Places

Rail bridge over the Gariep River at Norvalspont.

Karoo dreams, dilapidated  farm building 30 km east of Strydenburg in the early evening. 

Dilapidated farm outpost 30 km east of Strydenburg in the early evening. 

Perplexing and iconic ……

Monument to the Franz family; the remains of the Lutheran church funded by the Franz family on the Farm Borkum, today Senwabarwana, Limpopo.   Starting with Robert& Helene Franz who founded one of the earliest hospitals in the Transvaal, at least four generations of the Franz family provided healthcare here ….

Afternoon rain on the grave of a brother of Thobejane. This resting place must have been a cattle byre once and the Morula and Brown Ivory tree, seeds consumed by the cattle ?

Old Wagon bridge railing, Hopetown

Front room in the Franz family homestead, Prof Franz now in his 80’s recounted many a happy memory of this now neglected and ruined house ….

This corrugated iron and wood prefab building served as the accommodation for High ranking railway officials in Britstown. The building comprised of two identical units each with a kitchen, living room and bedroom.  The building was beautifully appointed; with wood panelling inside and a central face brick fire place that served both units. It no doubt is of British make and may have dated to the 1920’s ?   When I revisited two months later the building had been completely recycled and only the chimney remained!

The remains of the heart of the house. Formerly the kitchen in the Franz homestead 

Original station building dating to the Anglo Boer War of 1900. With the building of the Gariep dam in the 1940s the railway was rerouted and the station has remained like this ever since.  

Kitchen interior of a vernacular building, formerly a “brak dak” in the town of Strydenburg. The house was inherited by the Du Tiot familyformer servants in the house. Desolate poverty ….

Roofs in the Media of Tunis

Night scene in New York City

Escalator to the subway.... 

NY world trade centre memorial

New York

Brooklyn bridge at minus 16 and there are still tourists !

In any other city the church spires would have been a landmark, in Manhattan the church is dwarfed... 

Frank Lloyd Wright: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Trees seem strangely out of place in the concrete jungle of New York

The picture we are all familiar with ?

Ancient Roman city of Thysdrus, if you sit quietly you hear the suffering of man and beast above the crowd...