#2: [14-Jul-02]

#3: [07-May-05]

29-Jun-2002 -- During a visit with friends on 24 June the Degree Confluence Project was mentioned during conversation. Hendrik van Eeden told us of his two successful and one attempted visits. This immediately appealed to my sense of adventure and I gained more information from the website.

Friday night the Louw family came visiting and friend Fanie required no convincing to come along searching for a confluence point the next day. We decided to set off to the closest unvisited point from Pretoria, where we live. The point is 25S 29E, 118 km NE from here. This point is in our neighbouring province, Mpumalanga.

We left home at 13h30, Saturday afternoon, and travelled on the R573, which headed in the general direction of the point. On approaching the general area, we turned off the main road and progressed by trial and error on dirt tracks until we eventually came close to the location we were looking for. The geographical area is called the Springbok plains, which consist of grass- and shrublands. This rural area around the confluence point is sparsely populated by members of the Ndebele nation, most of whom practise subsistence farming with mainly livestock and maize (corn). Donkey carts are quite commonly used as mode of transport, one can be seen passing on the view due West.

We found the exact location on a piece of unfenced land, about 30 meters from where we parked the car on a dirt track. We gave the GPS some time to settle down and stabilise, and got the required reading just before 16h30, with an estimated position error of 5 meters (16 feet), altitude 987 meters.