TSWAING CRATER, SOSHANGUVE, PRETORIA
THE BIG HOLE, KIMBERLEY, NORTHERN CAPE
‘I look at the moon basically every night because I walk up and down between the kitchen and here. Actually when I look at the moon I can almost tell you how many days it will be until full moon or till dark moon. You pick up a lot of things about nature - like when it will rain. You can tell by the baboons and how they are screaming, by the ants carrying their food. Nature is absolutely part of my life here and I wouldn’t exchange it for the town - not at all. I mean, you can’t actually describe all of this, you got to be here to feel it - to be part of it… sort of. I just acknowledge myself as a very privileged person, to be here - just to see the sky and nature on the ground and everything all come together. You have to be here to see what is going on - to live with it. Then you start to believe how great nature is, how great God is. I mean he put everything there for us and it fits together like a puzzle.’
TJOL HERBST, TOLHUIS, R354 BETWEEN MATJIESFONTEIN AND SUTHERLAND
’I’m actually from Kuilsriver, but we moved to Paarl and I got heavy asthma - so we decided to move here. Since we’ve been here I don’t get any asthma - nature became my health-pill here. I’m relaxed. We are totally off the grid - we don’t have a landline, or cell reception and the police van doesn’t even catch his radio signal here. We are cut off from the world and like it that way - and the kids can’t bother us unnecessarily. We do go to town once a week and then they can reach us. If there is an emergency the police will come out and call us. I prefer this place, because here you can actually see the stars - you get the feeling that they are so near that you want to pick them like flowers, while in town you don’t see it as there are too many lights around you. Here you get the darkness and it is so near to nature.’
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TSWAING CRATER #4, SOSHANGUVE, PRETORIA
TSWAING CRATER #2, SOSHANGUVE, PRETORIA
TSWAING CRATER #3, SOSHANGUVE, PRETORIA
TOM LEARMONT #3, SCI-FI WRITER, GHOST WRITER, ILLOVO, JOHANNESBURG, GAUTENG
TOM LEARMONT #1, SCI-FI WRITER, GHOST WRITER, ILLOVO, JOHANNESBURG, GAUTENG
The name Tswaing means "place of salt" in Tswana and the crater was also formerly known in English as Pretoria Saltpan crater and in Afrikaans as Soutpankrater.
The meteorite was probably about the size of an average house and it would have taken no more than 10 seconds to slam into the ground after entering the Earth's atmosphere, releasing the energy of about 100 Hiroshima atom bombs. Life within a 35-kilometre radius would have been wiped out.
TSWAING CRATER, SOSHANGUVE, PRETORIA
‘Well there is a big mark in time, Soutpan, Tswaing. I don’t know how many million people would die if it would happen today but it was 200 000 years ago. I forget the size of the meteorite - a few thousand tons, and it threw up this central point and a ring of hills. There are legends - nobody will go there at night. It’s called the hills of the spirits.’
Tom Learmont, Sci-fi Writer, Johannesburg
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’I’m actually from Kuilsriver, but we moved to Paarl and I got heavy asthma - so we decided to move here. Since we’ve been here I don’t get any asthma - nature became my health-pill here. I’m relaxed. We are totally off the grid - we don’t have a landline, or cell reception and the police van doesn’t even catch his radio signal here. We are cut off from the world and like it that way - and the kids can’t bother us unnecessarily. We do go to town once a week and then they can reach us. If there is an emergency the police will come out and call us. I prefer this place, because here you can actually see the stars - you get the feeling that they are so near that you want to pick them like flowers, while in town you don’t see it as there are too many lights around you. Here you get the darkness and it is so near to nature. I look at the moon basically every night because I walk up and down between the kitchen and here. Actually when I look at the moon I can almost tell you how many days it will be until full moon or till dark moon. You pick up a lot of things about the nature - like when it will rain. You can tell by the baboons and how they are screaming, by the ants carrying their food. Nature is absolutely part of my life here and I wouldn’t exchange it for town - not at all. I mean, you can’t actually describe all of this, you got to be here to feel it - to be part of it… sort of. I just acknowledge myself as a very privileged person, to be here - just to see the sky and nature on the ground and everything all come together. You have to be here to see what is going on - to live with it. Then you start to believe how great nature is, how great God is. I mean he put everything there for us and it fits together like a puzzle. I got no worry about time because when you are in nature you lose time, because there are so many things you observe. Time is not a factor here. You must not worry about getting older because you will get older.’
