Country Estate

In the Lions River area, on a trip to Nottingham Road (we’ll get there, we’ll get there) I looked across this magnificent panorama. It is a view across the grounds of the country estate of St Ives – a popular Midlands venue. It was here on St Ives Hill that the last remaining local lion was reputedly shot – the area having been a Zulu Royal hunting ground back in the early nineteenth century, when it teemed with elephants and lions. The name was given to the estate in 1862 when it was acquired by one John Day who named it after his birthplace in England. It became a notable horse stud in the early twentieth century. Every time I pass along this road I recall a silly childhood riddle and I idly wonder - with polygamy still a tradition in the Zulu nation - was this where it happened?

As I was going to St. Ives I met a man with seven wives,

Each wife had seven sacks; each sack had seven cats,

Each cat had seven kits:

Kits, cats, sacks and wives

How many were going to St. Ives?

I had tried to get a sweeping shot of the landscape from within the grounds of the estate, but the best I captured was taken from the roadside. The grounds secured by barbed wire fencing I held the camera above my head to exclude the fence’s intrusion, and without the use of a viewfinder in one single exposure this was the result. With lighting through the gathering rain clouds that would have inspired even Turner I think I now have a new favourite favourite!.

Country Roads ...

They would eventually take me home, as the John Denver song suggests, but with the number of public holidays we’ve had recently there has been every reason to let them do just the opposite and take me to places still on the haven’t-been-down-this-one-yet list. Roads in South Africa are alphanumerated with national highways being Ns, major metropolitan freeways being Ms, and significant regional stretches known as Rs. I have now discovered that in the countryside we also have district roads – the Ds, and I’m changing a life of mainly Ms and Ns for one of predominantly Rs and Ds. It used to be that you would expect the rs and ds to be slightly blemished, but in line with the rest of the world it seems that the SPK (slaggate* per kilometre) benchmark is increasingly being set by the ns and ms. I also observe we seem to have a new road sign. It’s a red triangle surrounding an exclamation mark! Economical no doubt, is the missing prefix SH**? Or something stronger? Anyway the SPK rate of any stretch of M, N, R or D is a kind of inherent calming measure, and so a leisurely pace along our country byways is almost mandated. Not that I’m complaining of course. It gives you time to stop and smell the grasses.

A clear blue sky with slowly building clouds on the horizon (which changed dramatically within half an hour and fifty kilometres of this shot) a dry dusty road, and parallel roadside telephone lines to lend perspective make even an otherwise everyday mundane shot, a landscape. It does remind me of perspective studies from my art student days – maybe I’ll draw and paint again one of these days. But a camera is so much easier!

*potholes