A starry, starry night in Sutherland

I’m not often grateful for the scourge of Eskom’s load-shedding schedule, but it can be a tremendous boon to stargazers. Sitting in the Sutherland Planetarium’s boma shelter, having the night sky being explained to us by Willem Prins — he uses a laser pointer so bright he has to pause his demonstration when a plane flies over — the lack of street lights and other night-time lighting turns the Milky Way into an unrivalled 3D light show.

I first stayed in Sutherland almost 18 years ago. At the time I was on a seminal two-week journey around the Karoo on an old scrambler, gathering information for a book I planned to write. My late stepfather shadowed me for the two days it took me to carve a route from Loeriesfontein to Kruisrivier on a number of old explorers’ trails that saw us scaling the Roggeveld Mountains on the first day and overnighting in Sutherland that night.

Harvey was a great enthusiast for finding out everything about the world around him. As a result, he and I read up all we could about the night sky the previous evening and were determined to point the telescope in our Sutherland cottage at a number of the major constellations we had identified. Then the clouds came in and we saw nothing but the loom of the coveted firmament beyond. Yet, even though I now have a slightly better handle on our solar system and the infinitude of our universe, the naive notes I made that evening, and later published in my book Circling the Great Karoo, still ring true for a novice stargazer.

“Despite the handicap the inclement weather cast on our stargazing aspirations, Harvey and I had already discovered a common bond of startling astronomical ineptitude. No matter how hard either of us tried to remember the names and the relative positions of the major planets, stars and constellations, we couldn’t get it right. It was as though the subject was just too huge to grapple with and once you started to get the vaguest handle on it, you wondered what the point was anyway.

“I mean, take our solar system for example and our infinitesimal part in it. The sun is more than 100 times bigger than the earth and is roughly 150-million kilometres away. The earth spins on its axis at an average speed of about 1,550km/h whilst moving around the sun at approximately 106,660km/h and then the whole solar system moves through the Milky Way galaxy at around 1,120,000km/h. And when you’ve finally come to grips with all this mind-blowingly fast movement and incomprehensible size and distance, you ask yourself: Okay, but where is it all going, and why? And what about all those other galaxies; immeasurable, nebulous nebulae?”  

Since then I’ve visited Sutherland about 12 more times and each time I’ve cast my gaze skyward, hoping to gain just a little more clarity about the night sky and our place in it, with varying degrees of success. It’s been no fault of my mentors, chief of which has been Nicol van der Merwe of Blesfontein guest farm, whose long talked about dream of building a proper planetarium in Sutherland was realised about five years ago.

My wife and I seem to be more in tune with the astronomical story unfolding tonight than at previous times. Perhaps it’s because we’ve just lain horizontal and watched two informative one-hour shows on the planetarium’s domed ceiling. The first, Rising Star, contained reviews of the nearby SALT telescope, as well as the Meerkat and SKA radio-telescope arrays outside Carnarvon; and the second, From Earth to the Universe, portrayed a history of celestial discovery and took us on a general tour of our solar system and the universe beyond.

Prins, a house painter by day and “hobby” astronomer by night, also has an easy, structured and deliberate way of making sure you understand what you are looking at, and does well to give you practical examples to more easily comprehend the incredible distances between ourselves and our closest stars. For instance, when explaining the distance of Alpha Centauri (one of the Southern Cross’s pointer stars) from Earth, 4.4 light years away, Willem explains that if you sent someone a WhatsApp message on the star, it would take four years and four months to get there, and the same amount of time to get a reply.

His description of the thousands of stars in the globular cluster of Omega Centauri (the graveyard of stars) looking “like shattered glass” is brilliant, too. Then there is the “Jewel Box”, likened to “a fancy piece of jewellery” by astronomer John Herschel, when he first saw this beautiful collection of different coloured stars (the Kappa Crucis cluster in the Southern Cross). But the most impressive sighting of the night is the Orion Nebula, a purple and pink-hued assemblage of stars and gas fields located at “the middle star” in Orion’s sword handle. An additional highlight is being able to take home the photograph taken on one of the audience members’ phones, showing this “birthplace of stars and planets” with striking clarity.

Needless to say, we leave the planetarium starry-eyed, happy to embrace the cold night air on our way back to our accommodation just down the road. En route, we discuss our infinitesimal part in the universe, but console ourselves with the opinion of Prof Brian Cox (presenter of Universe on BBC Earth) that our origins can be traced back to collisions between galaxies that brought about the creation of our sun and earth, and more poignantly, his quote: “You may be small, but you are a consequence of grand events.”

Had we more time in Sutherland we would definitely take the Sutherland on Foot tour led by Amanda Du Preez, our guesthouse host. She tantalised our imaginations with historic titbits and tales of ghosts that hang around one of the town’s houses — apparently townspeople often smell the late owner’s pipe smoke and his widow’s perfume.

For now, though, we are content to sit in front of the Karoo TV (our blazing hearth) and eat a late dinner. Tomorrow we’ll decide on which of the three passes (one tarred and two dirt track options of varying difficulty) to descend back into the Tankwa Karoo, and the route our adventure motorbikes should take to cross the 110km of red earth before we hit tar again.

Travel Adviser

Why should I go: Sutherland is the undisputed stargazing capital of SA. There are four main astronomical facilities in or around the town: Tours to the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) — 15km east of the town —  arranged through the SA Astronomical Observatory (SAAO — 021 447 0025); Sterland on the edge of town (contact Jurg on 082 556 9589); Blesfontein guest farm (023 571 2631) on the western side of the escarpment (28km) and the Sutherland Planetarium (078 603 0058) in the town.

Other activities: Historical town walks (Sutherland on foot, contact Amanda Du Preez — 064 657 0693); light 4x4 trails (Ouberg Pass and Blesfontein recommended); go hiking (3km-12km) on Middelfontein farm just 2km north of town (Juanita — 071 491 2446); take a scenic day drive (if you have an all-wheel drive SUV or 4x4 I’d recommend the Bo-Visrivier circular route; the Hondefontein “postal route” to Fraserburg, returning on the R356; and for the more adventurous, take a careful drive down Ouberg Pass into the Tankwa Karoo, re-enter the town via the Verlatenkloof Pass and have a celebratory drink at Tjol se Gat). And, if you’re into palaeontology, head for the Gansfontein Paleosurface outside Fraserburg (call Marinda Oberholzer — 072 386 0102) or contact Jaco Groenewald (060 770 9567) who offers local tours on the perimeter of the town. Of course, many people go to Sutherland just to experience the icy chill of SA’s coldest town, so if it’s snow or just good old masochism you’re into, make sure to go there in the dead of winter.

Where to eat: While we self-catered, the locals assured me that both The Blue Moon (Tripadvisor 4-stars) and Ou Meule (Tripadvisor 4.5 stars) offer fine food.

Where to stay: There are many options available in the town and on guest farms in the surrounding region (see lekkeslaap and booking.com). We stayed in one of the eight cottages under the banner “Die Heks se Huis” — good value for money, excellent service.