South Africa is one of the most stable parts of the world in seismic terms but on the 29th of September 1969 a massive shock shook the district without warning. The epicentre of the quake was on a major local structure called the Worcester fault, which had clearly been geologically active in the distant past but had not moved in over three hundred years of recorded history. Ceres was affected badly. Many old Cape Dutch buildings were damaged and some lives were lost. The quake was strong enough to knock plaster off walls in Cape Town, a hundred miles (160 kilometres) away
