Trees and singing hills

“May brooks and trees and singing hills join in the chorus too,
and every gentle wind that blows send happiness to you.”
- Irish Blessing

A daily practice of sketching and painting gives you a chance to exercise the big three P's - practice, practice, practice!


Watercolour in Moleskine watercolour sketchbook - 8" x 5" - Maree©

A scene a couple of kilometers from where I live - a gravel road through Tarlton (South Africa) on the way to Randfontein. It's a short-cut we often take past all the veggie and flower farms, the rubbish dump where all the Seagulls (600km from the coast!) gather and where tall Blue gum trees flank the road. Here you will find many old farmsteads dating back to the 1800's and early 1900's, but unfortunately most of these have fallen into disrepair and neglect and are more and more making way for more modern and comfortable homes.

There is also a vlei (marsh) area here that extends for many kilometers all the way to Tarlton and the hills fairly sing with the sound of birds and waterfowl. I presume this was the original feed for the Tarlton Dam, which is now empty, broken and no longer in existence, although the water still flows down the course during heavy periods of rain.

Up-date on Seagulls in Randfontein

What he had once hoped for the Flock, he now gained for himself alone; he learned to fly, and was not sorry for the price that he had paid.
- From Jonathan Livingstone Seagull


Seagull - watercolour in Moleskine Watercolour sketch-book - 8" x 5" - Maree©

Every couple of weeks I have seagulls passing over my garden, and I've been wondering what they're doing so far in-land, 600km from the nearest coast. I decided to do a bit of investigating and contacted the Publicity Association in Randfontein with my query (you can read the previous post HERE).

The Association responded extremely quickly and said they would look into the matter. Here is an extract from the e-mail I received from Joy at the Publicity Association :

"HI Maree,

I have spoken to a few people and they have said that seagulls are scavengers and will basically land and stay in a place where there is food. I was told by BirdLife SA that seagulls are not necessarily associated with the sea - it's just their name that is.

The gulls that decided to stay in Randfontein were probably on their way somewhere when they discovered Uncle Harry's Roadhouse. The owner, Jimmy Pappas, says there used to be hundreds of the birds at the roadhouse and they would always feed them left over hamburgers and chips. At one point the birds would only eat the chips with barbeque sauce!

Jimmy also says they got very fat and never wanted to leave. He noticed fewer birds last year and was worried they may have been poisoned by contaminated water the mines pump out, but he's not sure. He says they normally come around towards and during winter, so we will have to wait and see.

Regards,

Joy"

Thank you for that fantastic information Joy and we just hope that the seagulls will be visiting Uncle Harry's again this winter.

Seagulls in Randfontein

“To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is,” he said, ”you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived…”
- From Jonathan Livingstone Seagull

A daily practice of sketching and painting gives you a chance to exercise the big three P's - practice, practice, practice!


Seagulls in Randfontein - a quick watercolour study in my Moleskine watercolour sketchbook 8" x 5.5"

Not far from us, about 22km, lies the gold mining town of Randfontein, about 45 km west of Johannesburg. With the Witwatersrand gold rush in full swing in 1889, mining financier JB Robinson bought the farm Randfontein and floated the Randfontein Estates Gold Mining Company. The town was established in 1890 to serve the new mine and was administered by Krugersdorp until it became a municipality in 1929.

(If you click on the "Randfontein" link, you will also see the Hartebeespoort Dam area on the left of the map, my favourite sketching spot, and where it is situated from where I live in Krugersdorp.)



We visited Randfontein yesterday, and what amazes me about this town is the fact that you can find flocks of Seagulls there, 600km from the coast! I've tried to track the history of how these birds could have landed up there, but to no avail - I have now contacted the Randfontein Publicity Association to see if they might have some information.