Bronkhorstspruit, Gauteng

Bronkhorstspruit is a small farming town 50km east of Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa along the N4 highway towards Witbank. It lies on the border between the Gauteng and Mpumalanga provinces.

Cultura Park, a suburb of Bronkhorstspruit, hosts the largest Buddhist temple in the Southern Hemisphere. The Nan Hua Temple is the South African headquarters of the Humanistic Buddhist order, Fo Guang Shan. The temple does a lot of community work, celebrates the Chinese New Year and is open to the public, who can book in for a weekend-long retreats.

In 1858, a group of Voortrekkers settled in the Bronkhorstspruit creek, which was originally called Kalkoenkransrivier ('turkey ridge river'). In June 1897, the South African Republic gave its approval for the town, then already named Bronkhorstspruit by locals.

In 1880 it was the scene of the action at Bronkhorstspruit, an important event in the early days of the First Boer War.

There is uncertainty where the town got its name from. Some believe it was named after the farmer JG Bronkhorst, while others say that it was named after a plant, the Bronkors, that grew in the region of the creek.

External links

* [http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=-25.81816&lon=28.74231&zoom=15&layers=0BT Open Street Map]