Karoo thunderstorms in the Great Karoo. The Swartberg Pass is not tarred and can be treacherously slippery after rain. It also becomes impassable after heavy snowfalls on the mountain, a not infrequent occurrence in winter. Poet Thomas Hardy wrote of the Karoo in his poem "Drummer Hodge". In "Bridge-Guard in the Karroo", Rudyard Kipling evoked the loneliness experienced by blockhouse soldiers at Ketting station on the Dwyka River while guarding the Karoo railway track, a lifeline during the South African War (excerpts). Karoo The Karoo ( ; from a Khoikhoi word, possibly "garo" "desert") is a semi desert natural region of
Gibson Desert severe drought which had dried up all of the springs and depleted the bush foods, a group of the Pintupi people who were living a traditional semi-nomadic desert-dwelling life, walked out of a remote wilderness in the central-eastern portion of the Gibson Desert (northeast of Warburton) and made contact for the first time with Australian society. They are believed to have been perhaps the last uncontacted tribe in Australia. On the eastern margin of the region, population centres (which include people of European descent) include Warburton, Mantamaru and Warakurna. Young Indigenous adults from the Gibson Desert region work in the