Durban - Twenty years ago, a lone antbear sniffed around the ruins on an abandoned farm.
He made his home underneath the rotted floorboards. One day, the antbear heard his floorboard roof creaking with the shuffle of two-legged footsteps. Unfamiliar with this sound, he rushed out past artist Bruce Attwood to seek a new home.
Attwood saw through the mess, the blackjacks, the collapsed roof and the wild wattle trees on the property surrounded by the majestic Drakensberg Mountains, to the bones of the once-beautiful thatched building. Over many months he restored the original structure, adding wooden features and hand-sculpted furniture.
In time his eldest son, Andrew, and daughter-in-law, Connie, visited from him from Germany, and fell in love with the place. And so a new adventure began for the couple, who took over The Antbear Lodge and built it into a unique lifestyle destination.
Over the past 17 years, the Attwoods have created what is now an artistic retreat that attracts visitors from around the globe.
Leaving a job at a software company in corporate Germany, Andrew turned his attention to woodwork, a skill learnt from his father. Andrew honed his craft and alternative building methods to create a spiritual space using straw bales, cob and rammed earth. The eco-friendly lodge uses solar heating and a reed-bed filter for cleaning waste water. This spirit of self-reliance and sustainability was as much a natural choice as a necessity, as the Attwoods’ limited budget meant that a degree of D.I.Y was required in the construction of Antbear Lodge.
Knowing that the owners’ hands have moulded the space in which you sleep is a special touch in an age of hurried, impersonal construction.
“The Midlands gave us the opportunity to buy land at an affordable price and the chance to get away from the rat race and live a life where we could spend more time with each other, growing our own vegetables, baking our bread and making our own cheese. And once your soul becomes peaceful and the stress is gone, the step to creating a sense of spirituality comes naturally,” Andrew says.
The antbear may have moved on, but its spirit lives in the name of the lodge and the Attwoods often find new antbear holes on the property where these shy creatures continue to live undisturbed.
Contact details: Antbear Lodge: http://www.antbear.co.za; [email protected] or call Andrew at 076 441 2362.
For more information about the Midlands Meander visit www.midlandsmeander.co.za, e-mail [email protected] or call 033 330 8195.
Independent on Saturday