From the start, the land had shown itself to be desperate for some good rain. Midmar, Hazelmere, Albert falls, all of them, suffering very low water levels. The Free State only got worse & now the Northern Cape’s looking like landscapes from NASA’s “Curiosity”.

So imagine my surprise when I took a dirt track (Nyati’s trying to tread the path less travelled) to Vallus, not shown on my map, & rolled straight into centerpivot central. There was water spraying EVERYWHERE. The Vaal river snakes through this valley which produces all manner of crops, vines, citrus, cattle feed, in fact there’s so much irrigation, centre pivots pivoting right & left, that anything you want to plant, grows here.
But, oh my God,  the efficiency.  I didn’t see ANYBODY walking around… Well you know what I mean, walking. You’re sure to have seen our legions of “workers”… Here, nothing. The only people I saw were driving farm implements… In the fields. Maybe it was tea time. 😉

Anyway…

All this water being taken out of the Vaal to service just this one tiny,  huge actually, but in the context of the country, tiny, farming community. I had to see how much was left, so I turned at the sign showing a fish & there it was… Sluggish, wide & brimming up to the perfectly manicured grass banks

Apparently immune to the dozens of 150mm pipes pumping non-stop on both sides, the Vaal slowly headed for the Atlantic… Fat & full as a tick

Why doesn’t it soak away into the desert ? Hell, the Tugela, Umfolosi & all our East flowing rivers are practically dry… You can walk through them

There must be a hellova clay layer, or rock perhaps.  I asked a local where all this fucking water came from,  he said, “The Vaal dam”…
“Okay”… 😕

Regardless of the origin of the Vaal, (I know some smart arse’s already googling) it produces a narrow ribbon of “paradise” right through the country’s harshest landscape.

It’s so very cool ???? relaxing here, on the river bank, in the busom of Mother Nature herself. Yesterday,  in the space of only 3 glasses, I saw 2 pairs of pigeons nestbuilding, 1 hen already set on her eggs above me, &, to me, a strange thing.  A single, big old spurwing goose flew over head leading a whole formation of sacred ibis. (Thank God Alan wasn’t there)  😮  I’ve not seen that before. Another lovely sight… The swallows have arrived, skimming along the mud banks, millimetres above the water they make everything else, the duck, geese, cormorants all of them, look cumbersome in flight.
Even the ostriches’ve got Spring fever… I photographed one today, she had eggs scattered out in the sun, all around her…Can’t they count  ?  There again, any Girl passing a nest full of those, could be excused for being somewhat confused. 😮

So while I’m on the subject of birds, I heard a classic today. Nyati’d happily rolled along the road between one end of nowhere & somewhere else in the magnificent Bo Karoo. We were approaching Marydale, about 10 km out,  when the little organism (careful with the spelling) sitting somewhere deep in my cerebral subconscious  suggested I turn off, here, NOW… Naturally I did.
We’re almost at the bird thing.

Now I was on Hendri Greonewalts farm… Enough to say he casts a very heavy shadow. Once he’d given me permission to park Nyati amongst his sheep. I asked how secure it would have been to overnight in Marydale.

Now the birds.

He laughed, & by way of explanation, told me this story… He said that recently he had some Germans arrive in a hellova state dragging a big complicated looking trailer behind them.  They were flying racing pigeons back to Knysna & had stopped overnight in Marydale. Imagine, in the early hours, they found that the locals had stolen & eaten most of the birds… Feathers, bones & a few leg rings were all they recovered. 😮 😛

Hey hey… Africa… Ya gotta love it. B-)