To celebrate International museum day, the Pellissier House Museum in Bethulie held an open day for visitors to come and have a look at the displays in the museum and some stalls selling jewellery, crafts, cosmetics and things to eat. Tours for visitors were given by Trudie Venter who has been in charge of the museum for more or less the last ten years.
As the day started, we noticed something that we don’t often see in Bethulie. It was a bunch of bikers driving down Voortrekker Street on their way to the Voortrekker monument that commemorates the symbolic ox wagon trek of 1938.
The triangular stone structure of rocks that forms part of the monument can be seen in the background of the photo of all the bikes that were parked in front of the museum.
The bikers were clearly interested in the historical sites so we invited them to view the museum.
Trudie started the tour in front of the museum to explain how it came about that the museum was built by the missionary Jean Pierre Pellissier who arrived in Bethulie in 1833. He was part of a group of French missionaries. He worked under the San people and the Bathlaping people whom he brought down to Bethulie all the way from Limpopo In the north of South Africa.
Numerous residents of the town came to view the museum and listen to the tour.
We even had a little princess on a leash that came to visit.
These visitors are in the dining room that has been turned into a space to exhibit posters and photographs of the South African actor Patrick Mynhardt who called himself the “Boy from Bethulie”. He was a stage actor; he stared in the popular T.V. drama “Vyfster” and also acted in 26 other movies.
One of the displays in the museum is of laminated photo copies of the contents of a time capsule that was embedded in the Ox wagon monument at the end of Voortrekker Street that was mentioned before.
The ox wagon in this display was made from melted down gun shells that were used during the Anglo Boer war. It used to be part of the Ox Wagon monument in Voortrekker Street as well, but it was brought to the museum to keep it safe after the two brass oxen were stolen in 1999. The missing oxen have been replaced by fibre glass and resin ones that were made by Gary Johnson-Baker, an Air Force technician from Gauteng, using the original mould.
It was a long day at the museum, but very rewarding for the committee of the Bethulie Heritage Foundation to be able to share the history of our town with visitors and the local community.
Some of the information in this article was obtained from Trudie Venter’s book “Bethulie Onvoltooid”. If you are interested in either an electronic copy or a paperback, you can contact Trudie on 083630 8849
BETHULIE ONVOLTOOID
TRUDIE VENTER