'It was in the Karoo that I realised that I was not destined to be a geologist even though I had a BSc degree in Geology, paid for by my mother and hard won despite lots of surfing in Durban, South Africa. My first and only experience as an employee was as a geologist in the Karoo out of Sutherland for a whole year. I found many things very different to the East Africa I had grown up in. I was far from the sea, and in very unfamiliar terrain. But this was a terrain that I came to appreciate as time went on. I spent a lot of time walking along sandstone horizons looking for uranium. But my heart wasn’t in it. Instead I spent much too much time looking through binoculars at distant mountains and searching for some movement amongst the rocks that would reveal an animal. I saw lots of sheep but I also came across kudu, steenbok, caracal and eagles. I even discovered some un-documented rock paintings. But the one thing I never got used to was the way that the weather could change overnight from a blue cloudless sky and a nova-like sun that crisped one’s skin to freezing-cold snow storms that had the potential to give you frostbite. I was badly prepared for this kind of weather and the first time it happened I drove down the street to Sutherland’s (then) old-fashioned farmers Co-Op. Here two laughing, female Afrikaans shop assistants dressed me up like a ski store mannequin and then squeezed my Michelin man-like shape out the door into a howling snowstorm. The next day the snow melted and the sun blazed down from the sky as if nothing had happened. The Karoo really is a very atmospheric place, and it’s the only place I have been in Africa where a heavy winter jacket and a set of woolen gloves could be found wedged down behind the passenger seat of my Land Cruiser.'

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