The Pickled Fish is a little bit of treasure buried in Imhoff’s Farm in Kommetjie – a sort of cottage cluster of all that’s left of an old 18th century farmstead once known as Imhoff’s Gift*. If you’ve driven past it on the way to Cape Point, you might have double-taked on the camels at the entrance. Izak the camel is kneeling and sleeping – at least his enormous lids are closed and his ruminating muzzle at rest. Johan has kept his camels here for 16 years, they browse on the Port Jackson bush in a field nearby and work respectable hours, noon to four daily. Work is carrying the odd child on a camelhaired back for a circuit round the green. The Parks Board should consider employing Izak and friends all over the peninsula to eat out the alien vegetation that’s killing off the fynbos. Just a thought.

* For being such an efficient farmer and supplying passing ships with vegetables, in the late 1700′s Baron Gustav Willem van Imhoff granted the widow Christina Rousseau a piece of farm land to continue her fertile work. It became known as Imhoff’s Gift.