Ten degrees Celsius at 2:00pm, under a clear sky, that's what we found here on arrival. We're 1500 metres above sea level and it snowed nearby this morning, and may do so tomorrow. Fortunately we have a cosy self contained room on a farmlet and are booked in here for three nights.
The forecast minus six degrees at Volksrust last night eventuated.
We had around 300km to go, due south on good roads which were being built as we drove on them. The result was that we had to wait several times for up to 15 minutes for north bound traffic to clear the single available lane.
As we neared Colenso, a place which the Boers successfully defended against British attacks for months during the Anglo Boer War, 1899--1902, we were reminded that our friends Sandra and Bob Carson lived in Colenso Crescent, Puckapunyal, where many streets were named after places where Australians had fought.
Having read two histories of the Boer War in preparation for this particular trip, I was interested in finding one obscure memorial along the road south of Colenso. Pinpointing a likely location based on personal accounts, Internet research and using Google Earth, I was delighted to find that the memorial was exactly where I worked out it would be, not far from the railway line and accessed by a nondescript track but preceded by a small easily-missed signpost.
Churchill was a 25 year old war veteran at the time, and was operating as a war correspondent for a British newspaper. After being transported to a prison in Pretoria with many of his fellow countrymen, he managed to escape, alone, to what is now Maputo, Mozambique, where he promptly boarded a ship back to Durban to take up his journalistic duties on the front once again a few months after capture.
For the next couple of days we intend to explore this area on the eastern fringe of the Drakensburg, not far from the landlocked nation of Lesotho. Hopefully the weather will warm up a little.
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