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SunnysideUp Karoo Cafe & Cottages : Nobody knows exactly when the cottages were built. Number 5A shows traces of Victorian and Edwardian architecture and may have been built sometime between 1915 and 1920. -
SunnysideUp Karoo Cafe & Cottages : Cottage 5B was given a bright purple door because it has a 1950s history and Toby associates smart, bold colours like purple with mid-century design. Get the look with Plascon’s Victorian Lace P5-C1-1. -
SunnysideUp Karoo Cafe & Cottages : Apparently light blue used to be the standard Karoo colour for woodwork — an anecdote that seems to be true because, under all the layers on the doors and windows, was a light blue that was easily matched with a modern paint colour, -
SunnysideUp Karoo Cafe & Cottages : Cottage 5B was given a bright purple door because it has a 1950s history and Toby associates smart, bold colours like purple with mid-century design. Get the look with Plascon’s Victorian Lace P5-C1-1. -
SunnysideUp Karoo Cafe & Cottages : Vibrant touches of orange create interest in a mostly white bedroom with a calm cream floor painted in a glossy enamel stoep paint. -
SunnysideUp Karoo Cafe & Cottages : Karoo fare is mostly about meat — lamb mainly, but springbok and kudu, too. Other produce from the area includes olives, pomegranates and quinces, and the women of Merweville preserve and jam a variety of fruit as well as bake bread. -
SunnysideUp Karoo Cafe & Cottages : The purple theme is continued consistently throughout. The lively bespoke floor rug is designed by artist Sally Arnold (sallyarnold.com). -
SunnysideUp Karoo Cafe & Cottages : The garden is a prime spot to contemplate the rugged and desolate landscape, open a bottle of wine, read a magazine, snooze… whatever. -
SunnysideUp Karoo Cafe & Cottages : Like all of the water in Merweville, the dam water is pumped from underground, via a restored traditional Karoo windmill. So the water is clean, chlorine-free and suitable for the garden and swimming — essential for cooling off in the hot summer months. -
SunnysideUp Karoo Cafe & Cottages : A pair of restored mid-century chairs takes on new life in a confident cobalt blue. Toby is keen on all shades of blue, from darkest to lightest. -
SunnysideUp Karoo Cafe & Cottages : Spraypainted in the same shade of purple as the front door at 5B, the chairs from Malawi were bought from Abi & Scarlett, and the rug is another of Sally Arnold’s creations. -
SunnysideUp Karoo Cafe & Cottages : On the Leeu Gamka side of the town, the terrain is gentle and hilly, but the huge vistas and mountains are always there as backdrops — the Nuweveld range towards Beaufort West and the Swartberg range behind Prince Albert.
PHOTOS Eric Nathan WORDS Lauren Shantall
In one of the last authentic farm dorps in the Karoo, a lawyer in need of a creative outlet has used bold colours and stark whites to create a cheerful blend of rustic and contemporary holiday accommodation.
Deep in big sky country, where over-bright stars loom so close they appear within grasp, you can still find an off-the-beaten-track Karoo dorpie that’s home to a small farming community and the odd city-dweller on a detox. Until recently only reached by dirt road, Merweville quietly persists with its long unchanged sheep-farming ways, upholding tradition and somehow defying any encroaching poshness of post-urban settlers. Which is what appealed to Toby Orford when he looked to establish his SunnysideUp Karoo Café & Cottages.
The Karoo has always drawn Toby: “There are fond holiday associations with a farm outside nearby Beaufort West – and my parents’ home in Prince Albert,” he says. “I had never been to Merweville until I seriously started looking for Karoo property about two years ago. Karoo villages are often run down or have become too ‘gentrified’. Merweville however is still an authentic Karoo plaasdorp.”
Toby was lucky enough to come by a pigeon pair of twin cottages on the same erf that had been for sale for years. Having been more or less abandoned, they were unspoilt but very rundown and nobody, it seemed, wanted to take on the challenge. The first cottage had no plumbing, electricity or bathroom and was built from clay bricks with mud plaster, which had to be replaced. With only rudimentary plumbing facilities in turn, the second cottage was at least built with conventional bricks and cement plaster.
Once the building work was done, Toby veered away from a typical country look with cheerful purple and blue front doors. Inside, strong colours and contemporary interiors that employ modernist and mid-century pieces lend a singular and deliberately incongruous identity to SunnysideUp – this is not ordinary Merweville fare. “Although the Karoo landscape, with its ever-changing contrasts, colours and light, is always vibrant, the local people tend not to be,” posits Toby. “They don’t like bright colours including white – they defer to conventional beige, brown and cream choices.”
Still, “the lack of pretence and artifice is Merweville’s main asset,” Toby counters. “It is also the reason why it has an understated and underrated charm.” Ironically, most of the furniture comes from the surrounding area. “The mid-century modern pieces were one-off local finds in Merweville. The country and bohemian furniture and accessories are mostly from Prince Albert.” These were supplemented by pieces purchased online.
The way that Toby has thrown it all together reflects his passion for quality and attention to detail. For him, these are the things in life worth celebrating. For others he has created an appealing getaway, a cosy and cheerful base camp from which to answer the magnetic call of the Karoo’s stress-free near-nothingness. And with his partner, Petrus Croukamp, he has also opened the nearby SunnysideUp Karoo Café, where there is an emphasis on eastern Mediterranean cooking styles using Karoo ingredients. On summer evenings, you’ll find them on the generous length of the stoep. In winter, in front of the vintage Dover and Queen Anne stoves, where the contemporary shapes and colours sing loudly in their rustic environment, both stimulating and soothing at the same time.
082 554 4554, 072 392 3031, [email protected], sunnysideupkaroo.weebly.com
