Hermanus Whale-Crier

Whale Crier

Until fairly recently it was unknown to all but loc­als, but men­tion the small South Africa coastal town of Hermanus any­where in the world today and someone will have heard about the vil­lage, and no doubt, the whales. Whales are one of the most pop­u­lar and well known attrac­tions on offer in this small town, loc­ated nearby Cape Town on the east­ern coast of the Cape and have been instru­mental in trans­form­ing a now boom­ing tour­ist industry.

One of the most unique aspects of the Hermanus whale exper­i­ence is the whale crier, the town’s own “GPS” for the Southern Right whales that fre­quent its coast in droves dur­ing the months of June to September. The only one in the world, the ori­ginal whale crier, Pieter Claasen, an employee of the Old Harbour com­plex, took up his horn and began alert­ing tour­ists and loc­als alike to the whear­a­bouts of whales in 1992 as a means to attract tour­ism to the then little known town.

The high­light of this whale watch­ing sea­son is the annual Hermanus Whale Festival, which sees the small town’s pop­u­la­tion swell with vis­it­ors. Wearing his sand­wich board and whale tail shaped hat, Pieter attrac­ted a lot of atten­tion from the loc­als at first, simply because of the quirk­i­ness of his garb and the sound­ing of his horn. The man­ner in which the crier achieves his object­ive is almost as unique as the concept itself. The crier blows his horn in a form of Morse code, which onlook­ers decode by fol­low­ing the dir­ec­tions writ­ten on his sand­wich board.

As a pub­li­city mech­an­ism, the idea was a huge suc­cess – local media picked up on his antics, fol­lowed soon after by their inter­na­tional coun­ter­parts, and vis­it­ors began to stream into the town to see the crier and his whales.

Whale watch­ing

Besides the com­mer­cial suc­cess, Pieter’s one-of-a-kind occu­pa­tion also gained him the oppor­tun­ity to visit the Town Criers com­pet­i­tion in Topsham in the UK. He was the guest of hon­our at the event, and led the pro­ces­sion of cri­ers through the streets. Pieter, and each of the cri­ers since, have been tasked with alert­ing vis­it­ors to the loc­a­tion of whales in the waters sur­round­ing the town.

In 1998, Pieter retired, and was replaced by Wilson Salakusana, and later still by Godleck Bulani, the cur­rent crier, who beat out numer­ous other applic­ants to win the now pres­ti­gi­ous pos­i­tion. Sadly, Pieter has since died of dia­betes, but the rel­at­ively new tra­di­tion of crier lives on in Godleck, as it no doubt will con­tinue to in his sucessors, as new South African icons.

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Hermanus Hiking Trails
Hermanus Whale Crier
Hermanus Accommodation
Hermanus Hotels
Hermanus Attractions