The Karoo Donkey Sanctuary sprawls over 18 hectares at the base of the Swartberg Mountains only two kilometres outside Prince Albert. Capetonians Jonno Sherwin and his partner Dr Johan Hugo bought the land in 2012 after falling in love with the area during a 2008 visit… writes Julienne du Toit from KarooSpace. The Sanctuary  URGENTLY […]

The question most people ask when we meet them somewhere on our travels through the vast dry Karoo region of South Africa is: “How do you find your stories?”… writes Chris Marais from KarooSpace. Those who read our Karoo books and our regular features in SA Country Life magazine and various other publications want to know what sets us […]

Sometime back in 2003, I was standing toe-to-toe with a Sutherland sheep farmer after his deeply rutted middelmannetjie road had nearly ripped the guts out of our little low-slung sedan… writes Chris Marais. We’d come to do a magazine story on some aspect of the guy’s farming enterprise, but the issue of his bad road took […]

Lizzy was born on the other side of town, on a farm called Noorspoort, owned by the legendary Craven family. “I learnt from my mother how to bake and cook. She in turn learnt it from old Mrs Maria Craven, [rugby legend] Doc Danie Craven’s wife. “Later on I worked on another farm at Baroe, […]

The desperate search for an escaped lion in the Karoo National Park outside Beaufort West in the Western Cape continued into its sixth day. According to Park Manager, Nico van der Walt, the trackers started with the spoor where they left off the previous night. “As they were tracking in a very deep gorge they […]

Tuesday marked the fifth day since a lion escape in the Karoo National Park outside Beaufort West, Western Cape. This is according to Nico van der Walt, Park Manager at Karoo National Park who said the search party consisting of 14 Rangers and about six volunteers from neighbouring farms breathed a sigh of relief late […]

In summer, the familiar rushing sound of the Great Fish River pumping through our home town of Cradock in the Eastern Cape is often punctuated by the excited babble of youngsters as they navigate the gentle rapids on the inner tubes of tractor tyres… writes Julienne du Toit. In the late afternoons, while pensioners watch […]

We received a Christmas card a month late the first year we arrived in Cradock, brought to us by our neighbour across the road, Frans Smit. We weren’t disappointed in the crap postal service, and I didn’t curse anyone’s ineptitude. In fact, my husband Chris and I stood staring at the envelope in silent awe. […]

It seems, for some of us, that the older we get the more inclined we are to be reckless. Who but the very bravest of long-distance drinkers, big-bike riders and hardened shoppers would take on the awesome pubs and padstalle of Route 62 in the Western Cape? Who but the youngest and silliest of us […]

People who live in the desert love rain. They love it in ways city people don’t understand. In the Karoo and the Kalahari, the horizons are so wide you can see the weather coming while it is still hours away. You can see clouds coalesce and darken over the mountains, then advance, walking on legs […]

Decades ago and deep in the Namaqualand desert at a point between Springbok, Steinkopf and the sea, a Cape Town housewife with a squeaky voice steals our hearts. This mommy from the suburbs has requested a tune that plays into our early years, way before Disco, Johnny Rotten, Duran Duran and Really Big Hair stole […]

I love old signs when I’m on the road. They tell me where I’m going, who lived here, what brands were promoted and what the travelling salesmen flogged to the locals over the decades. Sometimes, on a dusty Karoo trail in the back of beyond, they’re all I have for company. I run across old […]

There is no obvious way to sneak up on herbalist Antoinette Pienaar and Karoo healer Oom Johannes Willemse. As documented in her well-loved book The Griqua’s Apprentice (translated from Kruitjie Roer My), they live on Theefontein Farm near Beaufort West, which can only be found via an intricate set of directions involving small dirt roads with middelmannetjies […]

The vicious El Nino conditions of 2015 have created democratic South Africa’s first truly devastating drought. Not since 1992 has so little rain fallen on the land. Never has our water supply infrastructure been so vulnerable. Six out of the nine provinces have been declared disaster areas. Just before Christmas, the Director-General of the Department […]

A Climax windmill spins and creaks quietly alongside a dirt road linking Colesberg with the blue horizon. There is a cool morning breeze and a few sheep bleat in the distance. Soon, though, they are drowned out by the distant roar of a straining engine. A school bus appears, emblazoned with the words ‘Hantam Community Education […]

It’s about 160km, give or take a metre or two on either side, from the House of Light & Shadow in Richmond, Northern Cape, to the Karoo Roos padstal outside Middelburg, Eastern Cape. That’s if you venture out on the R398, a dirt road that embodies all that is intriguing about the Karoo: big spaces, […]

If you want to taste excitement in the air, come to Philipstown this week. They’re counting down the days before the Wire Car Festival, the local event of the year. Wire cars, or draadkarretjies, are big around here. The young boys of Philipstown will do just about anything for a wire car fashioned by one […]

This is no five-step waltz, no quadrille, and by no means is it a cakewalk. It’s more like a cactus tango or a dusty Jitterbug, this Nama Riel dance they do so well out here in the Northern Cape Karoo. It’s ‘Stomp the Yard’ in Calvinia, Williston, Brandvlei and beyond. The cheering crowd forms a square […]

It doesn’t rain much around Beaufort West, but when it does it often comes in the form of fast-rushing water. And so the recent rains in the Karoo, it seems, made a hole in part of the fence that keeps all the critters in the Karoo National Park in. And that’s how a 3-year-old resident lion is said […]

In November 2014, a Karoo-based German hydrogeologist called Dr Stefan Cramer made a bold prediction that fracking would not happen in the Karoo. He gave several talks on his theory and wrote an article called Six Reasons Why Fracking Will Not Happen. By mid-March this year, Cramer suddenly appeared to have been prescient in his […]

Some time ago, this nun and I were in deadlock over a daisy. Neither of us was giving any ground on this hot and bothersome day in Bushmanland. In the museum section of Pella Mission, Northern Cape, to be precise. “Just let me take the plastic cover off for one little minute,” I insisted. But […]

Last night here in Cradock, a bunch of us gathered at someone’s house and formed a wine club. Sounds like small potatoes, right? Maybe, but in this world you take your pleasures where you can find them. And so, when the load-shedding kicked in and the lights went out, the candles were lit and the […]

Let’s go for a walk around my home town, here on the edge of the Karoo Heartland, where the Great Fish River flows really fast and the local undertaker sells pumpkins on the side. HARRY POTTER & THE GRAVE STONE We’ll begin in the town cemetery at the gravestone of Harry Potter. Yes, you heard […]

The Drostdy has always been one of the select few grand old hotels of the Karoo. As the prime accommodation in Graaff-Reinet, it began its “hotel life” as Kromm’s Drostdy Hotel back in 1876. The Drostdy had many re-models and facelifts over the century to come, the latest being an intensive upgrade that has taken […]

What? Six? Sheesh, I could give you six dozen reasons to climb in a car and come and kuier with us here in the Heartland. However, in honour of short-number listings, let’s look at a sixpack of motivations, beginning with that crazy-creative festival they stage out in the Tankwa Karoo every autumn: AfrikaBurn. www.afrikaburn.com At […]