The milkwood in the garden of the Dias Museum is wide and low, its branches hanging almost to the lawn. Underneath stands a postbox shaped like a boot. Drop a card in and it comes back with a special cancellation. More than five hundred years ago a shoe with a letter in it hung from this tree, and a few steps further down at the water the first Europeans ever to set foot on South African soil came ashore. And a few kilometres west the story starts again from the beginning, 164,000 years earlier.
Pinnacle Point: shellfish 164,000 years ago
West of town, under a golf course on the cliffs, several caves open just above the water. An international team under Curtis Marean of Arizona State University has been digging there since 2000. What it has found shifts the answer to a large question: since when have people behaved the way we do?
The caves were occupied, on and off, between 170,000 and 40,000 years ago. The oldest layers are around 164,000 years old. In them lie shells and the remains of seals and whales, food from the sea, earlier than at any other known site. Alongside them ochre, which people probably used to paint themselves. And tools of silcrete, a stone that only works well once it has been heated in fire. Anyone who pretreats stone in a fire is planning several steps ahead. Cave PP13B also yielded human remains around 100,000 years old.
Since 2024 Pinnacle Point has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage listing that groups it with other South African sites under the title “The Emergence of Modern Human Behaviour”. You can only enter the caves with a guide.
- Pinnacle Point
- 164,000 yearsoldest evidence for marine food and ochre
- Dias
- 1488first Europeans ashore in South Africa
- Lighthouse
- 1864in service since 15 March
- World Heritage
- 2024Pinnacle Point added to the UNESCO list
The Khoikhoi on this coast
Long before a sail appeared on the horizon, Khoikhoi lived along this coast. They kept cattle and sheep, moved with their herds between grazing and water, and gathered shellfish on the shore as people had done here for thousands of years. The group at the Gouritz, the river west of the bay, comes down to us as the Gouriqua. For them the bay was not the object of a discovery but home.
The Khoikhoi left no written sources. Everything we know about the meeting of 1488 comes from Portuguese accounts, which is to say from the point of view of the arrivals. Read the next section with that in mind.
3 February 1488: Bartolomeu Dias
Dias had left Lisbon to find the sea route to India. Off the Cape a storm drove him far to the south, and when he saw land again it lay to the north. He had rounded the southern tip of Africa without seeing it. On 3 February 1488 he anchored in the bay.
It was the first landing by Europeans on South African soil. The Portuguese needed water and went to a spring near the shore. The Khoikhoi, to whom that water belonged, resisted the strangers, and the meeting ended in violence. That is as far as the record goes, and it goes no further. The first contact between Europe and South Africa was an argument over water.
3 February is the feast day of Saint Blaise. The cape on the southern side of the bay is still called Cape St Blaize, and the lighthouse there carries the same name.
Vasco da Gama and the shoe in the milkwood
Nine years later, in 1497, Vasco da Gama anchored in the same bay on the voyage that would take him to India. He too took on water. From then on fleets left Lisbon year after year to round the Cape, and the bay became the watering place along the way.
In 1500 or 1501, depending on the source, the captain Pedro de Ataíde took shelter in the bay after a storm. He wanted to warn the fleet coming behind him. So he wrote a report of the disaster, put it in an old shoe and hung it from a milkwood above the beach. João da Nova, the man the message was meant for, found it and had a small shrine built beside the tree. South Africa’s first postbox and its first Christian place of worship stand on the same spot.
The tree is still there. It is protected and now carries the boot shaped postbox; whatever you drop in gets the special Post Office Tree cancellation.
How the bay got its name
The Portuguese had given the bay a saint’s name. The Dutch, who sailed the same route east from the end of the sixteenth century, saw something else: mussels you could pick off the beach and eat. Two traditions exist about the naming. In one, Cornelis de Houtman called the bay Mosselbaai in 1595; in the other it was Admiral Paulus van Caerden on 8 July 1601. All that is certain is that the name stayed, first in Dutch, then in English as Mossel Bay.
Aliwal South, a lighthouse and the railway
For two centuries the bay stayed an anchorage without a town. That changed in the nineteenth century, when the place became the port for the farms inland. In 1848 it got a magistrate and a new name: Aliwal South, after a battle in India won by the then governor of the Cape Colony. The name did not take. People went on saying Mossel Bay, and eventually the administration did too.