TJOL HERBST #2, TOLHUIS, R354 BETWEEN MATJIESFONTEIN AND SUTHERLAND
’I’m actually from Kuilsriver, but we moved to Paarl and I got heavy asthma - so we decided to move here. Since we’ve been here I don’t get any asthma - nature became my health-pill here. I’m relaxed. We are totally off the grid - we don’t have a landline, or cell reception and the police van doesn’t even catch his radio signal here. We are cut off from the world and like it that way - and the kids can’t bother us unnecessarily. We do go to town once a week and then they can reach us. If there is an emergency the police will come out and call us. I prefer this place, because here you can actually see the stars - you get the feeling that they are so near that you want to pick them like flowers, while in town you don’t see it as there are too many lights around you. Here you get the darkness and it is so near to nature. I look at the moon basically every night because I walk up and down between the kitchen and here. Actually when I look at the moon I can almost tell you how many days it will be until full moon or till dark moon. You pick up a lot of things about the nature - like when it will rain. You can tell by the baboons and how they are screaming, by the ants carrying their food. Nature is absolutely part of my life here and I wouldn’t exchange it for town - not at all. I mean, you can’t actually describe all of this, you got to be here to feel it - to be part of it… sort of. I just acknowledge myself as a very privileged person, to be here - just to see the sky and nature on the ground and everything all come together. You have to be here to see what is going on - to live with it. Then you start to believe how great nature is, how great God is. I mean he put everything there for us and it fits together like a puzzle. I got no worry about time because when you are in nature you lose time, because there are so many things you observe. Time is not a factor here. You must not worry about getting older because you will get older.’
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TELESCOPES, TELESCOPE SHOP, BRAKPAN, GAUTENG
‘When I was a young girl, we didn’t have telescopes. We had small binoculars mostly because it was after the world war. Today there are so many telescopes - and they are amazing. From this little size from where you could see the moon and the Planets to that big one over there where you can see literally everything.’ - Jess van Elferen, Shopkeeper, Telescope Shop, Brakpan, Gauteng.
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TOM LEARMONT #2, SCI-FI WRITER, GHOST WRITER, ILLOVO, JOHANNESBURG, GAUTENG
‘My three books are all about time, in them time becomes plastic, malleable, time becomes a thing which people can use as a weapon, time becomes a thing like where you can play a leapfrog war, you leap ahead in time, you get there earlier than the guy you are trying to destroy, you wait and when he pops out of sub metric space into metric space you zap him! That is where time becomes a theatre of war. Also, I love time. Everyone knows this story, about the two young fish. They are swimming along one morning, and they say ‘o what a lovely morning’. And they meet the old fish, he comes past and he says ‘hey, hallo boys’, he says ‘the water is nice this morning hey’. The young fish says, ‘what’s he mean by water?’. That’s like weird, like us saying - what do you mean by time? Is time granular, I don’t know. I think they worked out something like there is a Planck length for time, I’m not sure, don’t quote me on that. One of my characters says ‘time and space are granular they inhabit each others intestines, give them a shake and they come apart’. But this is all bullshit, all science-fiction. A real physicist would laugh, mind you I do have a physicist friend who read my books. He said ‘ja I enjoyed it’, he said ‘Jesus Tom you know, you come up with all this absolute nonsense and made up bullshit and it is so plausible!’. Which is a big compliment.’
THEO FERREIRA, PLANETARIUM MANAGER, CAPE TOWN
‘What makes this system so powerful is that you can leave the earth - you are not stuck on the earth anymore. Traditional planetarium shows are stuck on the earth looking up at the night sky, now we can fly away from the earth and travel through the universe, moving out into space - right back to the beginning. We don’t actually have data sets that go that far back, but be can get really close, looking at some of the galaxies billions of light years away from us and, of course, when you are looking at those galaxies you are looking back in time - into the past. This is strange because we are looking at objects develop, seeing them as they were a very long time ago.’
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TEBOHO NXELE, SPACE WEATHER ASSISTANT, SANSA, HERMANUS, CAPE TOWN
TRUITJIESKRAAL CAVES # 7, CEDERBERG
TRUITJIESKRAAL CAVES # 1, CEDERBERG
TRUITJIESKRAAL CAVES # 5, CEDERBERG
TRUITJIESKRAAL CAVES # 2, CEDERBERG
TRUITJIESKRAAL CAVES # 3, CEDERBERG
AFRIKAANS TAALMONUMENT, PAARL, WESTERN CAPE
'"Ten . . . Nine . . . Eight . . . Seven . . . Six . . . Five . . . Four . . . Three . . . Two . . . One . . . Zero!"
The constant punch of thunder shakes the whole area. All eyes are focussed on the heavens or monitors that show images of the heavens. Inside them VR3 shrinks on top of an intense column of fire, first moving slowly, then faster, then unbelievably fast until it microscopically swims into the blue sea of heaven.'
'If man ventures out into space, he needs to be prepared to realise quite a few other things. That he was not the first intelligent being to do so and that he was not even the first child of Terra to leave his mother planet in this way. He'll learn to be humble. And further: That Terra is not the only planet in the heavens. That he can forget his allegiance to Terra. That he himself might change out in space, that he will never totally be and think the same as his fellow humans on Terra.'
From chapter 1 and chapter 11, Die Groen Planeet (The Green Planet), Jan Rabie, First edition, 1961. Translated from the original Afrikaans by Nic Grobler.
Photograph inspired by Die Groen Planeet, Jan Rabie, 1961.