‘Khaki professorial’ is the mental picture generated while shaking hands with the not quite 70 year-old Jurg Wagener in the tjoep-stil, arid Karoo mountain landscape of Sutherland.

Not quite what I expected as I roll into his sleepy town on a dead-quiet Sunday afternoon, for as one does, I had generated an image of the man (and the town) after our telephone conversation. But it was a friendly, genuine welcome, and his directions had been spot on when I pulled over and called him from the turn-off, as instructed.

“Come up the N1 to Matjiesfontein, turn left and after about an hour you’ll arrive in Sutherland. We are just before town, it’s called Sterland (star-land), on the right, it’s where I keep my telescopes and give my star-gazing talks…ja, I’ll meet you there…but call me from the (Matjiesfontein) turn-off, because it’s a little over an hour and there is no reception on that road”.

I can’t remember a lack of cellphone reception having ever been a problem before in my travels, in fact it’s an added attraction, but Jurg’s attention to detail – and his concern for a soon-to-be customer – was impressive. This part of South Africa has a wonderfully desolate feel, seriously less-trodden, with Sutherland appearing a bit like an oasis from the surrounding undulating scrub-land. The main regional road to Calvinia, which according to Jurg is some two hours drive away on a dirt road, runs through town.

Some 20 minutes to the north down Sarel Cilliers street is the SALT (Southern African Large Telescope), home high up on a hill to the largest telescope in the southern hemisphere; a collection of tall, silver dome-like buildings periodically inhabited by bleary-eyed astronomers and researchers who take advantage of the location’s unsullied skies. Jurg too takes advantage, introducing tour groups to the nocturnal heavens with some serious telescopes of his own. It’s a worthwhile stop when the moon is new, as SALT – as impressive as it is – is all about computers and mirrors, with no telescopes to look through.

A few mountainous rises to the west of SALT is the only live volcano in southern Africa – a favourite local hiking destination called Salpeterkop. Dormant today, geomorphological history tells us it was a heaving beast when active about 66 million years ago. These noteworthy locations are today two of the attractions drawing visitors to Sutherland.

Just as travellers with the means look for new destinations, so the list in this area is growing; there’s a quality winery over one hill to the south and impressive, well-marked hiking and single-track mountain-biking trails to the north of the one long street (bisected by a handful of cross-streets) that is ‘town’.

In these streets are numerous self-catering establishments. Among them are a couple of cottages owned by Jurg and Rita, in addition to the campsites at their Sterland ‘headquarters’ a kilometre outside town. In the almost-always quiet main street, across from the Sutherland Hotel (which caters for elderly bus tourists coming to see SALT and to listen to Jurg’s 8-10pm talks) is Kambro Kind.

It is a period-piece self-catering establishment, one of six en-suite rooms this enterprising couple have in town. Equipped with DStv, fireplaces and electric blankets, the attention to detail – arranged by Rita and their daughter Juanita – is refreshing for a town not known as a mainstream destination.

“It means ‘child of the Kambro’”, says the 60-something Rita as she shows me around, “it (kambro) is a veldkos (bush food), like sweet potato, and you have to dig it out”. Serious locals can apparently make jam from it.

A feisty daughter of this arid, sparsely populated environment, Rita is obsessed with the plant-life of the Karoo. She grew up on one of the original farms of the area called Middelpos (Middle Post), purposefully positioned near a spring to the east of where the present-day town sits. Walking around the farm (with Jurg in obedient tow), Rita remembers her father building the pump that would carry water from the spring to their farmhouse.

She also remembers him getting seriously ill after eating a type of euphorbia, dikloot melkbos. “He was always fascinated by how fast the steenbok could run and spring from side to side, and this was the only animal that ate the plant, so he decided to mix it with water and try it”.

Deeply passionate about the flora in this arid environment, when the Wageners returned to Sutherland after 20 years in Swellendam (she as a teacher and Jurg working in a bank) Rita set about creating ‘plant routes’ for visitors to the area. She wanted to share her world with anyone interested. They soon bought back Middelpos, and made a cottage available to tourists.
Jurg had meanwhile dived headlong into his new-found passion for astronomy, and having bought a sizeable telescope he had started giving talks and ‘tours of the night skies’ to tourists.

It’s not only along the walking trails that Rita has named the plants. There is a roughly 150km route heading south from Sutherland towards Ceres into the Tankwa karoo, where she has pegged little white name-tags (as you find in nurseries) into the ground with the names of interesting plants growing near the side of the road. She says it’s a day-trip, best driven from mid-August to September’s end.
The result of intense dedication, a paper guide with a key to every one of these plants (if they’ve survived the weather) is given to interested travellers. Similar guides are given to those who walk the well-marked trails on Middelpos.

We visit the thatched Saffraan cottage in a far corner of the farm, a recreation built on the remains of the original shepherd’s dwelling, which back in the mid-1800s would’ve been an outpost on the farm De List – which eventually became Sutherland. Situated near a 300-year-old grove of pear trees growing alongside a stream, this secluded cottage is quite the lover’s getaway.
Being a romantic herself, Rita has – using one one of her favourite poems from school, ‘The Passionate Shepherd to his Love’ (a series of verses by Christopher Marlowe, answered by Sir Walter Raleigh) – created a ‘lovers walk’ leading up to the cottage. The separate verses appear to the left and right of the pathway, on those same little signboards she uses to identify her plants.

“Look”, says Rita, bending down to stroke the delicate petals of an ursinia nana, “we call this a ‘kleinbergmagriet’”. She turns and gestures to what appears to be a fat daisy bush. “And that’s a ‘spekbos’”, she says, “the original farmers thought it looked like a slaughtered fat sheep”.

This area is rocky and hilly, and after a short walk (with Jurg still in attendance) to a tiny koppie, she explains how the ‘witgousblom’ appreciates the iron oxide in the soil. I ask if it’s unique to the area. “Nee”, she says, “it’s also found around Beaufort West and Calvinia”. And then she stops in her tracks. “Oh look”.

“Here’s the ‘evening flower’ I was talking about earlier”, she says. “It comes out between five and seven, it’s called the ‘tierbekvygie’ because of its serrated edge”. She points out an almost indiscernible annual herb, the pink ‘drumstick’, or manulea fregrans. Much like discovering the life around a sand-dune on Namibia’s Skeleton Coast, getting down on hands and knees in this rocky highland landscape will hold the nature enthusiast spellbound.

I have since found that the star tree, Cliffortia arborea, with its needle-like leaves, is indigenous to Sutherland and found only in the wonderfully named Unwieldy Mountains. Much like I learnt only recently that this is one of the Karoo locations where you could see the seriously endangered (1500 left) riverine rabbit. Initially surprised that Rita didn’t share these snippets with me, I then realize that in the 24 hours I was there, we had packed a lot in.

“Ag ja”, says Jurg, “she is the driving force”. While this Ceres-born former bank manager is the go-to guy for stargazing here in Sutherland – the best location in the country – he quite possibly understands that Rita’s thirst for sharing her childhood knowledge of this, the dry earth on which she was born, has inadvertently made her the best advertisement for a compelling destination.

Of course, as she would say, she couldn’t do it without the plants.