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Stoep Chat

’s weekly stories, observations and conversations from Knysna and beyond.

3 December 2020

TRAVELLING TORTOISE BRAVES RIVER AND WAVES

WE live and learn. A swimming tortoise? Who would have thought. Last year a leopard tortoise – or mountain tortoise as they are also known – popped up in a garden in the Noetzie…

WE live and learn. A swimming tortoise? Who would have thought. Last year a leopard tortoise – or mountain tortoise as they are also known – popped up in a garden in the Noetzie Conservancy. It is home to many wild animals, from leopards and otter to bushbuck and even aardvark, but we had never seen a leopard tortoise there before. It took a liking to the buffalo grass in the garden of Action Ads’ owner Julie, and stuck around for months, happily grazing and drinking from the ground level birdbath. It was big, and if you came near it,…

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26 November 2020

TRAVELLING FOR FUN, NOT THE INSTAGRAM SHOT

I was chatting about travelling the other day and said there were some places I would not visit again because I feared they would be too changed by tourism and development. I prefer…

I was chatting about travelling the other day and said there were some places I would not visit again because I feared they would be too changed by tourism and development. I prefer to remember them as I saw them when backpacking in my 20s. One such place is the Greek island of Paros. Paros is not conventionally beautiful. It is dry and barren, as if you had picked up a chunk of Karoo and dropped it into the Mediterranean. And very windy. But I liked it because it was so different from anywhere I had been before, and in…

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19 November 2020

QUIET CARS THAT CAN RUN ON SUNSHINE

I hear UK prime minister Boris Johnson intends to ban the sale of all new petrol and diesel cars by 2030. Quite a thing, that. Wonder if he will achieve it. I have never…

I hear UK prime minister Boris Johnson intends to ban the sale of all new petrol and diesel cars by 2030. Quite a thing, that. Wonder if he will achieve it. I have never been in an electric car, but I believe it is almost silent. Which makes me grin because it reminds me of a story about a friend who drives an electric car. More of that later. So ja, according to the Financial Times, old Boris was originally going to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040, but he is bringing the ban forward…

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12 November 2020

USA: A DEEPLY DIVIDED COUNTRY

So the US election is finally over. Thank goodness. It seemed to drag on for ages, and in some respects it was a bit of a circus. What struck me most about the results…

So the US election is finally over. Thank goodness. It seemed to drag on for ages, and in some respects it was a bit of a circus. What struck me most about the results was that it enabled the world to see in black and white just how deeply divided the United States is. Biden won, yes, but at the time of writing he had just 50.6% of the votes while Trump had 47.7%. That is a very narrow majority. It shows that US citizens are pretty much split down the middle. One Harvard University academic wrote on Monday that…

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5 November 2020

TIME FOR DARK SKY THINKING

I love looking at the stars. I especially love locating the Southern Cross, a kind of mental anchor in my life ever since I was a child. I love the evening star, first…

I love looking at the stars. I especially love locating the Southern Cross, a kind of mental anchor in my life ever since I was a child. I love the evening star, first to arrive and last to leave, and the Milky Way with its brilliant swathe of stars sweeping across the night sky. Not all star-gazers are as lucky as we are. I was astonished to learn this week that about two billion people in the world cannot see the Milky Way. They live in such brightly-lit cities that the artificial lights drown out the starlight. How sad is…

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29 October 2020

WATER ON THE MOON, POO IN THE LAGOON.

SO they have discovered water on the moon. News articles quote scientists saying the only way to find out how much water there is, is to go to the moon and start drilling. My…

SO they have discovered water on the moon. News articles quote scientists saying the only way to find out how much water there is, is to go to the moon and start drilling. My heart sinks. Another planet for us to mess up. We have been pretty bad at managing Earth’s water. A recent UN report says more than 30% of the world’s fresh water is wasted through leaks. That is criminal. We have so little as it is. Although 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered with water, only 3% is fresh water. Of that, only 1% is in…

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22 October 2020

Footprints Keep Their Secrets

SO much of our past will never be known, and the further back we go, the more difficult it is to find out how people lived thousands of years ago. But every now and…

They were found in the White Sands National Park in the United States, and are the longest set of fossil footprints ever discovered. They stretch for 1.5km in a fairly straight line across what had once been a muddy pan. The footprints show the woman was not alone. She had a toddler with her. This child’s footprints disappear when she picks it up, and reappear when she puts it down. Scientists can tell she had shifted the toddler from one hip to the other while walking, as the change in weight is reflected in her footprints. The woman was walking…

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15 October 2020

“STRANDLOPERS” TACKLE COASTAL POLLUTION

A group of modern-day strandlopers is moving along the Garden Route coast. Unlike those of yore, this group is not foraging for food and sleeping in caves. They are documenting humanity’s rubbish along…

A group of modern-day strandlopers is moving along the Garden Route coast. Unlike those of yore, this group is not foraging for food and sleeping in caves. They are documenting humanity’s rubbish along the shore - our discarded plastic, fishing lines and hooks, water bottles, plastic bags – whatever junk they find in their 185km hike from Nature’s Valley to the Wilderness. It is part of The Strandloper Project, a “citizen science” endeavor. I met them last Thursday after they had hiked from Harkerville to Noetzie, apparently one of the trickiest sections of the hike. Took them nine hours and…

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8 October 2020

A VIRUS, A PRESIDENT & A CAVEMAN

We are all a bit tired of hearing about this darn Covid-19 virus, but two news items about the virus this week made me sit up. The first was Donald Trump’s rather staged return…

We are all a bit tired of hearing about this darn Covid-19 virus, but two news items about the virus this week made me sit up. The first was Donald Trump’s rather staged return to the White House after being in hospital for the coronavirus. Instead of using his experience as a cautionary tale for the people of the United States, he did the exact opposite. He stood on the balcony, still infectious, and took off his mask. What message does that send out? That it’s okay to spread your contaminated spit? Then he said: “Don’t let it dominate you.…

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1 October 2020

WHERE ARE THE WHALES??

