Where have all the hippies gone?
Down the Garden Route, one by one. Lin Sampson hit the hippie trail & found a dream that is more fearful than its sixties prototype
WE walk along the disused railway track of the Outeniqua ChooTjoe railway line between George and Wilderness to find the Kaaiman’s Caveman.
Clifford Brandon, 52, is wearing a hot water bottle on his head and the images of his dreams still hang on his face. But his blue eyes are clear and his hair seems floodlit. On his feet are red Crocs which emphasise his fluctuating walk.
Brandon is in close communication with God whom he calls ‘‘Father”.
He has travelled a long road to this heaven-sent place and has had mystical encounters with many people, but the final message from God came through ‘‘a drunken coloured” who directed him: “Djy! djy! Gaan na die cave.”
Brandon was at Bible school in Vredenberg when he got the call that God had a house for him on the Garden Route. Once the cave housed a restaurant but the closure of the railway line made it inaccessible. Father, it appears, has a keen eye for real estate. “As soon as I saw the cave, my spirit leapt. I knew this was the home Father had prepared for me.”
He speaks fast in a fluty voice accompanied by rhythmic hand gestures.
“Before I moved in Father wanted to see my heart and my mind. He tested me for 40 days and 40 nights and then he gave me this house.”
It is a fantastical grotto strung with shells and fairy lights. There are chambers leading out of chambers and mysterious corridors decorated with all the detritus of retail. “People throw things out and I collect them,” he says.
He guards the cave like a fussy housewife. “When the dust comes it is a real nightmare,” he says, flapping his hands.
“Sometimes it is so bad I have to ask Father to lend a hand.”
He says he has not wanted since he has lived here although there have been hard times. “I put out a shopping list for Father.” But Father has been ignoring it lately.
His mother died recently but before she died, she visited him and said: “Well, Clifford, you are now really living like a bergie.”
Brandon is not the only person seduced by this piece of heaven. As we enter Sedgefield, we encounter men with feathers in their hair, barefooted girls with toe rings, despite the cold. Men whose idea of shaving is to skip it.
At Under the Milkwood Friday Night Market there is moonlight at dusk and lots of burning braziers. The hippie women are fragile with a neurotic beauty and defiant but vulnerable eyes.
Once hippies were people whose goal in life was to spread peace, love and happiness. They wore flared trousers, listened to The Grateful Dead, used words like ‘‘groovy” and smoked pot.
This counterculture was bred from passion. But hippies have changed. Now they include borderline junkies, the walking wounded, economic refugees and ideological eco-warriors.
A recent high-profile case involving the murder of self-proclaimed hippie Rosemary Theron, by her daughter Phoenix Racing Cloud Theron (the name says it all) and allegedly assisted by boyfriend Kyle Maspero, brought to light a life of dangerous neglect. Where have all the hippies gone? “We’re right here,” says a man rolling a reefer. “I moved down here in 1998 from Pretoria. I have never been home.
“Man, I dig this place. Where I live, fish eagles swoop down on water, porcupines, pied kingfishers, hey man, this is really the life.”
His name is Frederick but he calls himself Freghan Edmondstone. He lives in a two-room Transnet house, sleeping on a mattress on the floor. He paints and does leather work to keep alive. Outside there is a pit latrine and he cooks on a fire.
Freghan has many dreams. But he has been here for 20 years and nothing has changed. The place looks as if it has been overtaken by circumstances beyond his control.
We go to the Saturday Sedgefield market where there are mandalas, mohair beanies and tinkling chimes for sale.
Lisa and her partner Ivan (who have no surnames) sell tie-dye clothes. On a cold day they both have bare feet. “We just like to live as lightly as possible,” says Lisa.
They live off the grid with no internet in the rural paradise of Bibby’s Hoek near Knysna but find they have to move further and further inland to get away from development.
Keith Bergh prefers to be called an ecowarrior. He is a builder with long hair like golden syrup. His beaded bracelets chime with a closeness to an alternative life.
“I came up this way to collect some special planking. My 10-year building plan just stopped because I bumped into heaven in Hoekwil.”
That was four years ago and Bergh never left. He is building an eco-friendly house in a forested valley with faraway views to the coast.
Tamsin Rogers, 42, and partner Johan Schoeman, 39, were born to be hippies. They live in a mobile home with eight children, all home-schooled, ranging in age from 18 years to 11 months. “We used to wear sacks and until recently we went around in a donkey cart,” says Rogers.
“I can do without running water and electricity. When you live in the bush, family life is intense. It’s a good life for a kid.” As she speaks, two of her children sit on the grass and play chess.
“The word hippie is often misunderstood. In the ’60s the idea of a hippie meant something that was much more a style of dress and music. Now it is a way of self-expression,” says Rogers.
“More and more people find coping in cities too much.”