Open Writing

One Easter long weekend we wanted to do some serious exploring and so did a trip inland and got as far as the Aurus Mountains which is a 2000 ft high mountain range about 90+ kms inland. We used three Landrovers from what I can remember and six of us went. We took extra fuel, water, food, two spare tyres per vehicle, tools etc. If we really got into trouble we could always use the radios that came with the vehicles to call for help. We knew that it would be very quiet over the long weekend and that security would not be snooping around too much.

We left early on the Saturday morning and basically just headed north-east. We knew that we had to get past the Boegoeberg hills where security had the communications station. There was the reasonable track to follow as far as Boegoeberg, and then we just drove across the desert, still heading north-east.

We drove the whole day and finally reached the foot of the Aurus Mountains late that afternoon. There was some soft sand but we got through this without too much trouble, even though it was slow going.

We camped out and it was a magnificent and clear, although cold, night. We had come well prepared with sleeping bags and warm clothes. We built a small fire and braaid some boerewors and chops. There was a pale half moon angling across the sky. The timelessness of the desert was incredible.

The next morning we woke up at dawn and watched the sun rise. Suddenly we heard the grunts of baboons and over the crest comes a troop of baboons. When they saw us they stopped about 50 metres away. Some of them were huge; certainly the biggest that we had ever seen. Two huge greybacks sat as lookouts not more that 30 metres away; watching us. One yawned, showing his huge fangs. They seemed completely unafraid. We sat observing each other for a few minutes and then they unhurriedly moved off to our right towards another outcrop about 200 metres away.

We made some coffee, had a quick breakfast and then packed up, leaving the desert to the baboons. We reluctantly headed back to Affenrucken, which we reached without incident late that afternoon.

At times I felt as if we were the first people to have travelled there. There were no roads or tracks, nor any indication of civilisation. It was just the desert and us. It was a unique and humbling feeling.

We worked out after we got back that we had driven about 100 kms inland. This meant that we actually drove out of Diamond Area No 1. If we had wanted to we could had taken a Landrover full of diamonds, but we didn’t even think about it. We just wanted to enjoy ourselves.

It is a pity we did not explore the area further as I found out much later when I was in Australia that Bushmen had lived there until 1931. Evidently there are Bushmen paintings in pristine condition still in the mountains and there are now researchers visiting the area. There is supposedly a fresh water spring in the mountains called ‘Van Zyl’s Water’ discovered by a policeman called Van Zyl in 1931. He found a group of seventeen Bushmen there and took them into custody and they were taken to Aus to work on farms. Within a year they had all disappeared, probably back to the Aurus Mountains and the Sperrgebiet. We will never know.

I could imagine others there before me, watching the same moon in times long past. I pictured the little people sitting and talking, eating, sleeping, painting. I could imagine them dancing their ancient dances. I wondered what they would have seen.

They would have known the animals and the mountain intimately. They would have been part of the unfailing passing of the seasons and been familiar with the pulse of the earth.

To think that I was there in 1972.

I took a lot of photos of the mountains and when I left the mine I presented security with a set of them, explaining where we had been and telling them that we could have stolen a truckload of diamonds and they would not have known a thing. They were not impressed…. It felt really good to know that they were seriously pissed off.