CREATURES OF THE KAROO WILD
Nick Yell takes a giant swim back in time in Fraserburg
IWAS travelling up the Teekloof Pass when I killed the dassie. Riding through rock cuttings on a motorbike is always hazardous, as these cute little critters are prone to dash across the road, seemingly flushed out by the noise of the bike’s exhaust.
It’s a hazard I’m well aware of and slow down to avoid, not only because I love animals but also because hitting one of these not-so-wee-beasties (some are the size of large dachshunds) can be downright dangerous.
Though my bike seemed fine, my heart was heavy, so I turned around to make sure the dassie wasn’t suffering. I was relieved when I saw that I’d killed it instantly. I took it off the road and lay it in some soft grass on the verge. I sat there a while, acutely aware of the fragility of life and how every moment needs to be savoured. Two black eagles came into view overhead — a fitting salute to the dassie’s passing.
Before I left the vantage point overlooking the deep valley in front of me, I tried to imagine what life would have been like here when these parts were still covered by an inland sea, around 250-million years ago.
Instead of black eagles and leopards, what sort of pre-historic aquatic predators had ruled the roost back then? And what sort of giant coelacanth-like fish had lurked in the dark crevices of the ravines below? A fascinating world was unfolding in my imagination, one from which I was finding it difficult to tear myself away.
Part of my reverie was nostalgic. It had to do with the journey I’d made to these parts eight years back when undertaking my dirt-track circumnavigation of the Great Karoo on an old scrambler. On that journey, I was lucky enough to visit the Gansfontein Paleosurface on a farm outside Fraserburg.
I was bowled over by the number and quality of pareiasaurs (bulky herbivorous reptiles, including the Bradysaurus) and therapsids (mammal-like reptiles, the ancestors of mammals and dinosaurs) footprints I saw there. My fondest memory was of putting my hands into a set of Bradysaurus prints and trying to emulate the inside-outside sashay that their heavy bodies — set on bowed legs and short broad feet — forced them to perform.
It was the complimentary sherry in my room that finally brought me back to the present. It was a very cold night and the amber elixir, sipped in a steaming bath, proved to be an effective time-travelling antidote and the perfect way to thaw body, mind and soul before dinner.
I was the only guest in Die Kliphuis’s cosy little restaurant. I didn’t even ask for a menu; my host asked me what I felt like — I said steak, baked potato and some vegetables — and then left me in the company of a rather fine bottle of KWV Select Red I’d never heard of called Bonne Esperance: soft, juicy, mediumbodied, great value and highly recommended.
When Ronél le Roux delivered my glistening brown T-bone steak — the biggest and thickest I’d ever seen — surrounded by steamed vegetables and a baked potato with sour cream, I knew I’d ordered a winner. And what a treat it was, flame-grilled with a basting sauce so mouth-watering I had to ask her for the recipe — see fact box.
My host came to chat to me after my meal and I realised from our conversation just how under-marketed and, as a result, under-visited the fossil treasures in and around Fraserburg are.
It’s a tragedy that a national treasure is so poorly supported by tourism structures, product owners and big business. As Professor Bruce Rubidge, the director of the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research, has said: “These creatures (therapsids) should be a South African brand. No other country in the world has as complete a record of ancient land-living vertebrate animals as we have.”