I have visited the Kouga Dam near Patensie in the Gamtoos Valley many times over the years. In fact, back when I was a tourist guide I went there every two weeks with British tourists. In all those years I never knew of the scale model of the dam that can be found close to the picnic areas.
A couple of years ago the area around the scale model was cleared and signposted. I finally got the chance to see it when I took Miggie and the Damselfly to go and see the dam overflowing recently.
Constructed on the Kouga Dam started in 1957 and the dam was opened in 1969. A scale model of the dam was built a couple hundred meters below the dam wall site to test the design and see what would happen in case of flooding. The miniature was built at an exact scale with the correct curvature of the wall and slope of the mountain.
Look out for the signage to the model at the back of the picnic area with about a 300m walk to see it.
Edit – After sharing this on Facebook, Matrin Mitchell made the following very interesting comment.
“I visited there as a child while the dam was being constructed. The scale model was originally housed in a corrugated iron shed. The engineers demonstrated that when the dam was filled to capacity and overflowed over the main wall a vibration was set up that was so strong that the entire shed shook to the point where it was threatening to fall apart and would risk causing the real dam wall to fail. The engineers then demonstrated that by simply placing 2 fingers into the flow of water over the dam wall the vibration stopped immediately. Hence the rather odd columns built on top of the real dam wall.”
