The Karoo landscapes are beautiful and always give you something new to photograph. Driving back from Gauteng I stopped for a quick break outside Steynsburg and snapped this farm gate with Karoo koppies in the background.These specific Karoo koppies in question are Koffiebus (Coffee pot) and Teebus (Tee pot).
One of the iconic rural countryside objects of South Africa is the windpomp (wind pump). Windpompe is used to extract water from boreholes and can be found (working or not) on all our highways and byways around South Africa's countryside. This one I photographed on one of the game reserves just outside Port Elizabeth.
Two of the most typical things that you would associate small towns in the platteland (countryside) with are churches and windpompe (windpumps). They are to small towns as Aston Martins and girls are to James Bond. In this scene in Nieu Bethesda in the Karoo I got them both in one shot. James Bond driving with the top down and a beautiful girl next to him.
I was walking exploring around the back streets of the Karoo town of Prince Albert and to my delight stumbled on discovered this old cemetery. It belongs to the NG Kerk (Dutch Reformed Church) and the graves date between 1844 and 1884. Non of the graves really had grave stones, but they were all covered in stone mounds. It was interesting though that there was a couple of graves with small structures built over them towards the back of the…
I love Indiana Jones and when I was younger I wanted to be an archaeologist discovering lost civilisations and crawling through jungles looking for artifacts. I still have an great interest in archaeology and have a small collection of fossils and other interesting bits which I hope to still add to in future. So on a visit to Nieu Bethesda in the Karoo I reveled in the knowledge that I would be able to visit the Kitching Fossil Exploration Centre…
On our recent visit to Somerset East we stopped at Middleton between Port Elizabeth and Cradock. While the Damselfly and Rugrats were browsing through the farm stall, I had a closer look of the historic Methodist church that stands at the entrance to the village. The guy working in the shop asked me if I would like to see the inside of the church and unlocked it for me. The church, built in 1903, is what you would call quaint.…
Barrelling along the N10 between Port Elizabeth and Cradock, most people don't even notice the little historic one horse Karoo town of Middleton. Situated about 20 km before reaching Cookhouse, Middleton is a charming little village steeped in history dating back to 1879. The village is situated next to the Great Fish River and includes the Middleton Manor hotel, a restaurant, pub, general dealer, bottle store, post office and camping site.What makes the village unique is that its privately owned.…
One of the main landmarks in Somerset East in the Karoo is the Dutch Reformed Church (NG Kerk) in the main street (Nojoli Street). The proposal of the local Heemraden to erect a Dutch Reformed Church in 1825, was accompanied by the submission of a design in which Cape Dutch and Gothic architecture were cheerfully blended. The Eastern facade had a Dutch Renaissance tower rising from an impressive thatched nave. The foundation stone was laid in 1830, but the building…
Situated just down the road from the Somerset East Museum in the Karoo town of Somerset East, one will find the Walter Battiss Art Gallery. Anybody involved in the South African art industry would know who Walter Battiss was. Walter Whall Battiss was born in Somerset East on 6 January 1906 (died 20 Aug 1982) and is generally considered as South Africa's foremost abstract painter. From 1938 Battiss paid several visits to Europe where he met various successful poets and…