The relatively humble Port Nolloth Museum in the tiny seaside town of Port Nolloth in the Northern Cape, contains collectibles that go back hundreds of years.

Inside the museum are porcelain shards from shipwrecks; slave bracelets washed up from a doomed vessel called the Black Joke in 1600; old medicine bottles that still reek of citronella oil and liquorice powder; pieces of china dolls; a Nama bible; ostrich-shell fragments used by the Khoi and San for water containers; and Khoi clay pot pieces.

You will see snoek teeth, whale barnacles, ancient matchboxes from the Carlton Hotel in Johannesburg, and millstones from a nearby farm where flour for Port Nolloth’s bread was ground. You will also discover that a crayfish can bend a R2 coin with its claws.