On Saturday, we went to visit some friends out along Seven Passes Road. Lovely kuier with nice food, great company and interesting conversation. Their house is atop a hill, overlooking forests and valleys above Wilderness.

And thus, it was well after dark when we decided to head home. We said our goodbyes, and I negotiated the track from their house on the top of the hill down to the Passes road.

Wow… Where the track joined the road, I looked left and right as usual.

Pitch. Black.

As in No Light. Nothing. Black, enveloping velvet. Just my car’s lights facing the opposite side of the road. Not a chance of missing someone’s car travelling towards us, unless it was cloaked in stealth bomber paint and running no lights…

And so we drove, through the twisting, winding loops and valleys of this legendary road. Through the thick indigenous forest that reaches right down to the road’s edge, trailing vines, soaring trees draped in lichens. Past small patches of the old stone retaining wall (probably built when the road was made). The car’s lights swept across masses of vegetation, barely puncturing the darkness. Not a single car came from the opposite direction. Through the dip of the Kaaiman’s River, crossing the old bridge, every approaching corner flickering like an old movie scene.

Then, as we got closer to town, a faint glow in the sky — the lights of George taking over from inky black. Ten minutes later we were in the centre of town, driving past pubs and clubs with patrons out on the verandahs, buses and cars with their lights flashing and blinking, traffic lights on the go, late-night workers going home.

(It was probably Earth Hour at some point, but this was almost prehistoric.)