Imagine, if you will, a place so vast , so wide open, that the stars stretch down to the horizon.

Imagine, if you will, a place where the silence is so deep, so profound, where absolutely nothing disturbs the stillness, that you can eat your heart beating, and every intake of breath rubs harsh and sibilant against the velvet smoothness of the night.

Imagine, if you will, a place where the peace is so profound that you can hear the background hum of the universe.

Such is the Tankwa Karoo.

I had heard about the vastness of the Tankwa Karoo, an area five hours drive north of Cape Town, an area around 200 km long x 100 km wide. I had heard that this was a place where there was almost nothing, where the hills protruded from the land almost like afterthoughts. I had heard this was a place where you can see out to the horizon, where you can see forever. Living in New Zealand, where the landscape changes every few kilometres, with a climate varies so greatly and so frequently, I found that difficult to imagine, but I was keen to find out.

And so it transpired.

Last Sunday four of us made the journey into the Tankwa, towing a small trailer full of supplies behind the Land Rover. We went in the long way around, from the Road to Sutherland, picking our way around the hills and across the valleys, through the recently washed-out roads, circling closer and closer to the park headquarters. When we arrived, the office was closed, but the key to our house was waiting for us just across the road with one of the park rangers. None of us really knew where we were going, but with the aid of the GPS, the rather rudimentary map given us by the park ranger, and some rather rough signs at key turns, we finally made it, arriving after dark at our accommodation, 45 km into the park. No electricity, no cell phone reception, just water, candles and really comfortable facilities.

The next morning, we left before sunrise and headed back towards the park headquarters, stopping along the way to photograph the kopjies (small hills) that occasionally protruded from the wide landscape. In a place so wide, so unending, they became welcome focal points, markers of scale and space and distance, brooding sentinels in the timeless silence.

Africa is old, 300 million years old, and the tortured twisting strata of the rock formations, and the surreal curves of the open faces are clear evidence of the enormous energy involved in the continent’s formation. You can’t help staring in amazement at the layers of time that lie exposed to the weather. Coming from New Zealand, which has only been above the ocean of small fraction of that time, the landscape can appear alien and threatening. You walk through the low scrub with your eyes peeled, because even though it is summer, there’s still a chance you’ll disturb a snake sunning itself in a cosy spot. And there are plenty of species to choose from, most of which won’t do you any good if you annoy them. You learn to take care of yourself here.

We followed the winding road, apparently a regional road, but one which had seen so much rain recently that we had to manoeuvre across a seemingly continuous stream of washouts. This is not a landscape used to coping with any sort of water, and there had been plenty recently. In the Tankwa 135 mm of rain annually is a good year, and all the vegetation has adapted to make the most of it. The growth rate here is strikingly slow, and the plants defend themselves against the relentless aridity and heat by either reducing the growth rates or storing water, when they can get it, in thick fleshy, pulpy leaves.

We finally reached the base of the Escarpment, as it is known, an 800 m high cliff which stretches from one side of Africa to the other, and began the long climb up the Gannaga Pass, originally built in the mid-1800s to allow access to the plains which stretch all the way north to Johannesburg. Winding our way slowly up the single-lane road, it was possible to see the hand-built walls which supported it, and allowed us to reach the top. I could imagine herds of sheep being driven down the road, their hot sweaty shepherds moving slowly along behind. I could imagine carts pulled by donkeys or oxen grinding their way up, creaking protestingly in their dry-leathered way.

Eventually we reached Middelpos, one of those towns which have a post office, a shop and a pub. And very little else.  The sign on the shop floor advised us that they were closed between 1230 and 2:30 PM. We would have to wait to fill up the Land Rover. The main street, such as it was, was a strip of dirt some 40 m wide, more of a town square really, but unpaved. The buildings shimmered and squinted in the bright light.  I felt as if I’d stepped into a spaghetti western, and at any time Clint Eastwood would steer, slit-eyed and unshaven, around the corner to face a gaggle of obviously unkempt and low-moraled Mexican bandidos. Then somebody moved, emerging owlishly into the harsh light, and we were able to fill up and return down the escarpment.

Over the next two days, we roamed far and wide across the park, exploring, photographing and admiring the wildlife we saw. We stopped and explored the remains of the mudbrick farm houses which appeared intermittently on the landscape. We pushed open faded doors and stepped into the silence of their abandoned interiors. In places the ceilings had given way, the bamboo installation which passed for roof lining lying slumped and exhausted in defeat against the floor. We would wonder who had lived there, who would want to live there and attempt to farm this arid landscape where the summer temperatures would regularly reach 48° and in the green of winter would have been blackened into submission. Then we would come across a small fenced graveyard, whose bleached headstones would give some clue to the lives that had passed here.

And on the night, standing beneath the stars, it was possible for the nervous rustle of Springbok on the veld and listening to the shivery cry of jackals along the horizon. Alien it might appear, unforgiving it might seem, but there was a sense that it was here the true spirit of mother Africa could be found.

In the silence, in the vastness, out  along on the edge of the night.

In recent months my photography has been turning to the allegorical, moving into a space beyond interpretive, into a place of its own. That, however, didn’t seem right here.

I had fallen in love. For the first time I had found a place which had affected me as much as my beloved Maniototo. For the first time I’d found a place where the silence was even deeper, the stillness even more profound.

The Tankwa Karoo was so perfect, so pristine, and so unique, that I couldn’t bring myself to approach it on anything but its terms.

To do so would have been an act of utter disrespect.