Daily Maverick
Dailymaverick logo

South Africa

South Africa, Maverick Life

Tracks across the Veld: Transport legends of the Old Karoo

Tracks across the Veld: Transport legends of the Old Karoo
Relics of a once-vibrant Karoo railway system – rusting rolling stock at Noupoort Station. Photo: Chris Marais
Chris Marais and Julienne du Toit
By Chris Marais and Julienne du Toit
25 Jul 2024
Facebook
12
The ox-wagon was far more than mere transport. It was, in fact, your entire home. It was also your fortress.

You might notice the wide streets as you drive through old Karoo towns like Cradock; 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 communities. 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.

An ox-wagon on trek, captured on tiles in Burgersdorp. (Photo: Chris Marais)



Naturalist-explorer Francois le Vaillant 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 months, tobacco and a linen chest – it is rumoured that Le Vaillant 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. Overnight stops and mealtimes were seldom attended by friendly farmers sensitive to one's every need. Travellers carried their own grub: sardines, brandy, coffee, bread and pickles, potted meat.

Crossing the Karoo by stagecoach was an 11-day journey. (Photo: Chris Marais)



Even though they were headed for the diamond fields of Kimberley and there were constant thoughts of great wealth, they also travelled hard. Often the bench was wooden 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 probably have been armed with a copy of Hints to Lady Travellers: At Home and Abroad, published by author Lillias Campbell Davidson in 1889. This best-seller for women 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 hadn’t seen a bathtub in a month or two.

Road trip


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 18th and 19th Century adventurers and you’ll see the delight they had – even amid great hardship – in traversing the veld. 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.

Read in Daily Maverick: Escaping to the Karoo for remarkable back road adventures in a trusty double-cab

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.

One-eyed transport legends of the Karoo. (Photo: Chris Marais)



“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.

There are also donkey legends out there. 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. 

Karoo donkeys are obstinate, bloody-minded, calculating – and a whole lot cheaper than diesel bakkies. (Photo: Chris Marais)



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.

For nearly 150 years, however, a 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.

Relics of a once-vibrant Karoo railway system – rusting rolling stock at Noupoort Station. (Photo: Chris Marais)



The railways arrived at Leeu Gamka in 1879, and 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. South African Railways committed four trains, which carried 6,000 beasts every day until the plains were temporarily bare of sheep. DM



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 enquiries, please email Julie at [email protected]

Daily Maverick’s journalism is funded by the contributions of our Maverick Insider members. If you appreciate our work, then join our membership community. Defending Democracy is an everyday effort. Be part of it. Become a Maverick Insider.

Categories:

Tags: