In the area where I live we have something US President Donald Trump desperately wants but so far hasn’t been able to get – a wall. Okay, so our wall is not nearly as long or as high or as strong or as illegal-immigrant proof as the one he is after but it is still a wall.

In fact, it is reputed to be the longest stretch of dry stone walling in the whole of Southern Africa.

I am kind of fond of walls myself. One of my favourite poems is Robert Frost’s Mending Wall although, conversely, its theme is about why walls are not necessarily a good thing:

“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was likely to give offence.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That wants it down…”

He has a point – one that Trump, with his self-reverence, isolationist views and divisive politics, should perhaps ponder – although that hasn’t stopped me developing my own fixation with our wall.

The first thing I wanted to know was – who built it? It looks very old and, like Frost’s wall, many of the stones have ‘spilled’ so my immediate thought was that it must have been erected by the early white settlers to prevent their stock from straying.

Not so, says our neighbour whose farm is one of those it runs through – it was built by Italian POWS during the Second World War. Wanting to find out if this was indeed true and why they had built it in the first place I popped in to see our local museum in Howick but drew a blank because the curator knew nothing about it.

So I reverted to my standard fall-back position when I am stuck for information – I sent an email to my ex- Witness work colleague, journalist Stephen Coan. He is a man who seems to know something about everything and if he doesn’t he can invariably point you in the right direction.

Sure enough, back came an article, written by Val Woodley and Marthanett Valentini, that he just happened to have stored away in his files on the subject of Italian POWS incarcerated in Pietermaritzburg and environs during the Second World War.

Reading it made me realise our next-door-neighbour could be right. According to the authors, the Italians, many of whom were sent to work on local farms, were among thousands captured when Tobruk fell to the Allied Forces. Some of these POWS also participated in the building of the Italian church at Epworth from 1943 to 1944.

The Italians evidently preferred working on the farms because the nosh was better and they were treated as employees rather than as inmates to be lorded over. After the war many of them chose to remain behind in South Africa. Our local TV repair man is descended from one.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to discover why they went to so much trouble to build the wall although, I suspect, it was partly to give the Italians something to do while they waited for the war to end. In some sections it does run along farm boundaries so that could be a reason although I would have thought a barbed wire fence would probably have worked just as well and required far less sweat and toil.

All that remained for me now was to go out and take a good look at the wall. I had no idea – and still don’t – how long the wall actually is although my neighbour seem to think it stretches from the Karkloof to Nottingham Road, which would, indeed, make it a very long wall.

It was still early morning but already the sun was boiling the brains out of the land when I set off to explore the western section. My goal was to follow it to the top of a high hill on which there was a trigonometrical beacon and then check-out what lay beyond that.

As I toiled up the slope I wondered what it must have been like for those Italian prisoners having to cart all those stones up here. Hot, gut-busting work, I decided, pausing to gather my breath and rest before I had got even a quarter of the way up.

You could also tell the blood of their ancient Roman forebears still coursed through their veins because the wall travels in a dead straight line, up hill, down dale, through watercourses and rivers and patches of marsh and forest and other natural obstacles with only one minor kink in its entire length (at least in the part I have explored).

By the time I got to the top of the hill my face was as pink as a prawn but I had no regrets because the view made it all worth while. Directly below me there was a small stream rolling lazily between meadowy green fields dotted with trees and farms and dams and fir plantations. Beyond that I could make out the outline of World’s View and Table Mountain. Between those two distinctive features, concealed under a pall of white haze, lay Pietermaritzburg.

For a while I sat on the wall drinking a cup of coffee and munching a rusk watching a few Common Reedbuck staring back at me from the opposite hill. Surveying the tranquil scene in front of me I could understand why many of the POWS decided to remain behind.

Having finished my coffee, I considered carrying on with my mission but the wall disappeared in to a tangled confusion of trees so I figured it would be simpler to just drive around to the Old Halliwell Inn and pick it up there.

For my next outing I headed in the opposite direction, following the wall over sprawling moors and through a stretch of exotic gum plantation until I came to a beautiful deep-blue pool with a waterfall trickling in to it. It was a magical spot and I would love to have lingered but I didn’t exactly have permission to be there so after a quick look around I headed back.

The air was as warm as toast so, on the way, I did a quick detour down to a nearby stream for a dunk in its cold waters before resuming my walk along the wall. The most impressive part of it is in this section. If ever I had to defend the Karkloof against an invading army this is where I would make my stand.

Back home, I sat at my desk and plotted my next strategic move.

Of course, walking the length of the wall in the full glare of the sun was never going to be enough for me. Now I wanted to photograph it. And then do a painting of it. In fact, quite a few paintings.

Which I did.

I am pleased to report that Stephen Coan actually bought one of them although I suspect he only did so because it showed Otto’s Bluff in the far distance. He has a sentimental attachment to Otto’s Bluff although I have forgotten the exact reason why. I think someone may have made an important historical film there once. Stephen is also a movie buff. And a history buff.

I am probably kidding myself but I like to think my painting reminds Stephen of better views as he huddles behind his own high wall in his new home amongst the ugly sprawl of gated villages that have spread, like a cancer, all over Johannesburg.

Living where I do, I don’t need a wall to repel invaders of my privacy so it doesn’t really matter that the one I do have can easily be breached.

So far, I haven’t been slapped with any harsh, punitary, tariffs either for hopping over it at will. For which I am truly thankful because it means I can go on walking the wall…