km outside of Pilgrim’s Rest, which had the words “Scorpions F.C. Ground” in white lettering on it. We crawl on for 300 m. And what do you know? There’s a soccer pitch! Green, level and with goal posts at each end. It just begs to have someone kick a ball around on it.

If the ticket prices for the World Cup Soccer tournament make you choke on your cornflakes, you can come and watch a game here. The players will no doubt appreciate the support much more than the Ronaldos of this world.

Back on the road, about 3 km on, we pull over at a memorial plaque that commemorates the opening of the tarred pass on 9  September 1983 by minister PTC du Plessis, MP of the Lyden­burg constituency. (He’s better known as Pietie du Plessis, who spent three years in prison for com­pany fraud some years later.) According to our road map we should also see a memorial plaque for Jock of the Bushveld. We look around and even turn over a few rocks, but we don’t find anything.

Pilgrim’s Rest may be a museum town, but it has a hotel, shops and petrol pumps.

The robber of Robber’s Pass hijacked a mail coach on this road in 1912.

Smoke billows into the air as a veld fire rages to our left. We just drove past a sign, near where the Jock plaque was supposed to be, saying: “Prevent fires.”
At 12,6 km we cross the highest point of the pass – 1 778 m above sea level.

Now we’re descending again, and the landscape looks different: more grassy plains, fewer forests – just a stand of trees here and there. The road begins to even out in slow curves. I notice a few large thorn trees, and suddenly it feels like we’re in Jock’s country again.
After 24,7 km we stop at the Robber’s Pass Stall for a bottle of “good old-fashioned gingerbeer” at R8,50. I’ve tasted better ginger beer, but the mercury is hovering around 30 ºC and the ice-cold drink is a welcome relief.

Atella Pierneef invites us inside with a smile. She offers us coffee, tea and cold water. It’s still hot and the water helps. We turned off at the farm Riet­valy – 100 m from the farmstall – because of the name on the sign: Pierneef. As in Jacobus Hendrik Pierneef, the artist. Born in Pretoria in 1886, he is considered to be one of South Africa’s best landscape artists. He’s known for his distinctive landscapes of the Highveld. The painting Baobab, Bushveld, Messina (1946) was sold for R3,136 million at an auction in 2009.

Yes, Atella says, Pierneef was related to her husband, Cor. “He was my father-in-law’s father’s uncle. So it’s quite distant.” He visited the farm a number of times. Atella tells us her husband died recently after a two-year battle with brain cancer. “But you know what? It made me realise what’s important. Invest in people. Nothing else is really important.”
Atella says her husband’s brother, Jacobus Petzer Pierneef, inherited the Pierneef talent for painting. She shows us a few works in her lounge. They’re in that distinctive style: thorn tree in the foreground, soft colours. “Ja, the Pierneefs have a thing for thorn trees,” Atella says.

The last 5,2 km go by as if in a dream. The Polo’s wheels sing on the tar. We stop at the T-junction where the R533 meets the R36.
Robber’s Pass is behind us. And so is Pilgrim’s Rest, the mining town that became a museum town. To the right, the sign tells us, awaits Ohrigstad. Left: Lyden­burg/Mashishing.