Travel

During two years of so-called national service, one was forced to become acquainted at close quarters with a fairly sizeable portion of the country. Apart from travelling with the military by train from East London to Ladysmith in the then Natal and then from there to Kimberely, during various monthly passes I travelled to Johannesburg, Durban and, probably a dozen times back home to East London, and then back again to Kimberley. Sometimes I was lucky and organised a lift, but often I would hitch-hike the 800km trip - 200 to Bloemfontein, 200 toAliwal North, 200 to Queenstown and 200 home. I think we got off from the Thursday afternoon and had to be back again on Monday morning. This meant I spent the whole of Sunday hitching back to Kimberley. The eight-hour journey was often made a whole lot longer if lifts weren't forthcoming. Anyway, on a few occasions when I cadged a lift with mates, I took the opportunity to sketch the odd koppie along the way.




This was drawn on a sketch pad I obviously slapped together from waste paper. Drawn while travelling at speed, it would have been done in a few seconds.




I rather enjoy the sense of movement in this drawig of koppies, again done in a few seconds while travelling.




On one occasion, when I had no paper to hand, I grabbed an Afrikaans newspaper that was lying around and found a page with small type, using this as a backdrop to the sunset behind very rapidly drawn koppies.



Again drawn on newspaper, here I managed to get more detail in the koppies. But again it was drawn in a few seconds as the sun sank in the west and we hightailed it home.