Growing-Up

Our farm Die Vlei in the Eastern Cape

I was born in 1954 in Burgersdorp, Eastern Cape and grew up on a large sheep farm in the district.

My father told us stories in front of the fire: on a cold, dark night Hansie and Rosie set out on the back of a little wooden cart. Instead of horses the cart was drawn by two swift hares. Right through the night the hares ran as fast as they could while yellow eyes glared at the poor children.

My mother, a Van den Heever, told us about their visits to Riverbend in the district of Venterstad on Saturday afternoons. A broad net was held at knee-height by all the children and grown-ups. Then they would wade through the water as one and they’d catch dozens of plump mudfish. Now the river's dried-up, the fish gone and nothing is left of the once graceful farm.

Our farm I can recall all the koppies and vleis and I still know the lay of the land like the palm of my hand. Its landscape and its seasons, my family, the relationships between us and the black people have informed most of my story-telling.

Learning

My parents sent me to the best school they could afford, to Grey College in Bloemfontein.

- Happiness : Peer pressure at boarding school was immense. I was only happy in the Afrikaans and English and Latin classes.

When I read the opening line of Etienne Leroux’s Seven Days at the Silbersteins: The Van Eedens felt it was about time for their only son to marry someone who, in other respects, was worthy of their standing, I thought: if only I could write like that one day.

- Critical Mind : I wanted to become a minister in the Reformed Church and read Greek, Latin and Hebrew at university. The desks in the School of Theology smelled like dusty parchment. I switched to reading philosophy which developed my capacity to think critically. For the first time I could see how politics and social relationships operated in South Africa. At least four of my philosophy lecturers were bright and stimulating. I mastered on the late, melancholic philosophy of Max Horkheimer.

Fighting

My parents, sister & brother at a Republic Day Celebration, Bloemfontein, 1968

In between school and university I was conscripted into the Air Force.

- First Journal : Suddenly everyone was treated equally. In the mess I sat next to a boy from Woodstock, Cape Town, who didn’t know how to use a knife and fork. I requested to be sent to the Angolan boarder. The dry bush and huge sunsets were ominous. I liked all of it and made notes in my first journal.

‘86 – Leaving : I was junior lecturer in philosophy for one year and did a bit of copy writing and after a short stint at the Sunday Times I was fired.

- Witblitz (1986) My first collection of short stories was published by the small, establishment-defying Taurus Publishers. When the State of Emergency was declared, I decided to migrate to Australia. My parents were in the Kruger National Park when I flew out. I think their hearts were broken.

Cooking

I learnt all about tofu and hijiki in my brother’s macro-biotic café in Sydney.

- Love By cooking I managed to earn a living during all of my 20 years in Australia. Gerard Dunlop came into my life. He was unconventional, bolshy and he could talk. He suited my tastes.

- Bum-bee Gerard Dunlop’s family is from Belfast, Northern Ireland and they speak Hiberno-English. Gerard told me this story about his father, Gerry. He’d say to the kids: ‘right now!

If a bum-bee stung a bum-bee
on a bum-bee’s bum
what colour
would the bum-bee’s
bum be?’

And then you’d have to say a colour like red. And then he’d laugh his head off.

- Macro-biotics In Melbourne I set up Wild Rice Wholefood Café and served all the lacto-vegetarians of the city. It became successful and I managed to save-up for writing sabbaticals.

In Cape Town with dogs

- Never again The Long Table on the Mornington Peninsula, Melbourne (2000- 2003) was my last venture in hospitality. After that I stopped reading recipe books.

- Wabasabi Gerard Dunlop was front of house, I was head chef and Julia Jeppe did the desserts. A man saw the interior we’d created: the straw ceiling and slate floor, the long, wooden table and the open fire-places. He said the Japanese have a word for this style; they call it wabasabi.

- Slow Food We served slow-growing suckling pigs and double chicken stock with matzo balls and an old-fashioned Eastern European apple & cinnamon cake. Our signature dish was Slow Roasted Leg of Lamb stuffed with Black Olives, Thyme, Rosemary & Garlic.

Writing

After my brother’s death in Sydney I was devastated. I retreated to Donegal on the west coast of Ireland and wrote my first novel, Foxtrot van die Vleiseters/Foxtrot of the Carnivores (1993).

My Beautiful Death (1996) My editor said: why don’t you go to Prince Albert in the Great Karoo. There’s a lovely tannie(auntie) who rents houses. I wrote Ek stamel ek sterwe in 3 months there. Later it was translated as My beautiful death.

My Simpatie Cerise (1999) and Twaalf (Twelve) (2000), a collection of short stories, followed. Now my stories were either set in South Africa or Australia or on both continents. Like all migrants I had a history in one country and a life in another. On old Italian woman in a $2 shop smelled a plastic rose with a fake dew drop on it. It’s not in vain, she said when I asked her why she was doing it. She wanted to prove to herself – she started crying - that the roses here will never smell like the ones in Calabria.

Prince Albert house where I wrote My beautiful Death

Begeerte (2003) My parents and I travelled to north western Cape, to a town called Hartswater. This was where my new novel, Begeerte(Desire), was to start. After WWii the South African government handed out plots of land to returning soldiers here. Conditions were harsh. Only the most essential tools and a house the size of a match-box were provided. Now the area seemed lush and rich with its citrus orchards and fields of peanut plants.

On our way back it poured and the dirt road was very slippery. At times you could hardly see anything through the sheet of brown rain. Every now and again a deserted farm house would appear this or that side of the road. I had the feeling of being utterly forlorn. As if we were the last of the living pushing ahead through a land that had been deserted long ago.

Trencherman (2006-2008) Gerard and I packed up and moved to Prince Albert. He thought he’d give South Africa a try. I had come home.

Discomfort – My father died and our beloved farm was sold. Sometimes it seemed that my father’s prophecy (South Africa will sink) which I fiercely opposed at the time, could just come true. In this town the disparity between the haves and the have-nots was still about colour. It made us uncomfortable. We’d stand in the supermarket queue with chocolates and red wine and behind us would be a mother and children with flour and sugar.

On summer afternoons the breeze from the mountains used to be cool. But at that time the evening breeze turned hot and when it stopped a fierce northerly blew sand into town from the plains of the Great Karoo.

Dystopia - I got the idea of writing a Heart of Darkness story set in a future South Africa where the infrastructure had collapsed and peoples’ chances of living a decent life were destroyed by AIDS, hunger and greed. I called the novel Horrelpoot (clubfoot). Two years later it was published in English as Trencherman.

Rewards

Foxtrot van die Vleiseters, My Beautiful Death and Begeerte (Desire) were respectively awarded the WA Hofmeyr Prize for best Afrikaans novel of the year.

Burenfoxtrot was published in Germany and Ik stamel ik sterf and Dans aan het einde van de dag in the Netherlands.

I had the privilege of teaching creative writing in Posnañ, Poland and in Olomouc, the Czech Republic. In 2007 I was writer-in-residence at NIAS, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies.

THE GREAT KAROO & THE BIG SCRUB

A Queenslander in Lismore NSW

Now I lead a nomadic existence between South Africa and Northern New South Wales and leave a big carbon footprint.

I never feel quite at home anywhere anymore.

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