Tracks Across the Veld

By Chris Marais and Julienne du Toit

As you drive through old Karoo towns like Cradock, you might notice the very wide streets. Not much more than a century ago, you had to be able to do a U-turn driving a wagon and 16 oxen – hence the generous width of the thoroughfares.

The old ox-wagon, with its first kakebeen (jawbone) designs, brought trekboer, smous, transport rider and Voortrekker across the wide Karoo plains.

The ox-wagon was far more than mere transport. It was, in fact, your entire home. It was also your fortress.

As a trader, you took a wagonload of goods into the hinterland and swopped them for livestock from the pastoral tribes. From these herds you picked your best oxen, outfitted a couple of wagons with farmer-friendly utensils, both necessary and whimsical, and off you went once more.

Sometimes the traders would skip the farming communities and head off into the wilderness in search of ivory and skins.

One of the most flamboyant wagoneers to cross the Karoo was the naturalist-explorer Francois le Vaillant. He was the original ‘kitchen sink’ man, travelling with four wagons.

They carried just about anything you could dream of: guns, ammunition, tents, many specimen drawers, a mobile kitchen, a wagon repair kit, food for many for months, tobacco and a linen chest any woman would be proud of. Le Vaillant, it is rumoured, changed his linen three times a day.

The ox-wagon took more than 10 000 Voortrekker pioneers out of the Cape, through the Karoo and right up to the Soutpansberg. During the early days of the diamond boom, nearly 19 000 transport wagons made their way up to Kimberley.

Then came the railways. The wagons were grounded, the oxen outspanned. And Slow Travel through the Karoo was lost forever.

STAGECOACH JOURNEYS

In Victorian times, you had to set aside at least 11 days for your crossing of the Great Karoo by wagon or stagecoach.

Your overnight stops and mealtimes were seldom attended by friendly farmers sensitive to your every need. You carried your own grub: sardines, brandy, coffee, bread and pickles. Potted meat, if that’s what you fancied.

Even though you were headed for the diamond fields of Kimberley and there were constant thoughts of great wealth, you travelled hard. Often the bench was wooden, your fellow passengers were less than fragrant and there was always a lion or two lurking just beyond the range of the campfire.

There were occasional supernatural encounters as well. Four travellers heading from Ceres to Beaufort West were suddenly confronted, at 3am, with the sight of a wagon and “14 wide-eyed mules” storming down on them. They managed to dive to safety and shouted at the driver:

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“To Hell,” the anguished man replied. “To Hell!”

The occasional female passenger – a rarity in those days – would have been armed with a copy of Hints to Lady Travellers – At Home and Abroad, published by author Lilias Campbell Davidson in 1889.

This best-seller for woman tourists offered many wandering wisdoms, like the absolute importance of not drinking too much tea en route and always travelling with a “small flask of brandy, strong smelling salts and an eau de toilette.”

Just in case that grizzled old prospector sharing the coach hasn’t seen a bathtub in a month or two.

“THROW ITS EYES OUT!”

There’s simply nothing to beat a road trip across the Great Karoo – even when there’s no road.

Just page through the old overland journals of the 18^th and 19^th Century adventurers and you’ll see the delight they had – even amidst great hardship – in traversing the veld.

And when the ox wagon, the Scotch cart and the mule trains gave way to the Ford Motor Company’s Tin Lizzies which were followed by brands like Chevrolet and Austin, there was no let-up in transport legends of the Karoo. Every rusted hulk you see out there in the vastness has its own story.

The late Oom Johannes Willemse of Theefontein Farm near Beaufort West, used to tell this typical tale:

“I knew a rich farmer up in the Kenhardt area. And when the first cars arrived, he rode into town on his horse-and-buggy and paid his 20 pounds for a brand-new vehicle.

“The salesman gave him a quick driving lesson and off he went, homewards. By the time he arrived at his farmstead, however, he’d forgotten the lesson about how to stop the car. He had no idea where the brakes were.

“In a blind panic, he drove around and around the farmhouse, yelling ‘Whoa! Whoa!’ but the car would not listen.

“When darkness fell, he managed to find the headlights of this unstoppable car. After a few hours of driving in the dark, he shouted to the children gathered in the yard to throw stones at the car and blind it so it would finally die.

“Some of the stones found their mark, and the headlights went out. The farmer drove on into the dark and eventually crashed into a tree. The car became a wonderful chicken coop. The farmer went back to his horse-and-buggy.”

DONKEYS OVER DIESEL

Some say donkeys are dumb. In fact, they are thoughtful, sensitive and handsome beasts with a highly developed sense of survival. And very loud in their braying – so not so very dumb.

Karoo donkey owners will tell you they’re obstinate, bloody-minded, calculating – and a whole lot cheaper to run in the high-tech 21st century than diesel bakkies. In fact, small town leather crafters have reported a rise in donkey harness orders. It seems people have finally cottoned on to donkey power down on the farm.

And the donkey legends are out there, all right. Take the story of the late Oom Kallie Gagiano of Nababeep, a dear old soul who loved his big-eared beasts so much that in the evenings, he’d play the fiddle for them. They were simple old Namaqua tunes, but the donkeys seemed to like them nevertheless.

And then, in the middle of a typical Karoo drought, Grasveld the donkey and his four brothers faced starvation out in the dirt-dry countryside. Oom Kallie began staging a series of midnight raids into Nababeep. He led his donkeys into town and opened the gates of well-tended properties belonging to people he did not know (or like) well.

The beasts ran amok among the painstakingly watered gardens and gorged themselves. Until, that is, the night Grasveld got his hoof caught in an old tin while foraging in a yard. He made an awful noise escaping down the road and the homeowner woke up.

Banned from town, Oom Kallie and his donkeys returned to the veld – and their nightly fiddle jamborees.

TRACKS ACROSS THE KAROO

They are to be seen all over the Karoo: rusted railway tracks leading to nowhere in particular anymore.

For nearly 150 years, however, the great rail network spanned the Heartland, connecting Cape Town to Johannesburg and all points in-between.

At first there was some trepidation from the traditional Karoo farming community. Many felt that a railway would endanger their livestock, bring down the value of their land, kill the horse-breeding business and bring greater Government taxes. But the steam train eventually became an essential part of life in the Karoo.

The railways arrived at Leeu Gamka in 1879, in Beaufort West the following year. Two decades later, the vast system spanning South Africa was used by the British forces to ferry troops and supplies around the country. The Boer guerrilla units worked hard to blow the lines up, while the Brits built thousands of blockhouses near the tracks to defend them.

Nearly 60 years on, the Karoo found itself in the grip of a life-threatening drought, a time when many farmers simply walked off the land, never to return. The Karoo rail system was used to rescue more than 250 000 drought-endangered sheep and bring them to pastures in the Free State and old Transvaal provinces. The South African Railways committed four trains, which carried 6 000 beasts every day until the plains were temporarily bare of sheep.

The old-timers will still tell you about how, as kids going off to boarding school after the holidays, they used to wait for the train at lonely little sidings all over the Karoo. With them would be a leather mailbag on a post – and any number of laden milk pails waiting to go to market.
These are extracts from Karoo Keepsakes I & II by Chris Marais and Julienne du Toit. The authors are offering a Keepsakes Special on the classic little coffee table books of R600 (including courier costs within South Africa). For inquiries, please e-mail Julie at julie@karoospace.co.za