Karoo Stories

"I have fond memories of the times I accompanied my grandfather on his daily chores on the farm, his visits to neighbouring farmers, and his trips to town to attend to farming issues. It is during these times that I picked up on many stories and incidents as I listened in on conversations. This is my small contribution to preserving these stories for generations to come."

Join author Theron Crawford as he tells twelve frontier stories of the Great Karoo

Set mainly in the greater Graaff-Reinet area, the tales are recounted from his own experiences or from things he heard as a young boy while accompanying his grandfathers to local gatherings in the mid-20th century.

Crawford takes us back to a time when the Karoo was struggling to recover from the hangover of its frontier existence and the scars left on its people from the Anglo-Boer war. Readers will meet the delightful and sometimes quirky characters as they gather at stock fairs, church services, coffee shops, boys' hostels and under the starry night skies to share their experiences of the old Karoo.

Experience a range of emotions as you read a sad ending to an intense love match, doomed even before it began, and about how a local farmer deployed celestial forces to put a stop to theft on his farm, not to mention the time Oom Smitty had to take his own medicine.

Crawford's formative years were a mixture of town-living and time spent visiting his grandparents on their Petersburg farm, about 70 kilometres outside the once frontier town of Graaff-Reinet.