cart or wagon extremely difficult. The situation was aggravated by a widespread shortage of firewood, causing fuel collectors to cut the relatively few indigenous shrubs and trees that stabilised the sand. During the second half of the 19th century, the area was completely overrun by alien vegetation, mainly of Australian origin. The plants included hakeas and especially wattles (genus Acacia). The principal reason for this infestation lay in decisions made by the colonial authorities. It was an era before the advent of modern technological methods for the construction of permanent roads and in those days the Cape Flats was a massive sea of unstabilised sand dunes that moved with the winds. This made travel between Cape Town and the interior very difficult, particularly for the large ox-drawn wagons of the time. The authorities decided to try to stabilise the sand with plants native to the British colonies of New South Wales and Western Australia. The earliest importation of wattles was in 1827. Massive plantings were established in the 1840s and 1850s and the work continued until well after 1875. At the time, the plan worked well enough: the march of the dunes was arrested. The price paid, in ecological terms, was that the Cape Flats was carpeted by invasive species. Serious efforts have in recent years been made to roll back this alien scourge. Since 1950 The Cape Flats has undergone dramatic change in the past half a century. In 1950 the area was practically uninhabited. There was a single, narrow road across the Flats from Cape Town to The Strand that ran between walls of alien rooikrans bushes and one could travel for miles without seeing any sign of habitation other than a few fences and a handful of farmhouses. Native antelope roamed at will between the dense thickets of wattles. The army used the area for military exercises and the few farmers who inhabited the Flats eked out a living by growing vegetables in pockets of relatively poor soil between the barren dunes. Modern amenities were unknown; telephones were unknown, drinking water was collected in tanks from roofs and at night the rooms were lit by oil lamps. The era of sand and antelopes vanished completely in little more than a generation. Vegetable farming persisted, but to a much lesser extent, because urbanisation enveloped vast tracts of land in short order. The first use of the Cape Flats