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History: The Groote Wagen Weg or main wagon road from Swellendam to the east crossed the Buffelsjachts, Duivenhoks, Kafferkulls and the Gouritz Rivers. Even as early as 1750 there were several farmers living on farms along this road; one of them was Michael Muller of Zeekoegat. This farm is situated in the fertile valley of the Vet River, a tributary of the Kafferkuils, about 4 kilo- metres north of the modern town of Riversdale. The history of this old farm with its distinctive gabled house not only reflects the way of life of the people of the old Cape Colony, but vividly recalls the days when Swellen dam was still an outpost of civilization.
Zeekoegat was established by Michael Muller, the original ancestor of the Muller family. He came to the Cape as a soldier in 1735. Ten years later he became a free burgher and moved to the recently established district of Swellendam where he married Adriana van Rooyen. In 1746 the loan-farm Zeekoegat was granted to him.
Zeekoegat soon became a favourite stopping-over place on the route to the east and the travellers of old were warmly welcomed by the hospitable Mullers. Ensign August Frederick Beutler stayed here as early as 1752 and on the map of his route Zeekoegat is marked prominently in red. In 1776 Hendrik Swellengrebel, a son of a former governor, trekked past the widow Muller’s and two years later Governor Joachim van Plettenberg, spent the night at the farm of the Widow Michael Muller on the Vet River.
Michael Muller died in 1768 and in time his eldest son Hillegert Muller became the owner of Zeekoegat. Soon he was appointed as a member of the Heemraad of Swellendam and Captain of the Burgher Militia. In 1782, and again in 1790, he left from Zeekoegat with commandoes to search for survivors of the Grosvenor which went ashore on the Pondoland coast. The journals of these journeys give a most interesting account of conditions beyond the Fish River. In 1795 we find him with a commando in Cape Town defending his country against the British invasion, and even when the government forces had taken to flight this doughty pioneer with his sixty men continued to fight.
During these unsettled times he built the house which bears the date 1795 on the front gable and is still occupied. The architecture presents an interesting adaptation of the Cape-Dutch style to the rectangular forms of the inland farmhouses. A special room in the house was set aside for religious devotions with an organ built in by one Hoddersum of Cape Town. In addition to the house he also built fine outbuildings; the traveller Lichtenstein remarks that it was one of the few farms where the cows were milked in a cowshed. Muller was a progressive farmer and one of the pioneer wool-farmers. About 1804, between the visits to Zeekoegat of Governor Janssens and Commissioner de Mist, Hillegert made over this show farm to his son-in-law, Kobus du Preez. Du Preez improved it even further, with the result that Leopold Huizer wrote enthusiastically in 1808 that it was a pure delight to see the affair. This admiration was echoed ten years later by Latrobe:
An avenue of great oaks, he writes, leads to the house. The buildings are solid and surrounded by rich plantations - where orange, lemon, fig, peach and other fruit trees flourish in abundance.
Zeekoegat maintained its reputation during the nineteenth century and in 1835 Sir Harry Smith was accommodated and provided with fresh horses here during his hasty journey to Grahamstown. Finally it passed to another old Riversdale family, the Saaymans, who still hold it in high regard.
Proclaimed 1964"
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