Ironveld and Aughrabies

Continued from Cape Holiday 2015: a lonely Falkenberg grave.

Tuesday 18 August 2015

After breakfast at the Azalea Guest House in Kuruman, we drove up to the historic Moffat Mission, which was the main object of our stay in Kuruman, as a kind of missiological pilgrimage — it marked the start of Christianity in the region, and northwards into Botswana and Zambia, but we found found that it was closed, with a threatening notice saying that treaspassers would be prosecuted.

A missiological pilgrimage to the historic Moffat Mission in Kuruman

We left Kuruman reached Kathu, about 60 km from Kuruman. It was not a place I had been aware of from previous journeys along this road, in 1969 and 1991, but it seemed to be quite big, with lots of new houses, many apparently unoccupied, visible from the road as we passed through, and signs of further expansion. The houses seemed to follow uniform designs, so it looked like a company town, probably something to do with iron mining.

At Sishen, 80 km from Kuruman, where the actual mines were, the vegetation around seemed to be red, as if it was rusting. We stopped for petrol at Olifantshoek, 198 km from Kuruman. It was a much more pleasant town than Kuruman, and we recalled staying here 24 years ago, because we were driving without lights, and so had to stop at sunset. But the most memorable thing from that trip was opening a bottle of 5th Avenue Cold Duck (sparkling wine)and the cork squashing a mosquito on the ceiling.

Even the grass and bushes look rusty round the iron mines at Sishen

Compare this with the normal veld, once you get away from Sishen with its iron mines

Non-red veld, away from the iron mines of Sishen

From there it was a long monotonous haul to Upington, 230 km from Kuruman. We stopped at a sitplekkie along the way and took photos of shaggy birds’ nests in a syringa tree, with last season’s berries, and no leaves. Though there were two rubbish bins, there was rubbish all around them and very little in them, a sharp contrast from our visit to Botswana and Namibia two years ago, where they were all scrupulously clean, except for the ones close to the South African border.

A scruffy birds’ nest among the syringa trees

We reached the Augrabies Falls National Park about 2:30 pm and after paying the entrance fee, R38.00 each, walked down to look at the falls, passing a lot of very tame dassies in the gardens.

A dassie, said to be the closest relative to the elephant

The place was much changed from our previous visit in 1991, with new viewing platforms built of wooden poles and concrete slabs, which were less of a blot on the landscape than the previous metal ones. The new ones took one much closer to the main fall, and we took lots of photos.

Augrabies Falls — the whole flow of the Orange River sdqueezed into one narrow channel

There was less water in the river than on our previous visit, and one could hardly hear the water from the office — perhaps that was because of the three dry years that had immediately preceded this, so more water was being taken from the river for irrigation.

In the old days this was the closest visitors could get to the Augrabies Falls.

There were more dassies on the rocks by the falls, and lots of lizards, ordinary ones and multi-coloured ones with blue heads.

Another dassie — the Augrabis Falls National Park abounds with them, and they are as tame as pet rabbits

I thought of Lawrence G. Green, whose description of the Augrabies Falls in “To the river’s end” made me want to visit the place when I first read it in high school. There it sounded remote, a place hardly anyone had ever heard of, but now the road to it is full of farms and very well travelled, and only the park itself looks as it did when Green visitred it. And we probably had a much better view of the falls than he did, with the viewing platforms and paths leading to them, which make it possible even for old crocks like us to have a good view of the falls.

We went to the shop on the way out, and I got an Eskimo Pie, but it was nothing like the Eskimo Pies of my childhood , which were vanilla ice cream covered with a layer of chocolate. This was just some sort of frozen chocolate-flavoured confection on a stick. We went back to the town of Augrabies, to the Quiver Tree guest house, where we spent the night.

Quiver Tree Guest House, Aughrabies

Continued at Going west through Bushmanland

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