Klipriviersberg Nature Reserve

This guide to Klipriviersberg Nature Reserve in Johannesburg centers on the ruined farmhouse of Sarel Marais, a voortrekker who settled this land in 1850, and the fires that struck it. It reaches further back to the Tswana pastoralists whose sunflower-shaped stone kraals once ringed these koppies, part of the densest cluster of Iron Age sites on the Witwatersrand, and to the warriors under Mzilikazi who scattered them. Stone Age hand axes half a million years old turn up on the same slopes. Look for the low stone walls as you walk the trail near the old farmhouse site.