Graaff-Reinet is the oldest established town in the Eastern Cape and the fourth oldest in South Africa. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Dutch Burghers began to leave the settlement around Cape Town and the authorities tried to keep up with them as they moved into the vast African interior.

These Burghers became known as Trek Boers and amongst other things were noted for their hardy independent character, a disdain for authority and their disagreements with the taxman.

In an effort to keep some control over their subjects, in 1786 the authorities established an administrative centre, or Drostdy, in a picturesque setting in the arid Great Karoo where the Sundays River flows from the Sneeuberg Mountains. This centre they named after the Governor of the Cape, and his wife Reinet.

In the 1830s there was a mass movement of Boers away from the Cape Colony to lands to the North, where the Boers hoped to establish Republics where they could be an independent people. This was the Great Trek which had huge ramifications on the history of South Africa.

The vast majority of those who embarked on the Great Trek came from the Eastern Cape. One of the Graaff-Reinet trekkers, Andries Pretorius, commanded the Boer forces at the Battle of Blood River and later became the first President of the South African Republic. The capital of South Africa, Pretoria, was named after him.

Pre History

Starting at bedrock the story of the Great Karoo goes back 270 million years to when the central part of’ South Africa was a low-lying basin ringed by high lying land and covered by a thick mantle of slow-moving ice. With the coming of a warmer, wetter climate an enormously long period of alternating low and high rainfall seasons settled over South Africa.

This period saw the development of a luxurious plant life and the appearance of now long-extinct animals. With the passing of millions of years sand, mud and clay, often containing the fossil remains of animals and plants, were pressed and hardened into a series of rock layers, or strata, thousands of metres thick. The countryside formed from these deposits is today known in the Cape as The Karoo, while the series as a whole is known to geologists as the Karoo System.

This, in turn, is divided into several series that are, from oldest to youngest, the Dwyka, the Ecca, the Beaufort and the Stormberg series.

On the right is a photo of a Diictodon fossil (reptile-like mammal) found in the Karoo National Park. This fossil is approximately 240 million years old. (Dr F Durand)

It is from the beds of these younger geological series that have come fascinating fossils, leading to the Karoo’s recognition as one of the worlds largest and most important fossil deposits.

Painstaking pre-historical detective work undertaken by such famed “fossickers” as the late Dr Robert Broom has vividly re-populated the dim distant Karoo with the grim and grotesque monsters which lumbered, grazed and fought in its primaeval marshlands and rivers; animals such as the Pareiasaurus, a fearsome-looking cross between hippopotamus and crocodile, preyed upon by the even more hideous titanosuchids, therocephalians and the gorgonopsians.

It is strange today to think of the Karoo’s lonely landscape echoing with the shrieks and bellows of battling dinosaurs and even stranger to realise that whilst these scaly monsters were fighting for supremacy a new type of animal, no larger than a rat, had appeared on the Karoo scene to announce the beginning of the first true mammals.

The Karoo’s evolutionary scenario had a dramatic curtain when the semi-desert habitat experienced cataclysmic volcanic eruptions, pouring vast rivers of molten lava over the countryside, destroying all animal and plant life. At the end of this volcanic activity a period of erosion began, gradually stripping away land surfaces to expose the entire Karoo succession – a petrified showcase of entombed plants and animals, in a process that is still taking place

The accommodation at No 6 Guest House includes three spacious bedrooms, one double with en-suite bathroom and two twins with a separate luxurious bathroom.

The lounge offers a comfortable place to relax (with DSTV Television) and the separate dining room seats 8 in style and opens out into the spacious landscaped private garden.

The modern kitchen is generously equipped for all our guests’ self catering needs during their stay in Graaff-Reinet.

The charming and enclosed garden with braai facilities and a paved court, offers a peaceful and pleasant green oasis.

Children’s rates

Children 12 years and younger – 50% of adult rates
Children 3 years and younger – free of charge