Cecilia, Table Mountain

Today, large parts of the park are still covered in uniform plantations of Pine and Gum trees, relicts from the days of commercial logging.

The Diep River has its origins in the mountain slopes above Cecilia, in a large gorge – replete with a waterfall – that is beginning to fill again with indigenous forest.

Mature Peninsula Granite Fynbos is dominated by large tree-Proteas, such as the Silvertree, the Tree Pincushion-Protea and the Waboom, and a dense underlayer of Asteraceous (daisy) species.

On the steep upper slopes and mountain-tops is Peninsula Sandstone Fynbos, a less severely endangered vegetation type with a different range of species, including a vast number of endemics.

This tiny ecosystem (restricted to the upper slopes of Table Mountain) has an extraordinarily rich biodiversity, with roughly the same number of plant species as can be found in the whole of the United Kingdom.

[8] The original inhabitants of the area were undoubtedly the Khoi, who would have herded their cattle through the local forests and fynbos up until the arrival of the Dutch colonists in the 1700s and the beginning of the colonial era.

Cecil Rhodes bought this land in the 1890s resulting in him owning nearly the entire eastern flank of the Table Mountain range.