My Story

Every month one member of the Luderitz community tells us a story about Luderitz that they feel captures the essence of what life here is all about.

“In 1986 I was invited to sit on the National Dias Festival Committee in Cape Town, having earlier been on the sidelines of discussions about getting a replica of the original cross first planted by Bartolemeu Dias. In April ‘88 they replaced the cross, or Padräo, at Diaz Point.

It had been a ten year battle to eventually come to some sort of conclusion as to how to create this replica, because there were no absolute records, and eventually the National Monuments Commission in Windhoek decided on a design which was as near as accurate as they felt they could get. Now the original was made in Lisbon from Lisbon limestone which deteriorated pretty quickly in the conditions at Diaz point, so they had this new cross made in Karibib and it was made from Namibian Dolerite which, apart from diamond, is just about the hardest rock you can get. The dolerite they used was estimated it be about one and half billion years old so it’s not inconceivable that this cross could last another billion and a half years. Can you imagine where mankind will be in a billion and a half years time?

At the same time that all of this was happening my dearly beloved stepfather was very ill with cancer of the ear and had arranged to go down to Cape Town to be operated on in April. The operation was a great success and on the Monday he was fine and on Tuesday he was fine and on Wednesday he was fine. On Thursday he developed something in his stomach and started vomiting blood. At 2’o’clock he was fading and at 6’o’clock he had passed away.

The very next morning was when the new cross was going to be put in at Diaz point at dawn. My wife and I were all packed and ready to go to Cape Town because we had got the call at 2 that Fritz was fading. We got as far as the entrance to the town before I realised that I’d forgotten something so we turned back and as we walked through the door of our house the phone was ringing and it was the hospital in Cape Town saying that Fritz had passed away. So we weren’t going to South Africa at all so I said to my wife ‘we must go out to Diaz Point tomorrow, Fritz would have wanted that’. So we did and it was a magical sight in the sunrise, seeing this helicopter lifting the old cross out and putting the new one in. You can imagine that that was a very emotional moment for us and ever after that that to me was dedicating a cross not just to Dias but to my father-in-law as well.

The next time you’re up at the cross put your ear against it and give it quite a hard pat and it resonates, it sings.”