Nieu Bethesda – part 2! (yaaayy!)
After we checked in, we headed straight for the Owl House & Camel Yard, the main draw of the town.
How to describe this terrifying, beautiful, disturbing place? The house was owned by Helen Martins, also known as Miss Helen, who grew up in Nieu Bethesda, dreamed of leaving, escaped by marriage, and then was cheated on so returned home to care for her dying father (who she locked in a windowless room; apparently he was a jerk.) Once she was alone, she started decorating the house – at first with colored window panes, and later by painting almost every wall and ceiling in the house and covering them with crushed glass. I can only imagine how beautiful it looked by candlelight.
Her walls were covered with framed nudes, reproductions of the Mona Lisa, and enormous mirrors. She enlisted the help of a local (black) man to help her make sculptures with cement, of which they made many. She also had some gorgeous shoes, but unfortunately my picture of them didn’t turn out.
Behind her house is the Camel Yard, a garden of playful, bizarre, and sometimes disturbing sculptures. Needless to say, the locals were weirded out by her and she had few friends. Many townspeople considered her garden an eyesore. It was certainly something to behold:
Are these people trying to turn back time or pull it forward? The hours on the clockface are months.
Creepiest sculpture?
VS
She continued decorating and making sculptures until, with the onset of arthritis and failing vision, she took her own life. She was born and died in the same house.
We got a combined ticket to the Owl House and Kitching Fossil Safari, so we headed over there next. We saw some dinosaurs and a demonstration of how fossils are cleaned, which was actually kind of interesting.
The “safari” was little more than two rooms, but since we didn’t have any expectations going in, we weren’t disappointed. Actually, it was quite interesting to read a bit about the history of the Karoo, as it is such a vast and raw expanse of land, it seems like it was lifted right out of The Land Before Time.
To be continued…
