Courageously Colorful - Colonial Houses in Cradock

Salmon Pink and Bleu Majorelle on the walls of a colonial Cradock house

"Bleu Majorelle" is the name of a color, that you find in Morocco. A deep Mediterranean blue.

Morocco is known for this color. But you can find it in Cradock in the South African Karoo too. Bleu Majorelle develops. It is not a color, that just comes from the tin like this. Ok, it is a deep blue in the beginning, but it develops under the bright sun and the dry air of Morocco into something spectacular. It cannot be described.

A verandah in subtle rose. The back wall is painted yellow!

I asked my brother again and again to drive up and down some of Cradock's streets. Thank you brother. It was worth it!

This Cradock house is courageously colorful in true baby colors

The same light and air conditions as you find them in Morocco exist in the Karoo.

Terracotta and Bleu Majorelle Again

And there is the Bleu Majorelle!

In all its might!

Sky blue and a corrugated iron roof that was once painted chest nut brown

But not only that!

A Cradock Verandah in Purple And Olive

The beautiful thing is, that all this is probably not intentional. It is simply art that creates itself over time.

Two different shades of green and pink, just pink

Mauve.....

Energetic Deep Purple

A crazy dance of colors - old and new

The Sunken Graves Of Cradock

The Sunken Graves Of The Cradock Cemetery

If you ever come to Cradock, the old town in the heart of the great South African Karoo take a walk over the old cemetery outside of town. Walk into the past. And you will treasure life.

The Cradock Cemetery

There you find the graves of the ones, who came to foreign lands to live a better life. Today their are called the settlers. Back then they were only people who brought their memories of their own countries to the African soil. 

Africa became their home for a while. Some never saw their own country again. The Cradock Cemetery is their home now for eternity. But their last resting places are sunken into the white thorny ground. Is that how it is supposed to be?

A witness to the past of the ones who came to live a better life - Cradock cemetery

 

The Cradock Cemetary, nested close to the silent Karoo mountains, holds their memories under bleached tombstones that have to bear the bright, hot and white Karoo sun for hundreds of years.

Protection, that is not needed anymore

Once there was protection, now there is none. It is just the mountains, the sun and the graves.

A sunken grave on the Cradock Cemetery

Life was short. The stones are witnesses of real short lives.

The Last Resting Place of A Child Under A Bright African Sun

 
Africa treated them all the same. And it gave no pardon to the young and very young ones. 

A distant memory of a loved one on the Cradock Cemetery

Settler hearts must have been broken in a million pieces, when the children were buried. Angels and doves are watching over them still today.

At the young age of two years and eight months- no pardon from the Karoo Heartland for the young ones

" Our Darling" came to rest under a bright Karoo Sun on the Cradock Cemetery

The graves are sunken in and few of them are remembered. And it seems as if none of them are visited.

This stone remembers no one - Cradock Cemetery

The light is so very bright and and the stone can not tell us anymore who it was it protects.

In loving memory of 38 years of life

Just Mother and Father - Cradock Cemetery

Fences and some dead flowers on the Cradock cemetery

Hardly keeping together anymore

The ground shifts, has its own force. It is time to move the things. that have been static for so long.   

A bouquet of flowers chiseled into stone to remember a ten year and seven months old child

Siblings Rest Together on the Cradock Cemetery

Husband And Wife - Cradock Cemetery

Died in 1900 and 1917!

A headless angel still praying over an 4 month old infants grave

Once My Home Was Switzerland

More than one story to tell- the Cradock Cemetery

The picture can tell you their stories better than I can do!

A Walk in Silence 

 

Once Upon A Time When There Were Gramophone Specialists Amongst Us

Now, once upon a time, a long time ago, there were Gramophone and Record Specialists living right amongst us. I am very, very sure that I have been one of them in one of my earlier lives. I am not sure, if I was operating from South Africa or from another country, if I was a girl or a boy, but records I did have a lot in that earlier life and a specialist I was as well. I can feel it because I have always loved music.

Here is the famous Ted Lewis And His Band, That Certain Party, Fox Trot, Recorded in the late 1920's (probably 1925) with incidental singing from Ted Lewis. 

From a record shop in Cradock, that very few people probably remember. When this record was made available to the public, people were enjoying the Golden Twenties in other places on the globe and were dancing to fox trot and quickstep tunes. You are listening to a sound that is 90 years old, was pressed on Shellac and has survived unharmed through nearly a century.