The settlement is small but has a number of amenities including a hotel, police station, shop and garage.

The village was formerly the site of a prisoner-of-war camp established by the South African army in 1915 to house German inmates captured during the First World War.

They drink at an artificial water hole at Garub Pan where a blind has been erected to enable tourists to watch the animals without disturbing them.

Afrikaans speakers only began settling around the villages of Aus and Bethanie, both German colonial foundations, in the 1920s.

Pastors from the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK) were not eager to relocate to what was then South West Africa, only starting the congregations in Otjiwarongo and Gibeon by 1902 and delaying the founding of southern parishes such as Keetmanshoop (1924) and Warmbad (1928).

The Keetmanshoop congregation stretched over a vast area that has since spun off into the congregations based in Aus, Bethanie, and Lüderitz - at the time stretching about 650 km west-to-east from Aroab to Lüderitz, including many less easily accessible areas.

Brink from Gansbaai arrived in 1949, at which time the separation of Aus from Bethanie and Lüderitz was completed.