Well Hello There Fellow Travelers And Hivers.
Time for some more adventure tales! Last week I shared a post where we went to the National Womens Monument in my home town, well I still have a lot to share of that adventure. Now I mentioned that they added a whole bunch of stuff since I was last there. When we decided to up and go to the monument I had no idea that we might be spending the whole day there and not even come close to going through everything there is, and we have yet to go back and walk through the museum it self.
Okay we'll get to that on a later date.
In this post I'll be sharing some photos of a British war room that they recently added at the museum, along with a few more statues that I didn't add in the previous post. If perhaps you wanted to read through the previous post you can check it out here A Cultural Experience At The National Women's Monument
Let's do the final run through of the last couple of statues.
Now I can't really remember if this is a new statue since it sits up on the hill quite some ways off and very much hidden away. But let's say that this is one of the new statues.
On 31 May of 1902 The Boers signed a treaty with the British Empire that ultimately ended the four year war. So it would be safe to say that this represents the end of the war, where the Boer's laid down there weapons. As you can see the horse is also beyond famished, which represents the hardship that The Boers went through to protect their country and keep what was theirs.
This statue is at the far end of the monument grounds and you have to go on a beaten path through some bushes to get up there, I doubt a lot of people actually know about this statue. With that said I am glad that I decided to stray away on that path.
We were actually looking at this statue when we saw the beaten path for the previous statue.
This, well this is quite sad in someway, this statue represents the kids that was captured and taken over to Britain in the war. I wonder how many of them went over and how many made the journey and then how many returned home after the war ended.
There is very little information regarding that topic, I am assuming that none of those events were really recorded at all.
Okay so this is no statue at all... But look at the size of this cannon, I know these things were big and are big but I feel that they were much bigger than I thought they might have been back in the day!
Trust me when I say this is almost twice my height! How did the men operate those cannons back then? Must be that they sat on horse back while cannoning these.
Either that or humanity has grown very short indeed.
The Rundle House Museum.
This is just one of the small museums they moved recently to the National Womens Monument. I'm not entirely sure from where it was brought but I did hear talks of it coming all the way from Harrismith in South Africa.
This was a war room used by the British Empire during the war and mostly everything inside is preserved just as it was left all those years ago! Even the whiskey jar with it's original crystal glass! It was quite a thing to see!
Upon entering the little war room house they had this map up on the wall of all the battles fought in the Boer War. Ironic that there were 123 battles fought in those four years, that's roughly 30 battles a year which means two battles a month. Can you imagine having to fight a battle every other week for four years in a row!
Hectic.
As one can see most of these battle were fought in and around the Orange Free State. I have some proud being able to call the Orange Free State my home now.
If you look closely just below the Orange Free State on the map there is a town called Bloemfontein, that is my home town I was born and raised in this little gem of a town. It doesn't look like there were too many battles fought over here.
The whole room was infact filled with maps of some battles that took place, very detailed as well to say the least. They had markers on the maps where the cannons were placed along with the lines the cavalry used and the foot soldiers... basically everything from troops to field hospitals were displayed on the maps of both sides The Boers and the British Empire.
If you look at the image above, all of the maps have a smaller poster block beneath it, this specific one is from the map to the far left. It's one of the first battles fought in the war. Now in the previous post I mentioned that we gave the British quite a head ache, as you can see the casualties each side suffered in that battle, the British were somewhat on the loosing side of the war when it begun. In-fact it's sort of the same with most of the battles fought, they suffered a much higher life toll than The Boers did even though they outnumbered us more than 3 to 1.
Now as much as the British were the enemy, I do have to say they brought over some very nice furniture, I would certainly not mind setting this up in my house. A wooden table with a big patch of leather covering most of the table. Now as I said earlier this was a war room so you can only think that the highest of officers sat at this table discussing battle plans.
Can you feel the tension rising?
These are only replicas of the real deal, but it does add quite the affect to what was discussed and how things might have looked. At each seat they had a different set of papers, probably to add authentication to the whole look.
But of course I went and picked up every little piece of paper and read through most of it. It made me feel as if I was there when everything took place.
This by far was the coolest section of the little war room house, this was the sleeping quarters of an officer of the British army. I should have probably taken more photos and closer ones but the glass panel made it a bit hard because everything reflected too much. I would have loved to enter the area and inspect everything a little bit closer but I suppose the paneled it off for a reason, people were most likely touching everything and preserving these items was of utmost importance.
It would seem that a officer in the British army had a luxurious lifestyle to say the least. Certainly had a lot more than the average soldier did back in those days.
Paardeberg Museum
Okay so this one might not be as interesting as The Rundle House Museum but I decided to add it none the less, it had a lot of trinkets and odd stuff in it. Stuff that was picked up and collected where as The Rundle House was preserved more or less as it was found. I am assuming that Paardeberg was where a battle was fought.
Inside the one room building they had these boards that depicted the lay of the land and all three of them was the same, the only difference between them was the grounds controlled by each side as the battle went on. So it just depicts who gained ground when and where and for how long it was kept.
It must have been quite a battle if they did so much effort to depict just one battle.
What I found most interesting was the medals, I never thought they could fabricate so beautifully all the way back more than 120 years ago.
I mean look at the detail on those medals. Oh and Nazi signs? Seems a bit odd don't you think, laughs I'm joking I know it's just crosses.
They had all of these photographs taken way back, which mind you some are actually pretty cool to just look at and getting a fraction of a feeling what life must have been back then, although there's a big misconception when looking at these old photos it's almost as if life was greyed out and dull but it was just as colourfull as it is today right! They are just photographs!
The Tortoise That's Over 200 Years Old
The coolest one of the bunch was this one taken of a tortoise, now this is probably the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life!
The tortoise Jonathan is well over 200 years old if not 300 years old. The tortoise was found on the island St. Helena where Napoleon was banished and was already there when he was banished, so who knows how old he really is?
Oh and the tortoise Jonathan is still alive to this day on the island of St. Helena and is being cared for. Who knows he might live for another 200 years!
Dated 06/05/2023
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