OLD HARBOUR MUSEUM

By its very nature, the Old Harbour Museum is an all-weather open-air museum, open 24 hours a day. An indoor exhibition is open to the public seven days a week and provides interesting information... People were drawn to Hermanus since about 1855 by the plentiful fresh water and abundance and variety of fish. The Old Harbour provided a safe shelter for the small fishing boats and the town originally developed around this (harbour)area. The return of the boats to the inlet at the Old Harbour was the event of the day for more than a century. The fishermen often had to ride outside the harbour in heavy seas, waiting for a break between swells before they could row in their small boats... As museums and Nature Conservation were observing areas where they could overlap and because we are an ideal museum for that we looked into what prospects there were for the future. We realized a growing need among the public for environmental education and started moving more in that direction.

Primary location: Western South Africa