Month: July 2015

PINNACLE POINT SITE MOVES CLOSER TO WORLD HERITAGE STATUS

An important step forward has been taken to have the archaeological site at Pinnacle Point, Mossel Bay, declared a World Heritage Site. The site, which is is regarded as one of the world’s most important archaeological sites, has been included, together with five other South African sites, in UNESCO’s tentative lists for World Heritage sites.

Professor Curtis Marean, associate director of the Institute of Human Origins and professor at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University and his team of scientists announced in 2007 that they had uncovered the world’s oldest known evidence for the use of coastal resources, dating back to about 162 000 years ago, in Cave 13B at Pinnacle Point.

The site was included together with Blombos (Stilbaai), Klasies River (near Cape St Francis), Diepkloof (near Elands Bay on the West Coast) and Sibudu Cave and Border Cave (both KwaZulu-Natal) in a serial nomination submitted to UNESCO by the State Party, the South African Department of Environmental Affairs. All these sites relate to the emergence of modern humans.
Pinnacle Point gained Provincial Heritage status in December 2012.

In June 2014, the Mossel Bay Town Council approved the establishment of a state-of-the art interpretation centre for the discoveries at the Point. The centre, which will also house associated research facilities, is expected to be a huge tourist attraction. The old stone quarry site at the Point has been reserved for this purpose.

To be included in the World Heritage List, sites must be of Outstanding Universal Value, and meet at least one of ten criteria set by UNESCO.

The World Heritage Committee, the intergovernmental committee which decides which properties will be inscribed on the World Heritage list, or not, cannot consider a property for inscription unless it had been included on a tentative list first. The World Heritage Committee meets once a year and because of the complexities involved it could take several years for a site to be declared a World Heritage site.

MOSSEL BAY CARE CENTRE – BREAKFAST FOR HEROES

DSC07169

By now you probably all know that Mossel Bay Care Centre won the National competition.

On Friday, 19 June 2015 Mc Donald’s Langeberg Mall, handed 1040 Egg Mc Muffins to the children of Ridgeview Primary School. To the delight of the learners the Mayor also attended.

Credit to Clive Robinson, owner of Mc Donald’s Langeberg Mall, and all the others involved. Your active participation and enthusiasm in motivating the community to care for “one of our own” made this win possible.

Need Wheels, Tyres an Automotive Battery or Just Advice ?

Your Local Tiger Wheel & Tyre Can help.

 

Mossel Bay residents know full well that when it comes to finding the perfect wheels and tyres or even a new battery for their vehicles, they need look no further than their local Tiger Wheel & Tyre.

The store, which is now owned and managed by Theuns Vorster, offers the full complement of services and leading brands that customers expect from Tiger Wheel & Tyre. This includes a wide range of the world’s biggest wheel and tyre brands, like Continental, Yokohama, Hankook, Michelin, Goodyear, Pirelli, BFGoodrich and Tiger Wheel & Tyre’s own exclusive world-class Velocity tyre brand.

You can even have your battery tested for free and should you need a new one, you can have it replaced right away with a best in class automotive battery from ATLASBX or Duracell. Best of all, while professionally trained fitment staff apply their skills to your vehicle, you’ll be invited to relax in the comfortable hospitality area or to browse the ultra-modern showroom.
Whatever it is that you drive for work, play or just utility, Tiger Wheel & Tyre Mossel Bay has the wheels, tyres and batteries to meet your needs. Choose from tyres for high performance and ultra-high performance vehicles, and those for passenger, 4 x 4, SUV, LDV and luxury vehicles and find the wheels to match, in all the latest styles.

“On behalf of your local Tiger Wheel & Tyre team, I’d like to remind Mossel Bay motorists that you are always most welcome at our store. Whether you need our services right now or just to shop around and get answers to your questions, we’re here to help” said Theuns.

To find out more about South Africa’s best-loved wheel and tyre brand, visit the Tiger Wheel & Tyre website at www.twt.to or call your local Mossel Bay store on044 695 3090 or stop by the store at Louis Fourie Road in Gouriqua Park, Mossel Bay.

TWT

What is Rhino Linings?

 

Rhino Linings is a spray-on polyurethane that is applied to your thickness requirements.
It offers your LCV bed (and other assets) the best protection against rust, abrasion, chemical attack and impact damage.

The spray-on bed liner system forms a permanent, air and watertight bond with virtually any surface including steel, fibreglass, concrete, wood and aluminium.

Providing a non skid, flexible surface Rhino Linings reduces cargo slippage subsequently reducing damage to your vehicle and cargo.
Think of Rhino Linings as an extra skin for your vehicle that provides an additional barrier against wear-and-tear, increasing the life of your load bed and the resale value of your vehicle.

