Fish Hoek, Cape Town
Encyclopedia
Fish Hoek is a coastal town at the eastern end of the Fish Hoek Valley
Fish Hoek Valley
The Fish Hoek Valley is situated in the Cape Peninsula, eighteen miles south of Cape Town, South Africa. It takes its name from the town of Fish Hoek on the False Bay coast....

 on the False Bay
False Bay
False Bay is a body of water defined by Cape Hangklip and the Cape Peninsula in the extreme South-West of South Africa.- Description and location :...

 side of the Cape Peninsula
Cape Peninsula
The Cape Peninsula is a generally rocky peninsula that juts out for 75 km into the Atlantic Ocean at the south-western extremity of the African continent. At the southern end of the peninsula are Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope...

 in Cape Town
Cape Town
Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...

, South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

. Previously a separate municipality, Fish Hoek is now part of the City of Cape Town
City of Cape Town
The City of Cape Town is the metropolitan municipality which governs the city of Cape Town, South Africa and its suburbs and exurbs. As of 2007, it had a population of 3,497,097....

. As a coastal suburb of Cape Town, Fish Hoek is popular as a residence for commuters, retired people and holidaymakers alike. The traditional industries of 'trek' fishing and angling coexist with the leisure pursuits of surfing, sailing and sunbathing.

History

Fish Hoek or Vissers Baay or Visch Hoek appears on the earliest maps of the Cape. The arrival of European settlers in 1652 forced the indigenous population to leave the area, and during the 1700s farmers appeared in the Noordhoek
Noordhoek, Cape Town
Noordhoek is a suburb of Cape Town, South Africa, located below Chapman's Peak on the west coast of the Cape Peninsula, approximately thirty-five kilometres to the south of the city itself. The name "Noordhoek" was taken from Dutch and literally means "north corner"...

 area. Fish Hoek beach was used on an informal basis for whaling and fishing, but it was not until 1918 that it was laid out as a township. The first grant of Crown land
Crown land
In Commonwealth realms, Crown land is an area belonging to the monarch , the equivalent of an entailed estate that passed with the monarchy and could not be alienated from it....

 in Fish Hoek was granted to Andries Bruins in 1818. The land was sold several times before being bought by Hester Sophia de Kock in 1883. She was then a spinster of 51 years old. In 1901, late in life, she married a local farmer, one Jacob Isaac de Villiers, who came to live with her on the farm. Although she farmed wheat and vegetables' she started providing accommodation for people who wanted to stay in Fish Hoek, and so became the first local tourist entrepreneur. Having realized that Fish Hoek was becoming popular, she left instructions in her will that the farm was to be surveyed and the land sold as building plots. After the deaths of Hester and Jacob, the land was sold off, the first sale taking place in 1918. The oldest house on the bay, now named Uitkyk, was bought as a fisherman's cottage in 1918 by the Mossop family of Mossop Leathers, and is still in the Mossop family. There had been a building on that site since the 1690s; a Pos Huis (post house) and a whaling station office is all that is known of its history.

This was the beginning of the town of Fish Hoek. Initially people built holiday cottages but as there was a good train service to Cape Town a more permanent community soon arose. By 1940 it was big enough to be declared a municipality
Municipality
A municipality is essentially an urban administrative division having corporate status and usually powers of self-government. It can also be used to mean the governing body of a municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district...

 and was administered by the Town Council until 1996. Hester and Isaac de Villiers, with other members of their family are buried in the small graveyard next to the NG Kerk
Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk
The Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk is a Reformed Christian denomination in South Africa. It also has a presence in neighboring countries, such as Namibia, Swaziland, and parts of Botswana and Zimbabwe...

 (Dutch Reformed Church) in Kommetjie Road. The farmhouse on the site of the present Homestead Naval Mess near the railway crossing became an hotel. The original building subsequently burned down in 1947.

The town

After being part of the transitional South Peninsula Municipality from 1996 to 2000, Fish Hoek now falls under the City of Cape Town. Today Fish Hoek is regarded as a suburb
Suburb
The word suburb mostly refers to a residential area, either existing as part of a city or as a separate residential community within commuting distance of a city . Some suburbs have a degree of administrative autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods...

 of greater Cape Town
Cape Town
Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...

 and lies on the railway line from the central business district
Central business district
A central business district is the commercial and often geographic heart of a city. In North America this part of a city is commonly referred to as "downtown" or "city center"...

 of that city to Simon's Town
Simon's Town
Simon's Town , sometimes spelled Simonstown; is a town in South Africa, near Cape Town which is home to the South African Navy. It is located on the shores of False Bay, on the eastern side of the Cape Peninsula. For more than two centuries it has been an important naval base and harbour...

 in the south. It is approximately 30 kilometres by road from Fish Hoek to the centre of Cape Town, a journey that can take anything from 30 minutes to two hours, depending on the traffic. Until recently, Fish Hoek was a "dry
Prohibition
Prohibition of alcohol, often referred to simply as prohibition, is the practice of prohibiting the manufacture, transportation, import, export, sale, and consumption of alcohol and alcoholic beverages. The term can also apply to the periods in the histories of the countries during which the...

" area - one of the conditions placed by the owner who gave the land for development was that there be no alcohol sold there. Nowadays, alcohol is available in restaurants and bars but there are no bottle stores.
Fish Hoek has become well-known as a tourist resort and as a place where elderly people retire. Fish Hoek and its surrounding suburbs are served by the local False Bay Echo
False Bay Echo
The False Bay Echo is a local newspaper in the False Bay region of Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa. It serves the coastal suburbs along the Western edge of False Bay, including Muizenberg, St. James, Kalk Bay, Fish Hoek, and Simon's Town. It is part of the Independent Newspapers group, which...

 newspaper, originally the Fish Hoek Echo, and the Peoples Post. Schools include Fish Hoek Primary, Fish Hoek High School and Paul Greyling Primary.

