The Magic Place

If you go by their guest book, Stuurmansfontein is the best little hideaway in South Africa. Tucked into a hillside somewhere between Williston, Carnarvon and a meerkat mound, this heritage farm stay in the Karoo Nuweveld is tops.

What, no bathroom?

At the first gate to Stuurmansfontein, we find a squirrel colony preparing for the harsh Karoo winter. There are lots of strands of sheep wool caught on the wire fence, but only above a certain height. The squirrels have been hard at work, lining their underground nests with snuggly little Dorper duvets.

Along the way, on tracks outlined with pale amber Bushman grass, a looming windmill creaks its welcome. Down a valley, up a slope and suddenly we’re at the ancient corbelled house that is Stuurmansfontein.

What, no bathroom? Oh, there’s a lonely long drop down the hill. OK, fine by us. And where’s the shower? Oh, there’s an outside shower surrounded by packed stone. Oh, here’s the flush loo, right next to the main bedroom. So we have a choice.

I begin to rush with cameras, because the setting sun is saying goodbye and slipping over the hill and last light is falling rich on the back of the homestead. Made it. So let’s go have a cold shower, before the night chills set in and we lose our courage.

Damn, that’s bracing! Soak down, soap up. Ooh, that’s quite lekker. Mmm, getting even better. What’s for supper?

Original Karoo Planetarium

Jules gets into the old kitchen with its two-plate stove, candles and carry-water pots and whips up a little something delicious involving pasta, mushrooms, broccoli and pesto. I take two straight-backed chairs and place them carefully out on the stoep at the front door.

You could not ask for a better, more romantic dinner spot. Our chairs become front row seats to the best light show on Earth. The Original Karoo Planetarium. We eat in absolute silence, occasionally looking up in awe at the jewel boxes, treasure chests, Milky Way and generous splash of celestial lights above us. The last time we saw the Universe so bright was many years ago, somewhere up in the deserts of Namibia. No, wait. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it all so up close and personal before. There goes a shooting star. Or is it the 9pm flight to Cape Town? Or another alien landing in the Karoo? There’s so many these days, they need their own parking lot…

Candle Magic

When it gets chilly outside, we finally scamper in and discover more of the magic that is Stuurfontein. When you go there, light up all the candles you can find and dot them about the place. In the rich light, you will relive the frontier days when bywoner Fanie Bergh and his family occupied this fold in the hills.

According to local legend, the Botha family (who still own the farm) let Oom Fanie and his folk live here for free. And they wanted for nothing. They planted fruit trees: grapes, quinces, apples, oranges, figs and pomegranates, using the attic as a store room. A windmill supplied them with plenty of fresh water. And they had roses growing all over the places, those Heritage-type roses with the very strong fragrance.

Body Under The Bed

Tannie Bergh was well known in the district for her great coffee, and her secret lay in the dried figs she crushed in with the beans. When the family needed a chop or two, Oom Fanie would go out and shoot a sheep with his .22 rifle, they’d butcher it and store the cuts in the coolest place they could find: under the marital bed. And if it dripped a little blood, well, that was OK. The floors were made of blood and dung anyhow.

When the Berghs planted wheat, they would separate the grain from the chaff on the threshing floor about 200 metres down the hill, storing the grain in another special little purpose-built corbelled house. They hardly ever needed to go shopping in town. And if we lived like the Berghs did, we’d be healthy, happy and totally off the grid. What Eskom outage?

Corbelled Houses

On corbelled houses: what do you do for shelter when all the land from here to the horizon is filled with knee-high shrubs and flinty stones? If you’re an intrepid stock farmer moving across the dry Karoo of the 1800s, you turn to rock and build a beehive-shaped house – flat stones for walls, and the same, intricately interlocked for a domed roof. Maybe a bit of clay mud to glue it all together. And for a ladder, scaffolding stones jutting out of the house for maintaining the domes.

Not surprisingly, South Africa’s corbelled houses were built in what some call the ‘Hard Man’s Karoo’ – the areas around Fraserburg, Williston and Carnarvon, a land blessed with a surfeit of flat stones.

The houses provided excellent shelter. The six-metre-high ceilings and thick walls were cool in summer, and the rocks held the heat of the sun in winter. Plus, you could make a fire inside. All you needed for a chimney was to climb up the rock-scaffolding and remove the topmost flat stone.

Some say this building style was imported from Europe, where it was first used about 4 000 years ago. Out here in the flat lands, it was simply a case of the self-reliant boers using what whatever was available around them. They’d stash their tobacco and medicine in recessed ‘keep holes’, and when times were good, they built adjoining kitchens, or more rooms.

Around Williston, people still speak of ‘Tiensjielings’ (Ten Shillings) and ‘Gedaanwerk’ (Done With Work), two men who built superb corbelled houses on the farms Schuinshoogte and Arbeidersfontein.

Passionate Ravings

Just to add to the allure of Stuurmansfontein, we find some pretty passionate ravings in the guest book – from all over the world.

The Germans call it “the most exciting stay in South Africa.”

The French say: “We expected to find this solitude, countryside and silence, but not such olde worlde charm and tasteful decoration. The landscape’s hidden treasures took us back.” They called it “The Magic Place.”

The Canadians say: “We came here on honeymoon. We’re coming back for our second honeymoon.”

The Belgians say: “Beautiful, unexpected, unforgettable.”

Someone from Gauteng says: “Jislaaik, dis a mooi plek.”

My wife says: “One night is not enough!”

That night, I realise what real sleep is all about. All we hear is the distant purr of  crickets in the valley. We sleep like two little babies in a blissfully warm, comfortable bed.

Technicolour Dawn

And when the dawn comes, it rises in full rose-pink technicolour splashed liberally on the clouds and the front of the corbelled house. And when we finally meet the owner, Charmaine Botha, all she sees are wide-angle grins and all she hears is praise for her family hideaway. Stuurmansfontein is, indeed, “the magic place”…

** Stuurmansfontein is not widely marketed, but you can find out more about it on www.carnarvon.co.za. It has three bedrooms, sleeps six and costs R700 a night for the whole place. Contact Charmaine Botha on 053 3822 and ask for 2102 or 082 221 7500 or 072 352 8070.

Text & Photographs by CHRIS MARAIS & JULIENNE DU TOIT