Be Prepared

Today started with a walk around Hahndorf, before most of the shops opened and the traffic built up. Hahndorf on a weekend is like Daylesford in Victoria; packed with day-trippers from the city.

Here is Herr Hahn himself:

In the background of the photo (click to enlarge) is the evidence that we are in South Australia; a Stobie pole.

In another small park, this is "Angel of Hahndorf", sculpted by Craig Medson.

In the background, more proof we are in South Australia; everything is built of stone.

German graves in a fenced-off area in the middle of the Lutheran primary school playground:

These are the backs of the graves. The fronts, with names etc, are hard to see because the trees and shrubs obscure them.

From the main street of Hahndorf it is only a short drive to our next destination, "The Cedars", the home of  artist Hans Heysen, his wife Sallie, and their eight children.

We took the guided tour of the house. No photos were allowed in either the house or Hans' studio. Throughout both there are many paintings by both Hans and his daughter Nora. Nora was the only one of the children to become an artist.

I would have liked some photos of the views out of the bay windows to the gardens, because they were lovely:

Also of the glassed-in porch are you can see on the left of this photo, which is a large indoor/outdoor living area, with many plants and sitting areas. It is delightful!

This is Hans' studio, which seems from the outside to be too dark for painting in:

But the south wall is almost completely windows of frosted glass, which bathe the interior with a diffused light.

One of my favourite paintings lives in the house (this is a photo of a print, not the actual painting):

"Sewing (the artist's wife)". And here is that machine, that chair and that window:

This is not in the house, but in a separate cottage which became Nora's studio in later years. Photographs are allowed here. The bookshelves to the right weren't in the painting, but as it was done in 1913 they could have been added in the intervening 106 years, rather than just having been ignored by the artist at the time. The curtain fabric has the same diagonal design - could those curtains be over 106 years old?

Proof that I am a lot bigger than Sallie Heysen was:

And yes, I was given permission to sit in the chair and touch the machine. It was a bit odd that in Nora's studio the rules (no touching, no photos) don't apply as they do in the house or in Hans' studio.

This is the garden outside that window. The wooden structure to the left in this photo (visible through the window in the photo of me) is not in the painting (it may have been built since), and the trees are not as leafy now, in early spring. They may not even be the trees in the painting - they don't look very old. Perhaps there was a larger tree which was removed to build the wooden building (which is the main entrance and gift shop)?

Anyway, seeing this painting in real life was a highlight for me. I enjoyed the tour and in some ways I am glad to have seen it now, rather than in a few years when everything is "upgraded". There are plans for a huge visitor centre which are quite controversial. Details of that are in this article: Grand plans but not everyone is happy.

Our next stop was the Botanic Gardens at Mt Lofty. We hadn't had lunch and it was getting on, so we thought we would get something to eat at the kiosk in the gardens. All botanic gardens have kiosks or cafes or the like, don't they? (Apparently not.)

We parked in the upper car park. That was our second mistake. There are warning signs:

No worries, we were wearing walking shoes.

We walked down through the rhododendron gully

 which was quite beautiful.

However, few of the plants are labelled. That was a shame as there were a many that I would have liked to know the identity of. Does anyone know what this ground-cover plant is?

 The leaves have two reddish blotches, and the flowers are white with purple veins.

Added: Thanks to Dee in the comments for identifying it as Geranium versicolor.

We gradually worked our way down, down, down. We were getting tired, thirsty and hungry.

Around about here we stopped to read the brochure we had picked up at the top of the gardens, and discovered that it advised people to bring with them any water and refreshments they might want. That's right, no water taps, no kiosk, no nothing.

The direction signs through the gardens are confusing. There is no indication of the distances involved, and the map and the actual pathways don't seem to correspond at all. And there are lots of places where two or three paths meet with no signs, so it is very hard to know where you are and which way you should go. A few times on our climb back up we had to resort to the phone map to work out where we were. We would look at the phone, walk 20 metres or so, then see where we were on the phone map. There was no other way to tell which direction we were headed. It was overcast, so no clues from the sun. And the paths wind around all over the place. Looking at the times on my photos I can see that we walked down for about half an hour, but it took over an hour to climb back up again. There were a few times in that hour that I wondered if we would be lost on Mt Lofty forever, and I would end up appropriately in the rhododendron gully, rotting away undiscovered. Great was our relief when we got back to the car park!

We then drove down to the lower car park, where there was some sort of scout meeting going on, with a large banner reading, "Be prepared". Too late!

We had wanted to visit the heritage rose section which featured on Gardening Australia last night, but we were too worn out at that stage. So, my advice to anyone visiting Mt Lofty - start at the bottom (where there is one drinking tap). Walk up until you are tired, then have the easy walk down.

Our accommodation tonight is near the beach, and we were planning a walk along the beach this evening. However when we got there we found that there is a major reconstruction project under way. The beach is inaccessible, surrounded by fencing and construction machinery. You can read about what is happening here: West Beach Project

Back at our accommodation, the TV doesn't work. I sat down with my computer to update my blog, and almost immediately there was a power blackout.

Not the whole of South Australia. Just the little bit we are in. I worked on my computer (using the phone for internet access) until the computer ran out of battery. The power didn't come back on before I fell asleep.