Summer, 2009: I’ve heard of a bicycle built for two – Nat King Cole sings about it. 

So when Sagrys van Jaarsveld and his sweetheart Johanna van Wyk come tootling down the road in Aberdeen in their bike & cart contraption, I think very little of it. Out here in the Karoo, bedsteads in the veld, mountain climbers wearing bow ties, old ladies festooned with cats and Brits in bowler hats are de rigeur.

But when I hear they’re about to pedal more than 55 km to go shopping in Graaff-Reinet, it gives me pause. So much so, that later on, while firmly ensconced at the Art’s Café in Aberdeen behind a cold beer and a plate of pasta, I mention them to the owner, Dallis Graham.

“Sagrys and Johanna – a dear couple,” she says. “He pedals her off to church on Sundays and she sits perched on the back like a princess.” Sagrys might – in a future with no fossil fuel – become a rich man making bicycle trailers.

Sagrys van Jaarsveld and Johanna van Wyk in their nifty bike & cart contraption. Image: Chris Marais

An artist and pataphysician

I’m on an informal quest for the quietest, most nothing-going-on town in the Karoo. I’m afraid the village of Aberdeen doesn’t cut it. There’s too much nightlife here, emanating from places like the Art’s Café. And the locals have a lot going on in their country lives. 

Take Dallis’s artist husband, Hilary Graham. If you Google the guy, you’ll find out he was the “official painter to the pataphysician Y. Maharg, who was always accompanied by the baboon Bosse-de-Nage. They traveled in the pataphysical craft Anotur Neves.” 

What? I begin trying to unravel this sci-fi mind-spaghetti by asking Graham just what a “pataphysician” could be.

“A pataphysician studies a universe of alternative solutions contemporaneous to this one,” he tells me, with a straight face.

Artist Hilary Graham – a pataphysician studying a universe of alternative solutions. Image: Chris Marais

Apart from his Mahargian adventures, Hilary Graham is also known for his huge painting of the sinking of the troopship Mendi, on show at the Nelson Mandela Bay Museum in Port Elizabeth. His work is robust, burlesque and narrative, exploring hidden themes.

Aberdeen after dark – the Karoo at her peaceful best. Image: Chris Marais

Stormlight on an Aberdeen street. Image: Chris Marais

Martial arts in a pup tent

It’s a great night to be out in Aberdeen, drinking beer, watching the passing traffic on the dusty main road and talking of such strange things.

At my table is Bernard Raczokowski, a German fellow from Hamburg who’s bought a place across the road off the Internet. He drinks a lot of rooibos tea, and while his house is being renovated he’s living in a pup tent in the middle of the sitting room. Raczokowski is a martial arts fundi, but he’s wary of the little critters that scuttle about the Karoo – and with good reason. These tiny buggers bite sore.

Just so as not to scare or annoy the German newcomer to Aberdeen, Dallis’s assistant (and vicious domino opponent) Beulah Swarts whispers to me about the Rooimanne you find out here – horrorfest-hairy solifuges, wind scorpions that skitter about invisibly on Oregon pine floors.

“Oh, I don’t kill them,” says Graham, joining in. “I just scoop them into a newspaper funnel with a broom and carry them outside.”

“Carry what outside?” Raczokowski wants to know.

“Never mind,” we all chant. The less he knows about Rooimanne, the better.

Welcome to Aberdeen, with the magnificent Camdeboo Mountains in background. Image: Chris Marais

The magical Aberdeen landscape in the rainy season. Image: Chris Marais

The Rottweiler sets in

A young man, his wife and child come strolling along at the end of a very large dog. 

“Uh oh. The Rottweiler has set in,” someone quips.

As they pass, they leave strands of Russian conversation drifting in the night air. I find out later it’s none other than Zurab, the Muscovite Dog Whisperer of Aberdeen. Local Aberdonian Joan Tinker says on the village website:

“Zurab became aware of his affinity with animals when he did his two-year compulsory military training in Russia. He was taught to train dolphins in the Black Sea for military purposes, and formed a great love and bond with them.”

Tinker says Zurab taught her how to handle her boisterous Doberman in just two weeks. 

