Melville Koppies Nature Reserve

Melville Koppies East is the Reserve's Cinderella. It is only 10 hectares in size and like Melville Koppies West was taken under the the present Committee's care in 1993.

At the time it seemed like a lost cause. There was a large stand of exotic conifers, which create a desolation below them. There was a lot of prickly pear, some of the neighbours had decided to use sisal as a form of barbed wire, and many neighbours considered it a good place to throw their garden debris. There were clusters of lantana, a category one invader which only yields to a pickaxe.

This has all changed. The conifers were felled by the Council. In the desolation left behind indigenous species - first sedges and then grasses - moved in. We have got rid of the sisal, lantana, and prickly pear and the neighbours - mostly - have stopped throwing rubbish over the fence. The big stands of blackjacks (Bidens pilosa and Bidens bipinnata) have been weeded. Neighbours - particularly Adcorp - have helped with fencing. Melville Koppies East is becoming something of a community resource.

Melville Koppies East is also known as the "Louw Geldenhuys Viewsite" because the then owner of the farm reputedly came here with his wife in the evenings.

The views are indeed stunning, but Louw Geldenhuys probably turned his back on the disreputable mining town developing to the east.

Today it is much used by dog walkers, and one of the neighbours feeds our resident flock of guinea fowl. This is possibly not quite politically correct, but guinea fowl are not political animals. We also have francolins who are more reticent.

A thicket of Canthium gilfilliani - Wild Coffee - at the far eastern edge, overlooking the old Rustenburg road, has been rehabilitated.

The Melville Junction Church held a Christmas carol service on Melville Koppies East in December 2008. On the whole it seems to be a success story.