Sperrgebiet, by Malcolm Bertoni

Sperrgebiet, by Malcolm Bertoni. ISBN 9780646574745 / ISBN 978-0-646-57474-5

Malcolm Bertoni’s book Sperrgebiet is about a rather small and seemingly insignificant piece of land, just 250 km long and 100 km wide located along the coastline of the Namib Desert of southern Namibia.

Malcolm Bertoni  

[…] But this is also a book of a very unique place that is virtually unknown and virtually unseen. A place that exists in a small corner of a unique desert, in a unique country, on a unique continent. A place that will grab at you and make you, even if just for a few moments, take notice of where you are. This place is many things. It is uncompromising nature that is ruthless, bleak, pitiless and menacing; yet stunning and spectacular. A place of beauty, wonder, remorse, hatred, sorrow and affection. This is the Sperrgebiet and it is all of these. It will not leave one untouched or indifferent and will cause a reaction, whatever it might be. Originally the Sperrgebiet did not exist; not in name anyway. It was just another small piece of the world in another inhospitable desert along another remote coast. So why is there a Sperrgebiet? What caused it to be created in this corner of the world? And what is it actually? Firstly. The name and where it came from. Sperrgebiet means Forbidden Area in German. It came about as a result of the German colonialists closing off a vast area of the southern Namib Desert over a century ago when diamonds were discovered in 1908 in southern Namibia. The seemingly lifeless and empty piece of land that has been excluded from the general public and stretching from the Orange River in the south up past Luderitz in the north. With an area of 26,000 sqkm, it will remain closed as long as diamonds are worth mining, although there are changes occurring and the area is, in principle anyway, open to the public. The Sperrgebiet is desert. It is just a small slice of the Namib Desert that runs along the coast of Namibia. Whatever we may think, it is and always will be a desert. Deserts are cruel, bleak places and can be deadly. The scarcity of water, the blistering heat, the icy seas, the clammy fogs and the persistent strong southerlies and sandstorms all makes the Namib what it is today. The desert can have a beauty that is both stupefying and at the same time frightening. The Sperrgebiet is all this. Although there are actually two Sperrgebiet's, this book will focus on the southern area, the one that is from the Orange River to Gibraltar Rocks, 75 km north of Luderitz. This includes Diamond Area No 1, which is of the most interest and where most of the diamond mining occurred and is still taking place. It is this Sperrgebiet that was proclaimed as Namibia's new Sperrgebiet National Park (SNP) and officially opened, appropriately, at Kolmanskop, a diamond mining ghost town, on February 6th, 2009. The new park extends to the low-water mark and the recently-proclaimed (by the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources) Namibian Islands Marine Protected Area between Chameis Bay and Meob Bay which extends up to the high-water mark, so there will be co-management of the intertidal zone by the two authorities. The other Sperrgebiet, Diamond Area No 2 which runs from Gibraltar Rocks, 75 km north of Luderitz to Walvis Bay was incorporated into the Namib Naukluft Park in 1987. It is still a restricted area to all except tourist operators. […]

This is an excerpt from the book: Sperrgebiet, by Malcolm Bertoni.

Title: Sperrgebiet
Author: Malcolm Bertoni
Self published
Australia, 2012
ISBN 9780646574745 / ISBN 978-0-646-57474-5
Hardcover, 22x30 cm, 141 pages, numerous photos