Rose Willis, Legendary Karoo Storyteller

Corbelled house

By Julienne du Toit

If you wanted to know where the bodies are buried in the Karoo, where the ghosts walk in its Victorian-era towns and just when a certain fossil was discovered, you could always ask Rose Willis.

The popular writer and historian began her Karoo career in 1990 by incessantly pestering the town clerk of Beaufort West and the chairman of the local publicity association for a job.

Rose Willis
Rose Willis, storyteller of the Karoo.

Eventually, in a perverse effort to prove to her there was absolutely no work for her, the head of the then Regional Services Council hired her for a pittance, mornings only, for six months.

She had no office, and sat in the Raadsaal. There was no computer, and no typewriter, and she had to go up the main office to get messages or make phone calls.

Nevertheless, in six months, she notched up 600 hours of overtime, and the RSC CEO  eventually conceded that yes, perhaps there was a place for her.

One of the first things Rose did when she was hired was put together Rose’s Round-Up, a simple A4 folded in half, black and white newsletter, full of newsy snippets about the Central Karoo.

The first edition had six copies, one for each regional town clerk. It was done on her dot matrix printer, with a few pasted pictures.

When she got home after delivering one to the Beaufort West town clerk, he’d already left a message on her answering machine saying he wanted more copies for the Raad, please.

Rose’s Round-Up continued in emailed form until 2023, a monthly infusion of historical and current news on the Karoo.

“Round-Up still excites me,” she told us in 2013.”And it’s very popular with academics. At one time I published some facts about a missionary called Erasmus Smit, who used to work in the Karoo. Some professors from Wits called me up and thanked me profusely. They had tracked the mission and Smit’s history, but no one knew what later happened to him.

Karoo fossil
Rose was knowledgeable about the Karoo’s modern and ancient history.

Research into the forgotten histories of small towns had long been one of Rose’s strongest tools. Her house in Bloemfontein was packed to the roof with books. She had 30 fat and invaluable files on aspects of Karoo life that she has personally dug up.

Rose has brought half-forgotten fragments of history alive.

Did you know, for example, that the very last Cape Lion was shot at Leeu Gamka in 1842 by explorer Robert Gordon (who also shot the last black rhinoceros, just outside the present Karoo National Park)?

Or that C.J Langenhoven’s secret love Helena de Vries, who lived in Prince Albert, was forbidden to marry the besotted poet by her father, who thought him too weird to court his daughter?

Or that the stunning Cape Dutch house on the farm Vrolikheid has a witblits still that has never stopped running?

“I find the Karoo so fascinating, so enchanting,” said Rose.

It was an the obsession started by sheer chance. She and her husband Wally Kriek used to live in Johannesburg, but in 1989, they took a slow drive on the N1. Her mom lived in Bloemfontein and his in Worcester, and they had a vague idea to buy a house somewhere inbetween and use it as a stop-over or holiday home.

Karoo windpump
Rose and her husband Wally fell in love with the Karoo and its open spaces.

They haggled unsuccessfully for one in Richmond, but then chanced on an old house just outside Beaufort West, allegedly designed by Sir Herbert Baker, built in 1901 for the town magistrate.

Once they bought it, it seemed silly not to live in it. They sold their house in Cyrildene and made plans to leave town.

Everyone thought they were crazed. “You’ll be back in six months,” they warned.

On the Golden Highway, packed to the hilt with dogs and earthly goods, Wally pulled over. Rose thought Brutus the dog was carsick, but Wally said he just wanted to take a last look at Johannesburg, because he’d never be back. “And he didn’t, not once.”

Wally too, fell in love with the Karoo. You’ll still find his words quoted and requoted on websites and brochures, especially this:

“The Karoo is where nature dazzles on the endless plains and in the blue mountains, here in the blazing summers and icy winters where the wild winds fade to a silence so pure you can hear God think.”

When Wally died, Rose moved to Bloemfontein to be close to her mother and later lived with her family. She remained, until her death on 20 April 2024, one of the foremost chroniclers of the Karoo.

Rose Willis was the author of The Karoo Cookbook (2008), and co-authored Yeomen of the Karoo: The Story of the Imperial Yeomanry Hospital at Deelfonteinwith Arnold van Dyk and Kay de Villiers (2016).

Most of her Rose’s Round-Ups can be found here: https://www.ancestors.co.za/roses-round-up/.

Some of the research she did on small towns can be found here: https://karoofoundation.co.za/karoo-cameos/.

Karoo Park
Rose and her husband Wally were inspired by the Nuweveld Mountains and the Karoo National Park.

 

8 thoughts on “Rose Willis, Legendary Karoo Storyteller

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  3. Bart Logie says:

    I am devastated. Where does one go now for information on the Karoo? Not only did she know the history, the origins, the background stories, but was unstintingly helpful. Although I never met her personally, I shall miss her.

  4. BEVERLEY says:

    I never met Rose personally but for years we chatted on the internet and email. I was bereft when I saw the sad news on her Facebook page

  5. David Woodhead says:

    When I was researching the life of Sir Alfred Fripp, the chief surgeon at the Deelfontein Hospital in 1900, I discovered the magnificent book, Yeomen of the Karoo, and contacted Rose by email (from Birmingham, UK) to say how impressed I was with her and her colleagues’ book. This led to a series of emails in which her vitality was so evident. I am very sorry that I have not caught up with the fact of her death until now but wish to say that the memory of our short, ‘modern’ acquaintanceship will remain with me for however long I have left (I am nearly 85). It is obvious she had a full life, during which even an horrendous physical attack on her person did not quench her enthusiasm for her part of South Africa – its past and its present.

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