Fish Hoek beach

The beach is about 1.5 kilometre (0.93205910497471 mi) long and quite flat, and the bay is protected from the currents and stronger surf in the rest of False Bay. Swimming is allowed along the entire beach with lifesavers on duty during the summer peak season, and body surfing, boogie boarding, wind surfing and kayaking are popular. The water is far warmer than the Atlantic Seaboard
Atlantic Seaboard
The Atlantic seaboard watershed is a watershed of North America along both*the Atlantic Canada coast south of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence Watershed &*the East Coast of the United States north of the watershed of the Okeechobee Waterway....

, averaging between just under 17 °C (62.6 °F) annually (similar to Northern Mediterranean Waters like Monte Carlo
Monte Carlo
Monte Carlo is an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco....

 or Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...

, and peaking at 22 °C (71.6 °F) in Summer months. Restaurants and children's play areas are situated at the southern end, and a path known as Jager Walk (also spelled Jaeger or Jagger, and known locally as the Cat Walk) runs past rock pools on the southern side of the bay. Shark spotters are often on duty, especially during the summer tourist season. Despite this, there have been two fatal attacks on swimmers in the bay in recent years, one in November 2004 and one in January 2010. On September 28, 2011, a 44 year old man lost part of his leg after being mauled by a Great White shark, despite the beach being closed and shark flag flying. The northern parts of the beach are less developed, and are used by Trek fishermen to launch their boats and clean nets. This part of the beach is popular for walkers, and dogs are allowed.
The Fish Hoek Surf Lifesaving Club , established in 1957, is one of the most powerful in the country, regularly winning top national competitions.
Seasonal visits from Southern Right Whales occur from June to November each year and the bay provides some of the finest viewing of these massive but gentle mammals. For the latest information on whale sightings, go to A Whale of a Heritage Route.

Geography and climate

Fish Hoek is situated in a bay at the end of a broad, low valley
Fish Hoek Valley
The Fish Hoek Valley is situated in the Cape Peninsula, eighteen miles south of Cape Town, South Africa. It takes its name from the town of Fish Hoek on the False Bay coast....

, between two and three kilometres wide, which runs from east to west across the Cape Peninsula from Fish Hoek on the False Bay side to Noordhoek
Noordhoek, Cape Town
Noordhoek is a suburb of Cape Town, South Africa, located below Chapman's Peak on the west coast of the Cape Peninsula, approximately thirty-five kilometres to the south of the city itself. The name "Noordhoek" was taken from Dutch and literally means "north corner"...

 and Kommetjie
Kommetjie
Kommetjie is a suburb of Cape Town, in the Western Cape province of South Africa...

 on the Atlantic side. When sealevels were higher than they are today, the valley used to be a sea passage that separated the Cape Peninsula into northern and southern islands. The valley is generally sandy and the bedrock is Cape granite. In places this is deeply weathered and in the past the rotted granite was mined for pockets of the mineral kaolinite
Kaolinite
Kaolinite is a clay mineral, part of the group of industrial minerals, with the chemical composition Al2Si2O54. It is a layered silicate mineral, with one tetrahedral sheet linked through oxygen atoms to one octahedral sheet of alumina octahedra...

, which is used to make ceramic goods such as hand basins and bath tubs. The valley is famous for 12,000 year old paleolithic
Paleolithic
The Paleolithic Age, Era or Period, is a prehistoric period of human history distinguished by the development of the most primitive stone tools discovered , and covers roughly 99% of human technological prehistory...

 skeletons discovered in a cave (now called Peers' Cave) by Bertie Peers and his father in 1927. Bertie Peers was a lover and explorer of the great outdoors, a fine amateur scientist and a dedicated naturalist but his enthusiasm eventually cost him his life, when he was fatally struck by a puff adder
Bitis
Bitis is a genus of venomous vipers found in Africa and the southern Arabian Peninsula. It includes the largest and the smallest vipers in the world. Members are known for their characteristic threat displays that involves inflating and deflating their bodies while hissing and puffing loudly. The...

.

Fish Hoek has a mild mediterranean climate
Mediterranean climate
A Mediterranean climate is the climate typical of most of the lands in the Mediterranean Basin, and is a particular variety of subtropical climate...

 and is spared over hot summer days by the south-easterly wind known locally as "the Cape Doctor
Cape Doctor
"Cape Doctor" is the local name for the strong, persistent and dry south-easterly wind that blows on the South African coast from spring to late summer...

". The mountains nearby are famous for large numbers of complex cave
Cave
A cave or cavern is a natural underground space large enough for a human to enter. The term applies to natural cavities some part of which is in total darkness. The word cave also includes smaller spaces like rock shelters, sea caves, and grottos.Speleology is the science of exploration and study...

s in sandstone
Sandstone
Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...

s of the Table Mountain
Table Mountain
Table Mountain is a flat-topped mountain forming a prominent landmark overlooking the city of Cape Town in South Africa, and is featured in the flag of Cape Town and other local government insignia. It is a significant tourist attraction, with many visitors using the cableway or hiking to the top...

 Group. Caves are usually found in limestone
Limestone
Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....

s and it is not common to find complex cave systems in pure sandstone.

People

Footballers Matthew Booth
Matthew Booth (soccer)
Matthew Booth is a South African football defender who currently plays for Ajax Cape Town in the Premier Soccer League and South Africa.-International career:...

 and Emile Baron
Emile Baron
Emile Baron is a South African football goalkeeper for Bidvest Wits in the Premier Soccer League and South Africa.-International career:...

 are from Fish Hoek.

Current South African Test spin bowler Paul Harris attended Fish Hoek Senior High School.
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