19 July 2025
Riverbend’s Darkest Secret Stirs Again
There are days when the river runs quiet — so quiet you can hear the old ghosts shifting beneath the mud. And then… there are days when the river growls.
After the flood that roared through Christiana this year — the kind that rips trees from the earth and history from the ground — something has changed.
Something… deep.
Let me take you back.
A couple of years ago, during planned maintenance at the Vaalharts Weir, the water level dropped just enough. Bloemhof held back. Vaalharts opened.
My old man took me out on a cold, quiet morning — not to fish, not to fix anything — but to show me a secret.
We launched the boat early, water still like a mirror, the kind of day where even the wind holds its breath.
He pointed to a stretch in the river, leaned over, and said:
“There it is. The diving bell.”
The Bell.
The diving bell of 1921.
The very one where thirteen men went down… and never came back up.
Boat humming quietly, the cold biting our fingers. He didn’t say much. Just pointed.
“There it is Bas. Look.”
Peeking out of the Vaal like a rusted crown.
A diving bell, German-made by Krupp, sent to dig the river’s soul. And when the air failed that day… it became a tomb. A steel coffin sealed by water and time. The men inside? Never found. No funerals. No names carved in stone. Just gone.
He showed me the coordinates. We marked it. And then life moved on.
But now…
After the flood?
Everything is different.
The edges of the river are shattered.
The average depth has increased by two full meters in places — as if the river grew teeth and swallowed its own banks. Landslides. Mud scars. Roots exposed like old secrets.
And then I saw it — on the fish finder.
Something. Something big. But not where the bell used to be.
It’s deeper. Shifted.
Or worse… moved.
Did the flood drag it further downriver?
Is it buried now forever — deeper than any man can go?
Or is it… coming loose again?
Because here’s the chill my dear friends…..:
When steel breathes beneath water, it doesn’t rust.
It remembers.
I’ve attached two relics from my old man’s archives — an old Volksblad sketch from 2007, and the haunting article about the day the river took those men.
We don’t know their names.
We don’t know what went wrong.
But here at Riverbend, we remember them.
Not as footnotes.
As brothers in the dark. Forgotten by the world, but never by the Vaal.
This winter, our boat rides will follow a new route — the deep route. We’ll pass over the GPS location. We’ll tell the story. And maybe, just maybe…
we’ll hear the bell breathe.
This isn’t a tourist attraction.
This is sacred ground now.
The kind of place you lower your voice.
And listen.
Because the river doesn’t forget.
And neither do we.
Riverbend Camp | Christiana
Where history sleeps in silt. And sometimes… it stirs.
