Machadodorp

History

The town grew around a station originally named Geluk, after the sheep farm it was built on, but in 1894 the name was changed to honour the Portuguese Major Joachim Machado, an engineer who had surveyed the land for the proposed Nelspruit-Delagoa Bay railway line through the Crocodile River gorge. The settlement became a capital for a few months from 5 June 1900, but was only declared a municipal town in 1904. This quirk in history happened during the Second Boer War when the Transvaal Volksraad made the town their temporary seat, using railway carriages as their offices and mint after they had to evacuate Pretoria in the face of a British invasion. A quick-thinking station master rescued a consignment of dying trout by dumping the fish in the Elands River, which formed the start of the town's subsequent role in Mpumalanga's trout tourism industry. With the demise of passenger trains in South Africa, the once-postcard-pretty station closed in 2001 and it is now a derelict ruin. In the 21st century, Machadodorp's residents either work for the industries feeding a chrome smelter, or the logging industries based on the pine plantations surrounding the town. A large contingent of contract workers employed at the Nkomati mine about an hour's drive out of town also reside in Machadodorp, contributing a large part of the town's economy. The Komati Gorge, notable for its considerable biodiversity and bluff habitats, forms a backdrop to the town. In early 2010 the town (along with Nelspruit and Waterval Boven) had its name officially changed. The town was renamed from Machadodorp to eNtokozweni, meaning Place of Happiness. It is often still referred to as Machadodorp despite the name change. The hills around the town are terraced with thousands of stone walls which form…

Most-observed species

• Cape Wagtail

  Motacilla capensis Linnaeus, 1766 · Aves
  436
• Southern Fiscal

  Lanius collaris Linnaeus, 1766 · Aves
  328
• African Pied Starling

  Lamprotornis bicolor (Gmelin, 1789) · Aves
  320
• Hadada Ibis

  Bostrychia hagedash (Latham, 1790) · Aves
  275
• Long-tailed Cormorant

  Microcarbo africanus (Gmelin, 1789) · Aves
  253
• African Stonechat

  Saxicola torquatus (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  247
• Southern Masked-Weaver

  Ploceus velatus Vieillot, 1819 · Aves
  242
• Greater Striped-Swallow

  Cecropis cucullata (Boddaert, 1783) · Aves
  242

Most recent

• M 3.7 — 2019-07-01
  36 km W of Mhlambanyatsi, Eswatini
• M 4.3 — 2018-07-19
  5 km ENE of Carolina, South Africa
• M 4.6 — 2013-07-07
  43 km WSW of Nelspruit, South Africa