This page presents an historical overview of Churutabis farm in Namibia.

• Churutabis what it means and where to find it
  	Churutabis is located about 70 miles south of the town of Keetmanshoop, in Namibia. The name means "The place with much water" in the Nama tongue (a local indigenous language). The area is an arid semi-desert that borders the Namib desert. The Churutabis farm has dependable fountains and a seasonal river, hence the name. The desert and green spot is clearly visible from satelite, as these images show. During the German colonial period, the German government had a police outpost there. The old police outpost later became the farmhouse. This set of images shows some early and also more recent satelite images, first showing a good deal of South-Africa and Namibia coast and then zooming in all the way to where one can distinguish the old building, and the surrounding landscape, showing the pens used for goats, the grave of Hannelie's grandfather, as well as the ruins of German horse pens etc. as mentioned in the articles further down on the page. Follow this link to the Google Maps location

• Namibia Allgemeinen Zeitung of July 10, 1998
  This newspaper issue contained a story about the Churutabis Military station.
  The story was published in German and the original is visible here as scanned images.
  The translation is presented as well.

  Story from Namibia Allgemeinen Zeitung of July 10, 1998
  	Military station Churutabis In the May issue of the Namibia Allgemeinen Zeitung of July 10, 1998 in the Tourism section (no 48) we showed a photo two months ago, of soldiers’ graves at the former military station Churutabis in the south of Namibia. In the meantime, the editors did a little research in the national Archives in Windhoek. There we found exact old plans of the entire area, with officers- and staff houses, big garden (see picture), bathing house (see picture), camel- and horse stables and a riding course. Three old photos of the station are printed here with kind permission of the National Archives. The machine gun train no 4 is supposed to have been stationed in Churutabis. At the riverbank there were springs, that partally still flow today, but are now hidden under dense bushes, because the garden is almost completely overgrown. Further up the on hill is the once quaint main building of the military station. Today it is a ruin. The buildings stand on a private farm. There are guided tours from the Canyon Nature park, which is situated on the west side of the Fishriver canyon. Some historians are contemplating whether one should rebuild te building with students (and monetary donations) as the building structure is still very good. The last 7 pictures were taken by us on a trip in 2006 and shows the graves of German soldiers.

• From the Namibia National Archives
  	These documents were referenced in the newspaper clipping above, but not all of them was published. Photocopies of them have been presented to the current owners of the Churutabis farm (Hannelie's relatives).

• For more information:
  Follow this link to bring up the Google results when searching for Churutabis.
  Most of the references will be of us, along with some, mostly records of Fauna and Flora dating from the German Colonial period, but here it is.