Silvermine Reservoir

The Silvermine Dam or Silvermine Reservoir in the Table Mountain National Park is a popular spot for hikers, joggers, swimmers, and other visitors soaking up fynbos atmosphere for a few hours at a time. The reservoir built in 1898 to supply water to Cape Town is in the northern part of the Silvermine Nature Reserve, off Ou Kaapse Weg.

Havens of montane fynbos at the interface of wildland and the urban crunch add crucial natural sustenance to thousands of city residents. Many return without fail for doses of fresh air and bush boosters of the physical, mental and spiritual kind. It keeps people sane for city life.

Easy to take such places near cities for granted, all of them maintained by people unknown, mostly unseen. A city is good if these places are kept clean, pretty, accessible and safe. Visitors don’t need grey hairs to twig that all users take bits of responsibility for maintaining the beauty, the magic of these places.

Behind the scenes there is fire management, always required in the fynbos fire‑driven ecosystem. Woody encroachment and invasive alien plant management programmes deliver the terrain in the condition shown in the photo. Umpteen unseen meetings about urban encroachment keep highways and gas stations elsewhere. Non‑native fauna and urban‑driven ecological change can easily swamp such areas if there are not values and actions sustaining them. Water security in the catchment area is always a city responsibility, usually out of the line of sight of the visitor. 

Yet, every visitor enjoying a decent life somewhere also deals with a personal quota of demands and complexities, burdened by daily tasks on uncomfortably long lists for goals big and small. The modern citizen maintains herself or himself by deliberately planning time in little Edens like this.