FORGOTTEN HIGHWAY
The Karoo is so old that we can't know everything that happened here. Only stones in the veld can give us some hints. Near Fraserburg you can touch the petrified tracks left by ancient animals. On the farm Springbokoog near Vanwyksvlei, Bushmen etched their stories of elephants, lions and rhinos into the black rock. In the Hardemans Karoo, you can see corbelled houses like stone igloos left by the trek farmers.
We remember so little of the many lives lived in the Karoo. The people and animals are long forgotten, but the routes they trod still keep us on course.
That's why Piet Coetzer decided to honour these old routes. Piet, a farmer and horse breeder from Senekal in the Free State, harnessed six of his black Vlaamperd horses to a cart in 2021 and drove it from Hopetown to Ceres, following a coach route pioneered in the 1870s by the Gibson brothers during the diamond rush in Kimberley. The Gibsons’ transport service later became known as the Red Star Line.
In October 2022, Piet and his horses set out again, this time on the so-called Forgotten Highway. From the mid-1700s, hunters, trek farmers and other settlers fromin search of a new beginning.