Rhino Protection
Rhino Linings ? more than just a LCV bed liner
Need the best protection for your LCV, trailer, boat or almost any other asset ? you have come to the right place. Spray-applied in a seamless finish, our lining forms an air ? and watertight bond to virtually any surface. Also, as it is custom-sprayed it can be applied to any vehicle ? in fact, almost anything.

 

auto ads

Facts about our African Black Oystercatchers!

“The Endangered Species Act serves as a biological half-way house, a protective legal custody for life-forms at risk of disappearing. The purpose of the law is to protect species by identifying and then protecting their critical habitat. The act has been controversial, not because it tries to save plants and wildlife but because it tries to save the habitat they need to survive. Usually this means preventing humans from altering those ecosystems in any way.

The best measure of the act’s value is the very contention it causes, the fact that it helps us to see the unintended consequence of our actions. It reminds us that simple economic decisions have to be considered within the greater economy of nature, where many lives are in the balance.

What saves species, in the end, is human restraint, the ability to balance our needs against the needs of the rest of the lives on this planet”. (Extracts from Last One, Verlyn Klinkenborg, National Geographic, January 2009).

·African Black Oystercatchers have two breeding seasons, unfortunately both coincide with school holidays – December & March/April.
Animals and children need to be under control to ensure a successful season.
·2008 was a disaster – not one chick survived. Ten were hatched!
·These birds only feed twice a day at low tide. If they are disturbed the chicks starve.
·Oystercatchers CANNOT swim, (they have no webbed feet), they are waders.
·If chicks are in the water it’s because they have no place to hide and have been driven off the dunes by other predators/human disturbance (sandboarding). They have probably been washed off the rocks by incoming waves. Their future is drown or starve!
·This is unnatural forced behaviour to avoid starvation.
·DON’T take chicks home. They will die. They only eat rock and sand mussels. These have to be fresh!
·Chicks hatch after an incubation period of 28-30 days.
·Only four out of 36 chicks reach adulthood.

Please inform other beach users.

Dana Bay Conservancy Emergency Number: 044-698 2133

PETROSA NEEDS A STRONG REMEDY

PETROSA tried to buy Engen from Malaysia’s Petronas in an R18bn deal, even though it did not have the balance sheet to support such a transaction.

It aims to develop a 360,000-barrel-a-day new refinery at Coega, even though it’s not clear why it could do it better than one of the oil majors. Anyway, the project has been beset by numerous delays.

It’s also a company that wants to build a floating terminal for liquefied natural gas. And it was going to become the repository of the 20% free carry on behalf of the government in all future oil and gas investments.
It has been spending billions of rand each year to search for gas under the sea off Mossel Bay in a desperate bid to prolong its own life, with the gas reserves on which it was founded as Mossgas many years ago due to run out soon.

This is what we’re told is our “national oil company”.
But far from being the national champion the government seems to have in mind, PetroSA is evidently a national disaster that is expected to report spectacular losses for its latest financial year.
These are expected to be the largest losses by a state-owned enterprise in a single year — and that takes some doing.

The PetroSA debacle is a clear illustration of the gulf between the government’s often grandiose aspirations for public entities and the absence of the capability to pursue such ambitions — or even to carry out more mundane tasks competently, such as running an existing operation or keeping the finances under control.
It is a disturbing illustration, too, of just how little its board or the Department of Energy, which is PetroSA’s ultimate shareholder, seemed to have known or done as the company got itself further and further into financial trouble.
The projected loss for the latest year is expected to be as high as R14.9bn, of which R2bn is operating losses and the rest a R12bn write-down of the value of Project Ikhwezi, the exploration project searching for new gas resources off the Mossel Bay coast.

There is supposedly an extremely rich resource. But PetroSA’s wells have so far yielded only a tenth of the gas deposits they were supposed to find, and at a huge cost.

We were told last year that the company would be investing R11bn during the year, of which about half was for Ikhwezi. And that was even though the company by March last year had only R5bn cash on its balance sheet.
Now it surely has much less, if there is any cash left at all.

Whether rampant corruption or rampant incompetence is the cause is not clear. But it is clearly not appropriate to expect the current board or management to address the issues by themselves. There have already been enough ridiculous governance and executive ructions at PetroSA to undermine confidence in its leadership.

The full results are not yet available, but if this proves to be a company that is not a going concern, it must be put into liquidation.

The government must not shirk away from taking strong action, nor should it even contemplate a bail-out in any shape or form. SA’s citizens must protest very loudly if there is even a suggestion of putting taxpayer money into a company that is clearly dysfunctional.

An independent inquiry is urgently needed to establish what happened, and what needs to be done to fix PetroSA at zero cost to the taxpayer.
That may mean shutting it down, and if that is warranted, the government must do so. We hope it will admit, too, that its grandiose ambitions were misplaced and that it pursued an inappropriate strategy. The sooner it does so, the sooner it can put in place the necessary measures to fix the mess.