rondloper

We’ve been in the new apartment for about two weeks now, things are finally beginning to settle down and I can get back to blogging again. I have recently bought two very nice and scarce Boer War stamps. The Boer War is my main collecting interest, simply because it is such a fascinating event and it is pretty close to home also, my great grandmother was in the war, she survived by hiding in a cellar on the farm of an ‘Englishman’ in the area where they stayed! Close to my house in Strydenburg there are also several Boer War battlefields. Philatelically there are so many things to collect, covers from prisoners of war, covers from soldiers in the field, occupation and siege stamps – the most famous of these are the Mafeking siege stamps (I have quite a few, they are probably some of my most valuable stamps), the overprints on old Transvaal and Free State stamps when the English conquered these areas and much more. Today I am showing two scarce stamps from the Boer occupation of northern Natal. The Boers overran and occupied Newcastle and Dundee right at the start of the war in late 1899 and stayed there until around mid to end 1900. This was also the time of the Ladysmith siege. The stamps I bought show Boer postmarks used in Ladysmith and Newcastle on Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek stamps. The stamps are not scarce but the postmarks are. These postmarks are a part of history, they show the time when northern Natal was in effect part of the old ZAR, the Boers never annexed the area formally but in practice it became part of the ZAR, until they had to retreat back to the Transvaal in the face of the British onslaught.