A Falling Star

A Bright Light In The Sky.

            The winters in the Free State were bitterly cold so we used to gather in front of the kitchen stove after supper.   Here we would sit in a semi-circle stoking the fire with wood or mealie cobs.   Some children sat on the floor or on the cob bag and the little ones on Mommy or Daddy’s laps.   This was where we were told about our two Grannies who had long passed away.   We knew all the names of our Uncles and Aunts and where they lived, we knew the names of our cousins.   This was where we learned about all God’s wonderful creations and how things grew and when they should be planted.   Should there be any green mealies still soft enough to eat, they would be picked, peeled and placed in the hot coals in the ash box beneath the fire and we would eat ‘Braai Mealies” dripping with butter.

            One evening in the early 1940’s, as we sat there, suddenly there was a bright light for a few seconds and then darkness again.   What was it?  A car perhaps? but we heard nothing!   Daddy went outside to see but there was nothing.   A few days later we heard that a meteorite had entered the Earth’s atmosphere and was burning as it came down and landed somewhere in South West Africa.   What a bright light and what a scare we all had!   My dad tried to explain that it was a falling star like all the others that we could view every evening when it was dark.

            I only learned much later in life that some two billion years before, a very big meteorite had came down and struck the earth in the Parys Area of the Free State.   It was so big that it buried itself in the earth causing a huge basin surrounded by hills.   This is known today as the “Vredefort Dome”

 From the Internet :- “Two billion years ago a meteorite 10km in diameter hit the earth about 100km southwest of Johannesburg, creating an enormous impact crater.   This area, near Vredefort in the Free State, is now known as the Vredefort Dome.   The meteorite, larger than Table Mountain, caused a thousand-megaton blast of energy.   The impact would have vaporised about 70 cubic kilometres of rock - and may have increased the earth's oxygen levels to a degree that made the development of multicellular life possible

The inner circle of the Vredefort impact site is still visible and can be seen in the beautiful range of hills near Parys and Vredefort.

(Photo :- The Dome Bergland Meander)