If you’re meeting a friend in Aberdeen, tell him you’re waiting under the Post Office griffins. Image: Chris Marais

Aberdeen has its share of tumbleweeds – and an equal number of arrivals who take root here and never leave. Image: Chris Marais

Then an old Combi comes sliding up to the front stoop, bared shark jaws painted all over the front. A British couple climb out, and we all dive into the garlic mussels and fresh bread. Dallis and I get to talking about our Sixties music and I ask her if she’s ever heard the finest rock ‘n roll band in the world.

“Being?” she takes the bait. 

“Little Feat. But it’s all right if you’ve never heard of them. Only a few of us have.”

“I love Little Feat!” 

She makes me fetch one of my old tapes, parks her little car in front of the restaurant and plays Waiting For Columbus at full volume. It’s Aberdeen, darlin’. Folks have a certain way of doing things down here.

Wild at heart

The next morning sees a clash of sore heads. I go off to meet Deon Stewardson, actor son of the late and legendary Joe. Stewardson lives in Aberdeen for lots of the year, when he’s not up in the Hartebeespoort Dam area on the Wild at Heart film set.

Stewardson plays a “dessicated drunk” called Du Plessis, the owner of a less-than-successful game park. There’s a British vet and his family involved, with animal encounters a-plenty. You may have seen the series on the Hallmark Channel.

Deon Stewardson – a portrait in a puff of smoke. Image: Chris Marais

Stewardson’s house in Aberdeen consists of part of the stables from which the huge and volatile Carel van Heerden used to steal British horses during the Anglo-Boer War. A blacksmith-turned-rebel, Van Heerden once captured a junior Brit officer, stripped him naked, fixed spurs onto his feet and made him trudge back into Aberdeen. Carel van Heerden finally died outside the Mother Church in a gunfight with British troops.

Stewardson – ever the innovator – has decorated a tree outside with body parts from old dolls. 

“I used to offer the local kids a rand for a popkop,” he laughs. “But pretty soon the tree was full. I realised they were ripping the heads off their sisters’ dolls, so I stopped buying them up.”

He drops me off at the Art’s Café.

“Don’t forget to spell my name right.”

Bug-hunting Lesser Kestrels mob the air around the tower of the Aberdeen Mother Church. Image: Chris Marais

Boer leader Carel van Heerden died in a hail of British bullets at the front door of the Aberdeen NG Church on May 12, 1902. Image: Chris Marais

Sunny Aberdeen, with the Mother Church visible from everywhere. Image: Chris Marais

The Headless Thompson Gunner

If you ever pass Aberdeen on your trans-Karoo drive, drop in at the Kamdebo Padstal where they make fine jaffles. I breakfast on a lamb jaffle laced with sweet home-made mustard and suitably fortified, hive off back to the Art’s Café to ask Hilary Graham one last question: why Aberdeen?

“What I love about Aberdeen, in fact what I love about the Karoo, is that there is no poetry. I hate places that are full of poetry. At the end of the day, you can drown in poetry.”

What? Once I’m safe and back home in Cradock, I phone him up for some more info on the “no poetry” thing.

“It’s easy to come here, take a picture and leave, thinking you’ve captured the essence of the Karoo. But this place is so challenging, so vast that it defies the stock clichés. I think it still has to be discovered. And that’s what I love about the Karoo.”

A few months later, sitting beside Hilary at a home-dinner in Aberdeen, I ask him a question which stumps most other people:

“Do you know the lyrics to Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner?”

“You mean the Warren Zevon number?”

We break into song, verse by verse, with various wives agape, swig some more red wine and hit the rousing final chorus with a flourish.

Who said there’s no poetry in the Karoo? DM/ML

This is an extract from Karoo Roads I – Tales from South Africa’s Heartland, by Chris Marais and Julienne du Toit. 

‘Karoo Roads’ Collection. Image: Chris Marais

For an insider’s view on life in the Dry Country, get the three-book special of Karoo Roads I, Karoo Roads II and Karoo Roads III for only R800, including courier costs in South Africa. For more details, contact Julie at [email protected]

In case you missed it, also read A Karoo Graveyard: Thoughts, mist and memories