Melville Koppies with Lou & Serge

Eish!

Melville Koppies is a Nature Reserve and a Johannesburg City Heritage Site. It is the last conserved remnant of Johannesburg's ridges as they were before the discovery of gold in 1886.

Its geology goes back three billion years and recovered stone tools show that Early Stone Age man camped here as long as 500,000 years ago. There is a Late Stone Age living floor and within the last 1000 years Iron Age immigrants arrived. Remains of their kraal walls can be found on the northern slopes. In 1963 an iron-smelting furnace was excavated and can be seen today.

A "koppie" is Afrikaans for "a small hill." The word derives from the Dutch "kopje" which means literally "a little head." The vegetation of the Koppies is entirely indigenous and is a remarkable example of the richness of highveld grasses, flowers, and trees so close to a city centre. These ridges have looked like this for hundreds of years.

Socialized dogs on leads are welcome on Melville Koppies West and East, but not allowed on Melville Koppies Central because of the archaeological significance. In fact there are organized guided dog walks through Melville Koppies West every first Saturday of the month. Lou & Serge are very social so we decided to join the group for a walk on Saturday.

The group meets at 8:00 sharp at the 3rd Avenue and Arundel Road entrance to the Reserve in Westdene. And even though it was a holiday weekend which meant that probably many people were away, it was still quite well-attended. Make a small donation to the Friends of the Melville Koppies and you are off.

We climbed up the koppie to the top of the ridge over some pretty tough terrain for our poor heroes Lou & Serge. They are low-riders after all with very short legs! The group keeps a pretty brisk pace and their 5K walk usually last between an hour and 90 minutes.

From the get-go, Lou struggled to keep up. He finally declared the end of his jurisdiction by sitting down in the grass and refusing to get up until we turned around. Which we did.

Lou pulling up the rear!

in their defense, it was more like running the gauntlet than walking

over boulders

if it wasn't the boulders, it was the tall grass

disappearing dogs

But the views were spectacular!

overlooking Joburg

with some interesting vegetation

After our walk, we rewarded ourselves with a stop at the Bamboo Market in downtown Melville for some goodies.

Afterwards we drove back to Valley Lodge where Vince gave Lou & Serge a good brushing to remove all the burrs they picked up in the tall grass. Then it was nap time for these two tuckered out koppie explorers!