A shimmering beauty
Text: Julienne Du Toit. Pictures: Chris Marais.
Source: This article is taken from the Agust 2011 issue of Country Life.
For decades the Tankwa Karoo National Park south of Calvinia was more or less off-limits to visitors while the veld was given time to rest. Now it’s becoming a favoured destination for Karoo-lovers
Dawn in the Tankwa Karoo, and the light is pure and sweet as the air. A purr of wings as exultant birds fly over the undulating bushes, all sage green and pink. In the distance the dark peaks of the Roggeveld Mountains.
The grasses gleam in the early light. Vygies open white and purple to the sun. Spider web strands shine from bush to bush. A toktokkie beetle leaves a meandering track in the sand.
Cameras in hand, we kneel before the flowering veld. The day stretches out like a gift.
The Tankwa Karoo National Park is one of South Africa’s driest reserves. The farmers who lived here considered it a good year when they got an inch of rain (in the Karoo, rain is never metric). But if it falls at the right time of year; this paltry inch coaxes up a carpet of flowers.
There are comparatively few large mammals to see. There are no organised night drives, no restaurants, no shops. There is only the safe space and silence of semi-desert, as much solitude as you want, and a night sky bright with stars. If you want to go for a hike, pick your way along a gravel road or take a game path through the bossies.
When the first part of the park was proclaimed in 1986, most of the area around here had been farmed for generations. The land needed to rest, so the park authorities designated this a Scientific National Park and very few visitors were allowed. It became very popular with birders who came to see lifers like the Burchell’s Courser
Judging by the visitor’s book, people quickly become addicted to the peace here. They speak about the powerful soul of the place.
It’s noon and the crows lift up and ride the thermals, seeking out a geostationary position above the earth. A Karoo Chat flutters onto a nearby thornbush, bows and flexes its wings.
An overenthusiastic dragonfly (naaldekoker in Afrikaans) lands on our aerial and for many minutes remains convinced that this aerial is a loving female in need of his company. The monkey beetles are covered in pollen, diving head first into yellow and pink blooms. In the distance, seven oryx toss their horns and continue their horizon patrol.
Ria Burger loved this world. Now 90 and retired in Swellendam, her head is full of memories of this place. She and her family owned Oudebaaskraal, which became part of the national park in 2007.
“We used to sleep out under the stars at night. I loved that life. My husband Alewyn and I did a lot of entertaining too, and I cooked almost everything in my outside bakoond (wood-fired oven). I found an ideal way of making potbrood.
Everyone in those days used to cook using fire in a kookskerm (cooking shelter). It was only many years later that we had gas stoves.
“Many writers came to stay with us. Elsa Joubert wrote Die Sweefjare van Poppie Nongena at Oudebaaskraal, and heart surgeon Chris Barnard stayed for a weekend. It drove my husband crazy, because every time Chris Barnard moved, the photographer with him would snap away. His wife Barbara stayed at home as she was pregnant at the time.”
People quickly become addicted to the peace here. They speak about the powerful soul of the place
The Burgers created a massive desert fort of a home, perfect for entertaining – and now for hosting visitors to the park.
The greatest feature of Oudebaaskraal remains the massive earth-wall dam, created by Ria’s husband, Alewyn Burger; who was a water attorney and later a judge in the 1960s. For a long time it was the largest privately owned dam in the country, holding around 28 billion litres of water
Despite irregular and paltry rain, the Burger family raised crops of wheat and lucerne by creating saaidamme – sunken fields that are flooded and then sown with seeds.
A small forest of date palms still stands, the mother trees originally brought out from California. Ria used to sell the delicious Medjool dates in Ceres and Calvinia.
It’s astounding how the landscapes vary here. In some parts of the park, it looks like untouched Karoo.
The bossies are tall and healthy and the earth is covered. In others parts, the tussocks of grass and the odd spiny ghaap (hoodia) punctuate huge tracts of open soil. Elsewhere, there are grassy plains and the odd picturesque windmill.
You can look down on it all from Gannaga Pass, where you can sense the contours of the ancient inland sea that once flowed here. It’s obvious why some people don’t want to leave.
One of the farms that SA National Parks bought is still home to Hester Steenkamp, the last farmer of the Tankwa.
She has an arrangement with the conservation body that she can live out her last days there.
It’s a happy and simple life, with a windmill just outside her house, a few sheep and her beloved dogs, Duke and Hartkol. Hester’s son, who teaches in Calvinia, comes to stay with her every weekend.
“I’m not worried about anything. I am where I want to be,” she says. She’s surrounded by her memories, her father’s family’s organ, pictures of Oupa Barend and Ouma Kattie.
It’s a happy and simple life, with a windmill just outside her house, a few sheep and her beloved dogs
Duke, her German shepherd, is fiercely protective of Hester He’s cautiously welcoming to visitors, but hates it when they leave and has been known to nip a fleeing guest. His least distinguished moment was the time he bit the departing church deacon’s wife on her stockinged leg. Hester still recalls the moment with a shudder; even though the deacon’s wife immediately forgave her and Duke, and the wound was minor
To prevent any incidents, Hester decided to close Duke in the bedroom. Throughout the interview, he kept up a steady stream of muttered complaints and Hester would reply to him as if he were speaking Afrikaans.Then she took us out the back door to show us the windmill and Duke could take it no more. He somehow opened the bedroom door and bustled out to Hester’s side. True to form, as we left he bade us a nerve-shattering farewell, with ferocious barks, snarls and flashing teeth on the other side of the skinner-deur (kitchen door).
The sun was sinking fast as we got to our beautiful cobhouse cottage on the Elandsberg plains.Twilight, and with it a massive drama on the stoep between a gecko and a green, noisy moth that refused to become dinner.
A distinctive chorus of langasem grasshoppers. If the Karoo farmers are to be believed, it will rain within three days.
The bright starry arch of the Milky Way overhead, with the smudges of Small and Large Magellanic clouds on the horizon. Dark shapes of bats flying against the stars. The whirr of wings from unseen night birds.Then silence.
Map reference F2 see inside back cover
A luxury clay house
Building with clay has long been a tradition in the Karoo and you’ll find plenty of old clay ruins around the park.
Drawing on this architectural vernacular; the clay cottages (top) at Elandsberg in the Tankwa Karoo National Park constitute some of SA National Parks’ finest accommodation endeavours.
The cottages feel indigenous, are cool in summer and warm in winter, and the stoep is huge. In a nod to the past, the kitchen has a peach pip floor and the ceilings are lined with reeds. The kitchen is full of enamelware. It feels authentically Karoo.
Rather remarkably, each cottage has its own little splash pool, which makes it feel as if you’re staying in a luxury lodge, only without the hot and cold running staff.
But these are by no means the only, or even the most interesting, places to stay. Many of the old farmhouses have been restored for visitors too. Some camping spots are nestled around old clay houses like the one above.
More info on the quaint town of Calvinia | More info on the Hantam Karoo area |
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