HAVE you noticed that there are fewer southern right whales around the coast this winter? Every winter they swim up from the Antarctic to have their babies in the warmer waters around our coast.…

HAVE you noticed that there are fewer southern right whales around the coast this winter? Every winter they swim up from the Antarctic to have their babies in the warmer waters around our coast. Every October the University of Pretoria’s Whale Unit flies along the coast to count the number of whales. They have not done the official count yet, but a preliminary count in August between Hermanus and Witsand showed there were only about half the numbers of southern rights this year compared to last year. That is startling. They think the official count is likely to be the…

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24 September 2020

WILL THE PHOENIX YIELD ANY SECRETS?

Powerful storm surges have scoured away many Garden Route beaches to reveal rocks not seen for a long time. This prompted Action Ads’ Julie to haul out her metal detector and she plans to…

Powerful storm surges have scoured away many Garden Route beaches to reveal rocks not seen for a long time. This prompted Action Ads’ Julie to haul out her metal detector and she plans to see if the lower beach levels at Noetzie will yield any interesting finds. Thinking about that reminded me of the shipwreck at Noetzie 139 years ago. I wondered whether she might unearth any buried metal from that ill-fated vessel. It really was a mysterious wreck. It was a French ship from the island of Reunion, originally called Ville Pierre and later renamed Phoenix. I could not…

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17 September 2020

WALK YOUR BRAIN FIT

You know what has really been good about lockdown? Walking. I have walked my area flat. I even walked the soles of my takkies off and had to glue them back on. True as…

You know what has really been good about lockdown? Walking. I have walked my area flat. I even walked the soles of my takkies off and had to glue them back on. True as Bob. I did not really walk much before lockdown. Hike, yes, loved it, but usually on the weekends and in the mountains. Then came lockdown and we were trapped at home. Cabin fever de luxe! Remember what it felt like when we were finally allowed out of our cages for 3 hours’ exercise a day? And then the delight when we were allowed to exercise any…

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10 September 2020

COULD TREES HELP FIND DEAD BODIES?

It’s arbour month and people are planting trees to celebrate. But here is something about trees that is both astonishing, and a bit creepy: scientists in the US are trying to work out if…

It’s arbour month and people are planting trees to celebrate. But here is something about trees that is both astonishing, and a bit creepy: scientists in the US are trying to work out if trees may be able to “tell” them that a dead body is buried underneath them. It’s all happening at The Body Farm at the University of Tennessee. You may have heard of it. Its real name is the Forensic Anthropology Centre and it was established in 1981 to help investigators understand how a human body decomposes. All the bodies are donated by people who want to…

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3 September 2020

JUMBO ENCOUNTERS

Most people have never seen a Knysna elephant, but a lucky few have had close encounters. Dave Reynell, a retired Forestry Department official, is one of them, and contacted me after the…

Most people have never seen a Knysna elephant, but a lucky few have had close encounters. Dave Reynell, a retired Forestry Department official, is one of them, and contacted me after the recent Stoep Chat on the demise of the Knysna elephants. Trained as a forester at Saasveld, Dave worked in the department’s indigenous forestry planning section and has walked the length and breath of the Tsitsikamma forest. He saw elephants several times. In the late 80s he became “obsessed” with photographing the last surviving individuals, and for months “bounced around the tracks in Harkerville forest in my Mini.” December…

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27 August 2020

TACT CAN BE TRICKY

IT is not easy being tactful when you cannot speak the other person’s language. Particularly difficult when people are being kind, but you really don’t want what they are offering, yet have none…

IT is not easy being tactful when you cannot speak the other person’s language. Particularly difficult when people are being kind, but you really don’t want what they are offering, yet have none of those well-oiled words you can rely on in your own language to deal with an awkward situation without giving offence. Back in my 20s a friend and I were backpacking on a Greek island and stayed in a room behind the house of a local couple. They could not speak English, we could not speak Greek. One evening we returned to find a long table in…

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20 August 2020

DEMISE OF KNYSNA’S ELEPHANTS

STILL no conclusive answer as to what killed the 281 elephants in the Okavango Delta. The authorities have ruled out poaching, as the tusks were intact, as well as anthrax, starvation, viral disease and…

STILL no conclusive answer as to what killed the 281 elephants in the Okavango Delta. The authorities have ruled out poaching, as the tusks were intact, as well as anthrax, starvation, viral disease and pesticides. “Well”, said a fellow stoep-chatterer, “Botswana has 130,000 elephants so it is not a threat to their population.” Dangerous way of thinking. The Tsitsikamma once teemed with elephants, and how many do we have today? One. It was home to thousands of buffalo – Buffalo Bay was named after them – and how many do we have today? None. In the old book Timber and…

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