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One of the things we love about Port Elizabeth is that she has some fascinating eclectic skylines. There are interesting viewpoints around the city where you get to see such a mixture of the elements that make up this town.

Standing on a hill in south End, overlooking the ruins of St Peters Church (a reminder of the injustices of our Apartheid past) we see the bay sweeping around in the background, with a bustling modern harbour. And in front of it, we see a mixture of some of our earliest and most prominent buildings (like the City Hall and the Old Post Office) offset by some of the ugly oxo cubes that were a feature of 60s and 70s town planning. To the right is the Campanile which we featured in detail recently, now dwarfed by the Settlers freeway.

Below the writing which says Baakens street, one of the very earliest roads in town, are a set of zig-zag rooftops. These are from the original old boat sheds that were on the beach at the river mouth. All the land to the right of that, including the harbour, has been reclaimed. The line of trees in the foreground, behind the ruins, shows the position of the Baakens River Valley. We will shortly do a series on the Baakens River as it appears in different parts of town.