Description
The topography comprises dry bushveld with a climate that is ideal for cattle, maize, citrus fruit and tobacco. Open pit quarries in the area extract marble, slate and andalusite, with prospects of large-scale nickel mining on the banks of the Groot Marico river as well as the majority of the farms surrounding the hamlet having sparked a regional petition against such development.
The town was formed by the Voortrekkers in the 1850s and was only proclaimed in 1948.
The word "Marico" was made famous in South Africa by Herman Charles Bosman's writings of this area and later re-enactments of these tales by actor Patrick Mynhardt. Bosman described the area thus:
| “ | There is no other place I know that is so heavy with atmosphere, so strangely and darkly impregnated with that stuff of life that bears the authentic stamp of South Africa | ” |
At least part of Bosman's musings may have been inspired by sips of the mampoer for which Groot Marico is infamous.
In 2010, the farms surrounding Groot Marico were among the last in South Africa to still be connected through party lines to a manual telephone exchange, which require callers to ask an operator to connect them to other telephone lines by pushing jacks into slots.
Groot Marico is the smallest town in South Africa that host an annual arts festival as well as a mountain bike race.
Read more about this topic: Groot Marico
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“It [Egypt] has more wonders in it than any other country in the world and provides more works that defy description than any other place.”
—Herodotus (c. 484–424 B.C.)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.”
—Freda Adler (b. 1934)