It's a 'darling' of a town, is Darling

Darling ...

There is much to attract one to Darling. It's a small town for one, it's close to Cape Town (not even an hour's drive), has its own wine route, and is the closest of the West Coast wine dis­tricts to Cape Town; dur­ing the flower sea­son it hosts the Darling Wildflower Show whilst the Tienie Versfeld Reserve on its peri­met­ers is a car­pet of blooms, and Evita Bezuidenhout (Tannie Evita to you, darling) has ensconced her­self here at the station.

It helped that we chose to visit Darling when the rest of Cape Town had its eyes glued to the Argus, long before the flower sea­son. There was barely any­one in town. Despite this, we had the time of our lives, dis­covered a local gem for Sunday lunch, and got to chat to the locals ...

Darling is named after Charles Henry Darling. Despite the his­tor­ical found­a­tion, the town has eas­ily picked up the mantle and become the epi­tome of its name, leav­ing one in no doubt as to why it is the 'darling' of the West Coast and the flower sea­son, per­fect for week­end get­aways, and theatre even­ings spent split­ting your sides at our own foibles.

The drive out to Darling is rel­at­ively easy and very pretty. The land­scape is devoid of devel­op­ment and much of it is taken up with nature reserves and the beaches north of Bloubergstrand – you keep catch­ing glimpses of the sea on your left along the R27. There are, of course, a num­ber of ways to reach the little town, but we took the R27 past Koeberg and then right at the inter­change with Yzerfontein Road onto the R315. You can get there via Malmesbury, Atlantis and Mamre, or Moorreesburg. And just after turn­ing onto the road to Darling, you'll pass the Darling wind farm, its four tur­bines turn­ing lazily in the wind.

The R315 enters Darling at some­thing of a right angle, rather con­fus­ing actu­ally as you don't come in on its main road, which is prob­ably just as well as des­pite its allu­sions to being 'darling', the town's main road is more than a little sub­dued and rather decept­ive – its broad street has only the odd antique shop, one or two res­taur­ants, an old hotel and not much more. The pulse of Darling is away from the main artery, start­ing with the town's Information bur­eau, housed in the town hall, which is also the local museum and open on Sundays.

Photographs — Left: Town Hall and Museum (and Information bur­eau); Right: The Old Jail

I'm not usu­ally a fan of museums, but Darling's is a real relic and worth a browse. It's filled with wooden but­ter churns and but­ter wash­ers (I know, I didn't know what these were either), due to Darling's cream­ery and but­ter mak­ing his­tory. The rest of the museum is filled with antiquit­ies, kit­chen paraphernalia, a smat­ter­ing of fur­niture, a little room vir­tu­ally ded­ic­ated to the type of cloth­ing that has you gasp­ing (whether it was due to quaint­ness or hor­ror, I'm still not sure) and a barn in which there is a thresher, although no-one seems to know quite how it works, other than it was driven by the accom­pa­ny­ing steam engine. Alongside the wooden thresher are a couple of examples of horse-drawn car­riages that are start­ling, and an old Shell pet­rol pump. It's quite a collection.

It took us a while to extric­ate ourselves from the rather excess­ively talk­at­ive museum volun­teer and we pressed on to explore fur­ther the treas­ures of Darling.

Boerassic Park and Evita se Perron, situ­ated off the main drag at Darling's train sta­tion, is oblig­at­ory, even if it's the major draw card to the town and sel­dom free of crowds. Our visit was just after Tannie Evita launched her cook­book, 'Evita's Kossie Sikelela', now avail­able on a shelf near you...

Tannie Evita is South Africa's most fam­ous white woman, and the cre­ation of Pieter Dirk Uys, who takes his acclaimed cab­aret ver­sions of polit­ical satire all over the world. She has already won the 'Living Legend' award in San Diego, bestowed on women who have con­trib­uted act­ively towards mak­ing the planet a bet­ter place in which to live, an hon­our she shares with Mother Theresa, Peggy Lee and Hilary Clinton. Behind her guise, Pieter Dirk Uys is able to com­ment on gov­ern­ment, racism, AIDS and a whole list of con­ten­tious issues. You cry, you laugh so much.

Photographs — Left: Sign for Evita se Perron; Cente and far right: Boerassic Park

Boerassic Park, obvi­ously inspired by the legendary con­crete garden of Nieu Bethesda, is an eccent­ric art garden to say the least, filled with polit­ical icons, sym­bols, apartheid signs, faux flowers and at least one of a col­lec­tion of cats (real ones that seem to dom­in­ate the scene and have acquired names like Ginger Rogers and Windgat).

Take a stroll through the Nauseum — wall-to-wall Tannie Evita pics with friends and col­leagues  –that is gar­rishly naus­eat­ing but just another example of the hil­ari­ous tongue-in-cheek, bordering-on-ruthless humour dis­played in and around the theatre. Despite or inspite of the humour, Pieter Dirk Uys is one of the reas­ons that Darling is the land­mark it is today. He has estab­lished the Darling Trust to help pre­vi­ously dis­ad­vant­aged com­munit­ies of Darling in ways that fosters self-sufficiency rather than depend­ency as other handout cul­tures tend to do. He is also behind Tannie Evita's A en C, the arts and crafts venue that sells local arts and crafts, and the Elsie Balt Art School and Gallery, where the art of local artists hangs await­ing sale.

Which brings me to our per­chance encounter with one of Darling's local artists, although he cer­tainly wouldn't con­sider him­self in the league of Nicolaas Maritz — who has his gal­lery in his home in Darling — and laugh­ingly explains that Nicolaas refrains from hanging his works in the Maritz gal­lery. Jimmy, archi­tect by trade, is what he calls a 'Sunday artist' – there is a col­lec­tion of them in Darling. The obvi­ously lonely that-side-of-middle-age gen­tle­man invites us in to share his garden with him; we have been shame­lessly pho­to­graph­ing his hired house in Darling's suburbia.

Photograph: Cottages / houses in Darling

In Jimmy's garden we learn that, like all small towns, Darling has its little cliques to which you belong. He plays golf with the golfers lot, mixes with the local artists, and occa­sion­ally graces the 'rough it' crowd who have a good time over week­ends. As a single man he's hedging his bets. My son takes a dip in his pool, scales his tree amidst much mer­ri­ment, and then we fol­low Jimmy on a tour of his art and a trip to his neigh­bour up the road who lives in what was once the town's police sta­tion and jail, and which he thinks might interest me.

It does, par­tic­u­larly as the wooden trough remains intact. But more inter­est­ing is the view of Darling through the eyes of the  loc­als, who are only too happy to throw open their doors to com­plete strangers who show an interest in their town. Bobby, to whom we have been intro­duced, along with his ninety-three year old father, hauls out his copy of 'A West Coast Odyssey', a jour­ney through the his­tory of the coast­line, and reads to us about the local monu­ments, and the reason for the jail, whilst my son dis­cov­ers the tree swing he set up for his grandchildren.

It was a darling day, in a darling town. A more per­fect close to the week­end we couldn't have wished for.

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