THEEBUS & KOFFIEBUS

Named Teapot and Coffee Pot by early Trekboer women, Theebus and Koffiebus sit side by side near Schoombee in the Eastern Karoo. A white cross stands on Theebus, first erected in the 1960s and later replaced in the 1980s with the help of an army helicopter. Nearby are the remains of British blockhouses from the Boer War, while older histories also survive here in San rock paintings and stories of those who once used these koppies for refuge.

This part of the Karoo is unusually green, sustained by water channelled from the Orange River through the long Theebus tunnel. The landscape carries many layers, San life, colonial conflict, farming, belief, and weather, all held within two modest hill forms rising from the veld.

This was my second ten-day journey to photograph them. On the first trip Nimbus never appeared. On the third day of the second, clouds finally began to gather from the west. By late afternoon the Sneeuberg was under rain, the air was rich with blue gum, lucerne and kanna bush, and the whole landscape opened under a dome of darkening cloud and light.