Ladies of Stone

(a repost from my ‘wayback machine!’ – updated)

Way back in high school we spent a night in an old sparsely furnished Drakensberg farmhouse with no ceilings and a tin roof.

We – I think Leon Crawley, Tuffy Joubert & Piet Steyl were there – maybe we accompanied Klein Kerneels Retief? It was his Dad Kerneels’ winter grazing farm below Oliviershoek Pass and we schoolboys stayed overnight.

Adventure! The skies were overcast and soon there were deep rumblings and flashes of lightning. A heavy rain started falling followed by hailstones. The Drakensberg storm built up until it was a roar and we couldn’t hear each other at all – not even shouting into your ear from an inch away was audible above the intimidating tinroof fandango. We jumped a foot high when a massive crack of thunder clapped half a millimetre above the roof apex. The loudest heavenly bang I’d ever heard in my larf!

The next day we explored the soaked veld and ouhout thickets above the house in glorious sunshine, and came across a well-endowed woman lying naked on a huge stone in the woods! Stunning! She sported huge shapely boobs and was a wonder for the eyes of lustful teenagers. She was gorgeous! OK, she was made of stone, but hey, what else did we have? Come to think of it, Klein Kerneels couldn’t have been with us, as the Lady of Stone was a big surprise “discovery” to us, and he’d have known about her.

I have often thought of our stay on that farm, which I later learnt was named Sungubala, and of the voluptuous stone lady over the years. I started thinking I may have imagined her, but then I read of the stone carvings of the Drakensberg and determined to go and find her.

On the Detective Trail – I took the kids Jessica, Tommy and friend Sindi, and we stayed at The Cavern, lovely old-style ‘Berg hotel. They loved it. Luxury! Dad’s not camping!?

Beautiful things in the hotel grounds – also flowers

Asking around, one of their guides said he knew where my statue was and he’d take me there. I packed a rucksack, he packed lunch and off we went for the day, leaving the kids behind. They could not WAIT for me to GO, DAD! as they had discovered an amazing secret: If you gave any hotel employee your room number he or she would give you anything you wanted under the sun. They had discovered the key to endless riches and had no further need for a Dad.

When my guide and I got to the little valley in the foothills where he said the statue was , it didn’t look right. It didn’t feel like the place I remembered from – uh, 40yrs ago. But there she was: A maiden with luscious boobs carved in stone.

But this lady was standing up, not lying down on a rock in a seductive pose. There is another statue, I told him. This is not the statue I saw. Its beautiful, and thank you, but she is not the lady of my vivid and fond mammaries and my dreams. Ah! He knew where the other one was. He had seen it once. But it was on private property and he couldn’t take me there. Back at the hotel I asked around, and they showed me a picture, framed and hanging on a wall.

And there she was, exactly as I remembered her. I had not been hallucinating. Here was proof of my excellent memory, my sanity and my dodgy taste.

Well, almost exactly. Um, I must confess I did NOT notice that she had wings back then, nor that she had clothing. I was remembering naked with bunnytail more than dressed with wings. Hey, Teenage Testosterone! Vrystaat! 1970! No internet! Very few Playboy magazines! Cut me some slack here! It was a lekker memory, and – like many of our memories – the years had enhanced it; airbrushed it.

Here’s a more recent pic from toplodge.co.za – (btw, their cottages look terrific).

~o0o~

The Story of the Stone Ladies – a tale was told of a reclusive sculptor who fell in love with a trader’s daughter and sculpted these rocks in homage to her. She was a Coventry. We had the lovely Coventry twins Glenda & Glynis in Harrismith who came from a Drakensberg trading family. And I think I see a resemblance . . .

~o0o~

Later I found this in a book by Rowan Philp, Rediscovering South Africa: A Wayward Guide.
“There are two boulders hidden deep in a Drakensberg forest which tell a near-Shakespearean tale of obsession, genius, and revenge. Completely unsign-posted, they feature magnificent, life-size sculptures of the same nude, full-breasted woman, painstakingly carved by her lover fifty years ago. The story begins when Willie Chalmers, a wandering artist with a wildly unkempt beard, came to the area from the Kalahari in the 1930’s to learn more about Bushman paintings from a farmer’s daughter, Doreen Coventry. He fell in love with her and spent fourteen months carving her likeness into a flat sandstone rock on her farm, adding a halo and the face of a child alongside. He called it Spirit of the Woods.

But some of his younger in-laws saw him as a con man and a parasite at the family homestead, and at the height of the row, Coventry’s nephew hiked up to the sculpture in a rage and smashed off the nose. So, some say, Chalmers began a second Spirit of the Woods, this time in a secret location almost completely enclosed by other boulders, sometimes working for weeks without a break.”

~o0o~

ouhout – Leucosidea sericea; mountain shrub and tree

lekker memory – lovely memory from school days

~o0o~

Here’s a wonderful description of this special place from my good schooldays friend Luisa Blignaut, now ‘down under,’ who knew the farm well, and clearly loved it:

– Sungubala used to belong to Kerneels Retief. He granted my father, Koos Blignaut, the right to use the farm in the 1970’s. I spent many a weekend and week or two on the farm in a house with no ceiling, no electricity and no toilet. We used a long-drop in a zinc structure outside the house. At night I always had to accompany my mother to the long drop. It was funny because she was armed with insect repellant spray. I sprayed the roof and walls of the outhouse with insect repellant spray before she entered it. Dead goggas, galore, fell down from their perches. My mom was scared that a snake may be lurking in the long drop and I had to make sure no snakes were about. Then I waited outside while she did ablutions  The farm supervisor’s son killed the biggest puffadder I have ever seen near the house. Longer than a meter. That did it for my mother. Everything had to be checked for snakes. There was a small wood or coal burning Aga stove in the kitchen. Water came via a pipe from a stream above the house. We attached a funnel with mesh wire at the end of the pipe. Secured it with rocks in the stream. The pipe ran downhill for about a 100m to a tank just above the house. A fire under a further drum outside the house provided warm water. We swam in a pool under a waterfall near the Silent Woman (we called her the Paw-paw lady). But why, oh why, did you build a blue pool. It detracts from everything the place is about. The solar heating you installed is fantastic. Thunder storms at night were truly memorable. We smelled the Sulphur following thunder clap after thunder clap. In my mind, the house shook. The sound of violent raindrops on the corrugated zinc roof drowned any attempted conversation. We could not hear each other. Lightning lit up the inside of the house and I saw the big white eyes of my friends fearing that the next lightning strike would take out the house. The thunder claps were followed by echoes running along the mountain faces, to and fro, again and again, like harmonics in music. And just as it was fading, the next thunder clap or two arrived. The closest I have come to it, is listening to the music of Xenakis at full blast. But beautiful! Get rid of the pool and encourage guests to find a mountain pool. I can think of several. And when the sweat cascades down your body in summer, the mountain water is simply delicious. So is drying yourself in the sun, stretched out on a comfortable rock.

~o0o~