Karoo journal · Part 1: Cape Town to Karoo National Park.
At six on the morning of 27 August, everything was packed. Not necessarily organised, but packed. I was about to leave Cape Town on the first solo trip of my life, with my cameras and an idea I wanted to give a proper chance.
Maryke had suggested that I go. I was excited, but the thought of leaving her and the kids was the first thing that came to mind. Once it was actually time to say goodbye, it was much harder than I had expected.
I have always told myself, “One life, live it.” That morning, those words came with questions. Was it too late to chase a dream now that I had a wife and two children? How did I make room for something I wanted so badly when leaving the people I loved already felt this difficult? I was barely on my way and I was questioning myself.
There was more behind this trip than a few days away. I was looking beyond the construction work I had known for so long, towards a life with more photography, filmmaking and adventure in it. I could feel that I wanted something to change. I could not yet say exactly what that new life would look like.
At a stop on the pass outside Cape Town, I spoke about saying goodbye to familiar things and looking forward to something new. Then I admitted that I was not quite sure what that something was. Perhaps I would find out along the road.
These photographs hold the part of the journey between that goodbye and the park gates. Yellow flowers across the open ground. A riverbed turning through the earth. Long stretches of road beneath clouds, and hills on the horizon. Looking through them now, I am reminded of how much there was to photograph before I had even reached the place I was travelling to.
That was part of why I wanted to go in the first place: to make time to look, to photograph and to try telling a story of my own. The drive was already giving me something to work with, even while I was still trying to settle into being away on my own.
Eventually I arrived at Karoo National Park. The first stretch of the journey was behind me. I had not worked out all the questions I had brought along, but I had made a start.
For this first part of the story, that is where I will leave it: at the park gates, with the adventure still ahead.