On 15 March 1864 the light on Cape St Blaize burned for the first time. The tower is only 14 metres high but stands on the cliff, which puts its light 73 metres above the sea with a range of 46 kilometres. It is still in service.
In 1901 a grain and saw mill went up on Market Street, and a second building beside it in 1902. Both are still standing. The mill now holds the Maritime Museum with the caravel, the building next door the shell museum. The railway arrived in 1906 and 1907, the first harbour jetty in 1912. With that the bay had what a port needs: a link to the land and shelter from the sea.
Gas, a museum, World Heritage
The biggest change of recent times came from the sea, but not by ship. Gas fields lie off this coast, and in 1987 the Mossgas plant went into operation on the edge of town, turning natural gas into liquid fuel. Since 2002 it has been called PetroSA. The refinery brought work and a second town alongside the holiday one, with pipes and tanks instead of beach houses.
A year later, on 3 February 1988, exactly 500 years after the landing, the Bartolomeu Dias Museum opened. Its centrepiece is the full size replica of his caravel. It arrived in the bay after sailing out from Portugal and has stood in the old mill on Market Street ever since. A ship inside a building, and the building used to be a mill.
The town has grown since. The 2022 census counted 140,075 people in the municipality, including the neighbouring townships (August 2026). And in 2024 the oldest history earned the newest recognition: Pinnacle Point joined the UNESCO World Heritage list.
Our tipPut the Dias Museum and Pinnacle Point on two different days. The museum is in the centre and needs no booking, while the caves lie west of town and can only be entered on a booked tour. There are 164,000 years between the two, and they do not fit into one afternoon.
Where you see the history today
Almost all of it lies within walking distance in the centre. Only Pinnacle Point needs the car and a booked slot.
- Dias Museum: the caravel in the mill of 1901, the shell museum next door, plus an ethnobotanical garden. Market Street, by the harbour.
- Post Office Tree: the milkwood on the museum grounds, with the boot shaped postbox. Bring a postcard.
- Pinnacle Point: the caves of the first humans, World Heritage since 2024, guided tours only through Point of Human Origins.
- Cape St Blaize lighthouse: on the Point since 1864, with St Blaize Cave below it and the start of the St Blaize Trail.
Frequently asked questions about the history of Mossel Bay
When did Bartolomeu Dias land at Mossel Bay?
On 3 February 1488. Looking for the sea route to India, Dias had rounded the Cape and anchored in the bay at Mossel Bay to take on water. It was the first landing by Europeans on South African soil. The dispute over the spring with the Khoikhoi who lived there ended in violence.
What is the Post Office Tree in Mossel Bay?
An old milkwood on the grounds of the Dias Museum in Mossel Bay. In 1500 or 1501, depending on the source, the Portuguese captain Pedro de Ataíde hung a shoe there with a message for the fleet coming behind him. João da Nova found it and had a small shrine built beside the tree, the first Christian place of worship in South Africa. Today a postbox shaped like a boot stands under the tree, and mail posted there gets a special cancellation.
Why is Pinnacle Point near Mossel Bay a World Heritage site?
Because the caves on the coast west of Mossel Bay hold the oldest known evidence of modern human behaviour: food from the sea, ochre used as a pigment, and stone tools pretreated in fire, around 164,000 years old. Excavation has run since 2000 under Curtis Marean. Since 2024 Pinnacle Point has formed part of the World Heritage site “The Emergence of Modern Human Behaviour”.
Where does the name Mossel Bay come from?
From the mussels Dutch sailors found on the beach. Two traditions exist: Cornelis de Houtman is said to have named the bay Mosselbaai in 1595, or Admiral Paulus van Caerden did so on 8 July 1601. The English form Mossel Bay came later. In 1848 the town was briefly called Aliwal South, and the name did not stick.
Can I visit the caves at Pinnacle Point in Mossel Bay?
Yes, but with a guide only. Tours to the caves of Pinnacle Point near Mossel Bay run through Point of Human Origins in small groups; book in advance through their website. Prices and start times are there (August 2026, worth checking before you travel).