Capetown
During the first half of the nineteenth century wool was unquestionably the Cape’s principal export. In late 1870’s, Phylloxera that almost wipe out wine production, brake out in the vineyards of the Western Cape. To aggravate matters, the Colony suffers a severe drought.
Late Victorian Cape Town smelt quite unequivocally of the sea and fish. The ocean, with its ever increasing traffic and its rich harvest, provided more than a poetic flavour to life in the Mother City.
By the time dawn lit the sky, the fishing fleet was well under way into the Bay Its return was eagerly awaited on the beach by, brightly garbed fishwives, hawkers with their pagoda-shaped hats and bamboo yokes, perhaps a turbaned imam or two, and dealers with their fish carts and horns. Fish were kept alive in tanks near the whitewashed block of a fish market. Others were cleaned and either curried or smoked on the beach under the close and noisy scrutiny of a cloud of squabbling gulls, greedy for offal.
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