When the cock crowed at 4:45 on that first Friday morning I was sure it was a mistake. But then I forced myself out of my warm bed and stuck my head into the cold Karoo air and realised that in fact the Moon had made an appearance, along with an attendant star. Together, perhaps, bright enough to fool a rooster into thinking the Sun was up.
It might seem an arbitrary spot to pick for two days of devotion to the night sky, but Prince Albert is where, many years ago on a visit to what was then an up-and-coming Karoo town, I first heard about “astrotourism”.
A couple of amateur astronomers named Tilanie and Hans Daehné had moved to town when the light pollution - first in Pretoria, and then in George - became too much. ‘We came here chasing clear skies,’ they had said. ‘The surrounding area’s dry climate constitutes an average of five cloudless nights per week.’
Showing visitors what they knew seemed the obvious thing to do. The couple infected quite a few people in Prince Albert with their love of the stars. It’s why some residents can tell you about the southern celestial “Big Five”: Sirius, the brightest star; Alpha Centauri, the nearest star; Omega Centauri, the biggest globular cluster; the Jewel Box, considered the most beautiful open cluster; and the Tarantula Nebula, a massive star-forming beauty.
Over the years, apart from the Milky Way and ‘many dim objects in a dark sky’, they’d seen shooting stars, meteors, and Comet McNaught (aka “the Great Comet of2007"), which ‘was really huge and impressive’.
They said they’d got plenty of people so hooked ‘they’d go home and buy their own telescope’.
That visit to the Karoo had got me hooked on the stars, too. If you look up on a clear night, it’s impossible not to fall for the Milky Way, stretched like glowing candy floss across the glittering firmament
Hans and Tilanie were ahead of their time, for sure. They even offered astrophotography tours. ‘We get people to sleep with the telescopes next to them and set their alarm for the middle of the night, so they can take home an astrotrophy,’ they had said.
Prior to the pandemic, there was a growing interest globally in astrotourism, and star-chasing holidays were touted to become the next big thing. But then the world turned inward for a while, and a lot of people involved in niche tourism shut down.
Hans and Tilanie’s Astro Tours was among those that vanished forever.
HOLY COMMUNION
Coming off the Swartberg Pass, I’d driven straight through Prince Albert and turned into Wolvekraal, a sheep and olive farm just 10km from town. As you head down the last 2km of dirt road into the 4 000ha farm, you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere, an isolation that’s only tempered by the presence of a farmhouse, a few guest cottages, a small flock of sheep, and lilac clouds looming above the momentous frame of the Swartberg range in the distance.
I’d booked a little cottage all to myself, with a singular aim: when the sun sank, I planned to commune with the Milky Way.
‘It’s a place of healing,’ said Berlinda Nel as she handed me the key to Granaatbos. ‘If you’re stressed, burnt out, or just sick of being cooped up, this is a place to unwind, rewind. You can find yourself here. You can talk to yourself, too; or to the rocks and stones. Nothing and nobody will disturb you.’
She wasn’t exaggerating. It wasn’t just the solitude that gripped me, though. There was the oxygen-rich Karoo air. My lungs couldn’t get enough. And the textures, so crisp, so clean. The light was surreal, the colours infinite. The only interruptions to a perfect silence were the haunted strains of a creaky windpump, sheep bleating, birds twittering.
Otherwise, an impeccable stillness prevailed. The distance from the city suddenly so much more than the kilometres physically driven.
It seemed now like light-years, an infinitude of space. Different worlds, altered realities.
After a makeshift dinner composed of farm stall ingredients, I let the fire I’d made simmer down so I could regard the scene overhead with as little light as possible. There was a dim gauze of light pollution from Prince Albert itself, but it took little away from the spectacle overhead.
I stared and I stared, and I speculated. I consulted my copy of Sky Guide Africa South 2022 and slowly but surely I made sense of its charts and sky maps.
