George News

Olive Festival Prins Albert

Olive Festival Prins Albert – More quality than quantity
Ken Gie

If you want something quaint, peaceful, totally relaxing and want to mingle with the local folk, you need to drift over the Swartberg Mountain Pass via Oudtshoorn to Prince Albert’s Olive Festival. It’s as if the festival already starts when you crawl over the top of the pass and then steeply down around the hairpin bends conditioning you to slow down and take real time out.

On arrival one’s first impression is that this is going to be the usual ho hum festival where everyone is anxiously trying to ply their trade to make up for lean times when nothing much else happens in the village during the rest of the year. Yes, the venue is just a few hundred meters of tarred main road in the village center where anything to do with olives is on offer. Olives galore, raw, spiced and in glass jars and oiled for your selection.

Fires sizzle with white spiraling smoke drifting up everywhere and much chattering goes on between cooks, aspirant chefs and plain braaiers while they flip and stir their offerings. If you have come to buy olives, grab something to eat and then anxiously wait for something big to happen, you are sure to be disappointed. Nothing is going to happen unless you make it happen. You need to stroll around and observe all the fascinating wares and attractions on offer. The people, local and stall holders, are just so different, friendly, some quite weird but they make you feel welcome and appreciated.

It looks like an autumn clearance sale on ladies designer apparel as oohs and aahs eminate from Robin Gunn’s small gazebo. She’s been designing clothes for eighteen years and has for almost as many years traveled to shows and festivals selling her wares. Assisting her is life long bubbly friend Brigette who, when not delivering yachts all over the world, accompanies Robin on her travels.

A hand painted sign of white lettering on an old piece of rusted and buckled steel sheet, reads “Donkey Taxi”. Parents stand patiently while their kids wriggle around impatiently for the cart to arrive, no doubt thoughts pondering whether this mode of travel may become a reality when our fossil fuel dries up one day. The sheer excitement and awe on the children’s faces and almost silly look on the parents’ who try to hide their own pleasure of being pulled along by two motley grey donkeys, is sweetly noticeable.

The locals are not without global issues and concerns. You ask if it is remotely possible for a village tucked away in the vast Little Karoo, that the people can be affected by world affairs. Kevin Hough uses a mass of “pieces” to create his life sized Mad Max type motorcycles, weird vehicles, bicycles and home décor creations. His “pieces” are bits and larger pieces of scrap sheet and metal from old discarded farm implements which are now becoming extremely scarce. Scrap metal agents arrive on the farms in huge trucks, cut up everything with cutting torches and export the scrap iron to China. “The bloody things come back to us as Chanas!” he curses. He also mutters a warning about it not being a good idea to drink with the Irish. By going into Kevin’s studio you enter a weird and wacky world of pure uninhibited imagination.
“What now, after this?” a question later asked by someone who have not heard about the Bush Pub on the outskirt of town. News travels fast and soon the cars arrive at owner Jason’s Bush Pub. He has a penchant for ironwood and his wide and thick ironwood bar counters depict his robust character. Yet the flame-like grains in the wood show a creative and sensitive side to him. Jason had a medal bestowed upon him by the French government years ago when he was visiting France as a young man. Sorry, you have to visit the pub if you want to find out how he won this auspicious award.

Karoo lamb on the spit, ‘pap en sous’, salad and ‘roosterbrood en konfyt’ provides hearty sustenance to weary festival goers as they anxiously wait for Brian “The Bird” Finch to occupy the small outdoor stage. Typically, by the time he strikes the first chord on his guitar the audience is already hyped up to a frenzy and ask “What took him so bloody long!?” (Nice marketing technique Brian – get them to cry for your presence!) Brian’s unique style is a combination of country, rock and blues all combined in one song and the finger work, as Brian masterfully makes his guitar talk, provides entertainment on its own.

Next morning, crowing cockerels and barking dogs are the only alarms waking you. Before breakfast you take a slow climb up the nearby koppies and look down at the awakening village. Steam from pure roasted coffee cloud smiling faces, hands clutching ‘roosterbrood’ filled with whatever you desire (bacon and egg, steak or smeared with a variety of home made jams) precedes the new days’ shopping. A procession of vintage cars trundles slowly through the crowd. Pristine models of past motoring glory, now lovingly polished for the occasion, while the appropriately attired drivers proudly wave as they cruise by.

The activities draw to a close and visitors reluctantly pack to travel back to the bustle and noise of their homes in the fast growing towns in the Southern Cape. Winding over the Swartberg Pass makes one feel that you are leaving something special behind in that little village at the foot of the huge mountains.

That something special is the timelessness, the tranquility. The thought that it is only another year to go before you will be back to take up where you left off, is comforting.