CP Nel Museum, Oudtshoorn

Scenes of the Oudtshoorn ostrich boom days.

© Chris Marais

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By the time you’ve driven into the bustling town of Oudtshoorn, you will already know you’re in the heart of ostrich country.

It seems you can hardly move around this part of the world without bumping into a couple of ostriches, or ‘Karoo sock puppets’, as these famous flightless birds are fondly called.

But, as you negotiate the streets of Oudtshoorn, you see many rather venerable old mansions and meetings halls from another era.

The rather incongruous houses with the pointy domes are called ‘feather palaces’, because they were all built more than a century ago when a really perfect ostrich feather could be exchanged for first-class passage to the United Kingdom on 1 of those stately ocean liners that used to ply the waters between Cape Town and Southampton.

When you get to No 3 Baron van Rheede Street, find the closest parking and enter the building. You are now in the CP Nel Museum, in the midst of a stately collection of goods, chattels and memories that capture life in Victorian-era Oudtshoorn so well.

In the museum's Ostrich Hall there’s an image of running ostriches carved into rock, discovered somewhere in the Sahara Desert.

Here you can also discover what makes the contemporary ostrich industry tick.

You’ll also learn about the 1st wave of the ostrich industry, when those feathers were all the rage in Europe and Britain.

So what kind of a frontier life did all this newfound wealth spawn? That’s what you discover as you wander through various rooms like the chemist shop, the crockery collection and the garage, which is full of classy old vehicles of yesteryear.

Much of this collection comes courtesy of the late Colonel Charles Paul Nel, a businessman and antique buyer who donated his collection to the local community.

Perhaps the biggest surprise comes last, as you enter another room and find yourself in a complete synagogue. This is a reconstruction of the old St John Street Synagogue, primarily used by the local Lithuanian Jewish community, who were prime movers in the feather business before World War I.