Are You Lonesome Tonight?

On a whim, OBIE OBERHOLZER starts up his old Isuzu bakkie and sets off through the Tsitsikamma for Storms River Village, where Elvis and Marilyn live

- Obie Oberholzer

We have just returned from a mind-boggling, eye-staggering, neverrrrrrrr-ending, bloody unbelievable, eight-week, 6 000-kilometre trip to the Australian Outback of northern Queensland. I am not a travel writer’s backside, so please excuse my unbalanced, oblong sentence.

How was it, you might ask? Well, I’m still collating the infinite collections of impressions driving around in my head. At a small town with a big pub called Boulia near the Northern Territory border, a sign pointed directly east and read, ‘Alice Springs, 1 000 kilometres, the world’s longest short cut’. (This would have been on a gutted track through the North Simpson Desert.)

On arrival back at Cape Town International Airport, I was once again overjoyed by our country’s haphazardness, happy beauty and sad brutality. However, a glance at a newspaper headline filled me with dread. It highlighted that Table Mountain National Park has almost become a no-go zone for tourists and advised that security guards should accompany hikers and climbers. My ‘Happysadland’ had become my, ‘Just-shake-your-head-land’.

I slowly shuffled my depression to the rather glamorous tourist information desk and asked in a gruff voice how our iconic World Heritage Site and top tourist attraction had become a no-go zone? The pretty informant kept her lovely smile stretched and then just slowly shook her head. Right, okay, got it, get in the car, drive home. Home. You know, where the heart is.

My photographic studio was exactly as I’d left it. Untidy. In the far corner I have constructed a partitioned area that, well, we can call it The Confession Booth. This is where thoughts are evoked, dreams followed, depressions lifted and journeys planned.