50 Keep it simple – camping, backroads, night skies and a chance to think deeply
Our Karoo skies are among the clearest on Earth, ideal for stargazing. And, says CHRIS DAVIES, there’s no better place to experience it than in this wide-open land
The back roads of the Karoo have a strange effect on the mind. It’s as if mile by mile they clear you out, forcing your attention into equilibrium with the passing veld, slowly finding balance, until inside and out are united in a single vast expanse, where koppie-like thoughts appear slowly, take shape, then vanish in the mirror behind. In a sense, all roads through the Karoo are back roads – even a quiet morning on the N1 can conjure this effect – but the gravel meanderings are where everything is at its most uninterrupted. There are no cars out here. No activity of any kind it seems. A Springsteen song shuffles onto the playlist and I glance beside me at Ann, my companion on this desert detour. She is lost in thought: legs drawn up on the seat, chin on knees, staring out the window. Her fingers tap absentmindedly on her shins as Bruce makes the dusty African heat feel like a New Jersey morning skyline. Yeah Bruce, they’re both a lunar landscape, for real. The mind abhors a vacuum and mine, apparently, can never be entirely empty. With daily anxieties driven out, old memories rush in and I find myself thinking of someone I haven’t in years: Tony Fairall, my Astronomy 101 professor at UCT. That one semester of lectures – back when you could still get creative with your first-year choices, despite a major in English – is without doubt the only thing of substance I remember from three years of university. Prof Fairall’s passion, enthusiasm and wonderful bi-monthly sessions at the Cape Town Planetarium instilled in me not just a love for the stars, but an enduring interest in what they’re all about; at least as far as we know. He died in 2008 in a tragic diving accident off Hout Bay, but I’ve always remembered those lectures. More accurately, I’ve forgotten them too, but at least, having forgotten, I’ve made the effort to learn again. The sun is low on the horizon as we pull into Kambro’s campsite, grab a takeaway pie for dinner, and pitch the tent. If daytime in the Karoo is about the immensity of the landscape, the night is about the immensity of the sky. Scorpius, my favourite constellation, is rising and I point it out to Ann, who humours me and nods as if she’s never seen it before. I mention that Antares, the bright red star at its centre, is so big it would engulf Earth and Mars if it were centred on our sun. This gets a more thoughtful response, although I’ve gone on about that before too, and my ego gives another nod to Prof Fairall and Astronomy 101.
The next day we pack early and head south-west, taking dirt roads wherever possible – not because they are quieter (even the ‘main’ roads are quiet out here), but because the Karoo feels better on dirt: older, more solid. Past Pampoenpoort, we turn west towards Carnarvon. Beyond, 70 kilometres out between the koppies, the South African section of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope is under construction, and will be for the next decade or more. The first phase will go online later this year. Back in my varsity days, the astronomical community was abuzz with the 11-metre Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) in Sutherland, then still five years from completion. Twelve years after opening, SALT is still among the largest optical telescopes in the world, and the largest in the southern hemisphere, but SKA is the next big thing, a really big thing, a ‘megascience’ project comprising an array of telescopes spanning 10 countries and two continents: Africa and Australia. Combined, it’ll be the largest telescope of any kind to peer out into the universe and super-fast super computers must be built just to cope with the incoming data, expected to be many times the volume of the world’s total Internet traffic per second. Both installations are centred here because the Karoo has some of the clearest
‘...the Karoo feels better on dirt: older, more solid’
night skies in the world, and because, until recently, all large telescopes were built close to or within their funding nations, leaving much of the southern sky unobserved. Well, not unobserved, just far less scrutinised. I remember being disappointed when I realised SALT wasn’t something you could stick your eye up against and watch
distant galaxies pop into focus like cells under a microscope. Everything is computerised these days, and while the final rendered images are beautiful, they still fail to eclipse the awe I feel seeing the full swathe of the Milky Way in a pitch-black southern sky. And that seems right, I think. At Middelwater Campsite that night we pull our chairs from under towering trees and sip our red box wine, made vintage by the splendour above. Ninety kilometres to the north-west, SKA is taking shape in the darkness and above us a lone satellite tracks a pale arc past the Southern Cross. We wake late, making the most of the leafy canopy above. Except for a few parked cars in Fraserburg, we see only one bakkie and a donkey cart all the way to Sutherland, where we catch our first glimpse of the huge dome that is SALT, on its high plateau outside town. Sutherland is quiet in the late afternoon, and even quieter at night. Once again, a moonless sky soars above and we say little, just stare and think. You’re supposed to be able to see two or three thousand stars with the naked eye on a clear night. It seems a ridiculous underestimate, but I don’t try to count. Down Ouberg Pass into the Tankwa the next day, we stop at an abandoned barn for lunch, but quickly vacate when we find a hive of bees ensconced on the ceiling. Outside the massive heat drives us onwards and I try to imagine the cold, dark enormity hiding behind the baking blue above. At the oasis of Die Mond Campsite, with starlight gleaming off the incongruous water before us, it strikes me that these totally remote, vast landscapes are the perfect mirror for the immensity of the universe above. No city night sky can reveal this profusion. And who would want that? You have to be as far away from people as possible to see as far into the night as this. Or maybe take a trip to the planetarium. It’s a memorable experience, though not quite the same.