Inside Melville Koppies

Dear Friends of Melville Koppies

We are reviving our newsletter. Come join us on our literary hike across the Koppies. Like the Koppies that changes with the seasons, our newsletter is going to come out four times a year with a Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter edition. We’ll cover those in between moments that you might have missed elsewhere, tell you something you may not know and remind you of upcoming events you shouldn’t miss.

We’d love to hear from you; e-mail any comments, questions, complaints to [email protected] 066 571 9539. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram and sign up to receive it each time so you don’t miss one.

Jenny Grice and Merle Grace, the writing team for the Friends of Melville Koppies

Many Melville dog-walkers may be wondering what has happened to Wendy Carstens, the long-standing chair of the Friends of Melville Koppies. For many, many years, Wendy was a familiar sight on Melville Koppies East, usually in her blue overalls, weeding her way across the slopes and keeping a watchful eye on the precious grassland she loved.

Last year, after almost 25 years at the helm of the Friends of Melville Koppies, Wendy finally retired. She now lives with her daughter in Cape Town. But if the Koppies is today functioning, well-maintained with a welcoming heritage site, trails open to visitors and its precious natural environment protected, much of the credit belongs to Wendy.

Under her leadership, visitor numbers and donations grew steadily. By 2003, there was enough income to employ two casual conservation workers. And Wendy didn't simply manage from afar. Every morning she was out there with them in her blue overalls, pulling weeds, tackling invasive alien plants and sharing her deep knowledge of the delicate business of conserving the grassland. She understood that the Koppies needed constant care, careful monitoring and regular burning to remain healthy.

She weeded with the full-time 3-man conservation team every morning, kept the monthly accounts, coordinated school and university visits, mentored new guides and was herself a gifted and knowledgeable guide. Together with the conservation team and fellow conservationist Tam Scheidegger, she helped develop new trails that opened up more of the Koppies for visitors to explore.

Even Sundays there was no day off. You would often find Wendy and her husband, David, guiding visitors or leading hikes across the Koppies. David sadly passed away in 2025, but left behind a lifetime of shared memories and work on the hills they both loved.

Wendy also made an important contribution to the wider conservation community, writing articles for publications such as Veld & Flora and explaining the intricate balancing act involved in conserving the grassland. At the same time, her lively Facebook page drew people towards the Koppies, while behind the scenes she quietly kept the wheels turning: making sure security was in place on Sundays, keeping City Parks informed of monthly activities, invoicing schools and university departments—and doing all the countless other jobs that somehow always found their way to her desk.

Wendy was, quite frankly, an eight-legged octopus.

Wendy is the institutional memory of Melville Koppies. She knows its people, its plants, its trails, its history and, perhaps most importantly, what it takes to keep this extraordinary place alive. We miss her enormously. Fortunately, Wendy is never more than a WhatsApp message away. She is now enjoying the mountains, fynbos and sea of the Cape, and we wish her happiness in her new home. We suspect she will fit right in. After all, she has moved to another biome that also relies on fire to rejuvenate itself.

Thank you, Wendy, for giving so much of yourself to the Koppies—and for helping to ensure that this remarkable piece of Johannesburg's natural and cultural heritage remains a place where everyone is welcome.

On the second Sunday of every month, an ancient art comes alive at the Lecture Hut. Storytelling at Melville Koppies draws people of all ages to sit together beneath the trees and listen as folklore, ancient myths, and modern South African stories unfold before them.

Merle Grace, official storyteller of Melville Koppies, brings these stories to life. At one moment she’s a fierce monster, the next she’s a shy little badger who just wishes for a sketchpad for her birthday. Children are captivated – they lean forward, wide-eyed, while adults rediscover the same sense of wonder they thought they’d left behind. To watch a story land on the faces of both is one of the great joys of this gathering.

This March, Storytelling at the Koppies celebrated its first birthday, marked with cake and warm company. It’s a small milestone for what has become a cherished monthly tradition in Johannesburg. Over sixteen months, a myriad of stories have been told beneath the Lecture Hut's roof, each one leaving the audience feeling something stir, long after the final word. We look forward to many more Sundays, and many more stories. No need to book; stories are from 9-9.30 am in the lecture hut. 10 minute hike up the hill to the venue. Call 066 571 9539 to get easier access. Hiking is available after storytelling till 11:30 when the gates close.

Our guided walks are special – where else do you get to see and hear about the rock history of Joburg, the history of its people and see who now lives on it and how they interact with each other! The varied grassland with its plentiful flowers often hidden beneath, rocky ridges and riverine forest provide different habitats for more than 185 birds, 50 different grass species and hundreds of different plants and trees.

Book a guided walk on 066 571 9539, [email protected] at least 5 days in advance so we can secure a guide. Special group tours can be organised during the week.

Our full-time conservation team have been hard at work banishing bug weeds, making a path wheelchair-friendly while our volunteer Sunday weeders focus on the mothcatchers

The conservation team are busy every weekday doing the major hard work but every Sunday morning, a small group of women can be found kneeling in the veld at Melville Koppies, hands in the dirt, thorns catching at sleeves, blackjacks clinging stubbornly to socks. They are the Weeders, and their work is anything but glamorous.

Yet each week they’re back. For some, it's meditation in motion. There's something about the quiet, repetitive rhythm of clearing invasive growth, root by root, patch by patch, that settles the mind. One volunteer describes it simply as a "cleansing." Others just say they can't stay away. Something about this ancient koppie, its 500-year-old Iron Age furnace and its stubborn wild grasses, pulls them back week after week.

Their task is never-ending. Weeds creep in from the cemetery next door, from gardens in Melville and Emmarentia, carried by wind and birds and boots. The Weeders can't stop it all. No small group could, but every hour they spend outdoors takes real pressure off the reserve's small, deeply knowledgeable environmental staff, who battle these same weeds year-round.

It helps, too, when neighbours keep their own gardens and pavements clear, and when regular walkers pull up a stray blackjack as they pass. Every hand counts. Once a weed has flowered or seeded, though, it's too late for casual removal — it must be dug out fully and carried away, or the cycle simply begins again.

We are a small NPO with many wonderful volunteers who give their time and energy to help us maintain the Melville Koppies Nature Reserve and Heritage Site. The land is owned by the City, falls under Johannesburg City Parks and Zoo and since the 1960s when it was declared a nature reserve, has been managed by an independent group of volunteers. In the early 1990s the relationship with the Johannesburg Council was firmed up: the City tasked residents to form a committee, draw up and implement a Master Plan to manage the reserve and to use income generated from the reserve to benefit the reserve.

That structure continues to this day. We are open to the public Sunday mornings, charge visitors R100 for adults, R50 for U18 and U5s get in for free. All the income we receive is ploughed back into FOMK and with it we employ three full-time conservation workers and one worker who works one day a week. City Parks cuts the trail paths a few times a year and provides 24/7 security for the lecture hut/smelter. Come and attend our AGM on 19 September to find out more.

E-mail us on [email protected] to find out more

Donate to us: NEDBANK/ Melville Koppies Management Committee/ A/c 1581 017 421 / (send pop to [email protected])