Skip to content
Posta — the ordinary archive
Kimberley · NCThe Long RoadPT_013·NC

The long road starts with a bird

Every account of a road trip is about the people in the car. The landscape gets a paragraph. Here it is the photograph.

PlaceKimberley · NC
RecordPT_013·NC
Published2026-10-28
Energyquiet
An ostrich standing in sparse, rocky Northern Cape landscape.
An ostrich standing in sparse, rocky ground with low vegetation and sand in the distance, in the Northern Cape.South African Tourism · CC BY 2.0

A single ostrich, sparse rocky ground, low vegetation, sand in the distance. Nothing is arranged. Nothing is on the way to anything.

The long road between provinces is a ritual because of what it does to time. Six hours in a car re-organises a family: who sits where, who controls the music, where the stops are, which garage is the good one. The stops are inherited knowledge and they are defended.

The landscape is not scenery on the way to the story. For the people who live in it, it is the address.

A platform that claims to cover the country has to be able to publish a photograph with one bird in it and no narrative at all.