Carnarvon

Carnarvon sits on the flat Karoo plains at around 1,000 metres elevation, surrounded by dry scrub and the particular emptiness of the upper Karoo. It was founded as a service point for the farming community and took its name from Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert, the 4th Earl of Carnarvon, who was British Colonial Secretary in the 1860s. For most of its history, it was a quiet wool and goat-farming town with a population of around 6,500. Then radio astronomy arrived.

The reason Carnarvon and the surrounding Karoo were chosen for the Square Kilometre Array is the silence. No mobile phone towers, no broadcast transmitters, minimal air traffic, sparse population. The same emptiness that made this region seem like nowhere is exactly what makes it ideal for listening to the faintest signals from the edge of the universe. The MeerKAT array, 64 dishes spread across the Meerkat National Park 90 km from town, is one of the most sensitive radio telescope arrays ever built and a precursor to the full SKA which will eventually span two continents.

Carnarvon has set up an astronomy tourism route and there are guided visits to the SKA site, though access is controlled and bookings are essential. The Karoo Hoogland area around town is also genuine dark-sky country, and on clear winter nights the Milky Way is extraordinary from the surrounding plains. The town itself is a standard Karoo settlement: a Dutch Reformed church, a few streets, a handful of guesthouses, a museum, and a quiet main street.

Beyond astronomy, this is deep Karoo. The landscape is semi-arid and vast, game drives into the surrounding conservancies are available, and the sense of isolation is total. Carnarvon is not a destination that delivers experiences on a plate. You have to go looking. But what you find, once you're there, is hard to replicate anywhere else in the country.