PANORAMAS, PANCAKES AND PLENTY MORE
Spend a few days in Graskop and you’ll notice that there are four main types of traffic filling up the streets: foreign tourists making their way to Harrie’s Pancakes; curio sellers dashing after the tourists; overloaded logging trucks grumbling through town; and cows.
I’m standing in Sunlight Art Gallery in Main Street when a brown bovine leisurely strolls past. Gallery owner and artist Griet van der Meulen – known locally as Griet van Graskop – bursts out laughing when the cow pauses on the pavement, framed by her shop window. Life imitating art?
“As a child, I swore that I would get out of this little town,” Griet says with a laugh. “But to be honest, it almost feels like this place belongs to me. My great-grandfather was one of the founders.”
Indeed, Max Leibnitz came from Germany in 1889. He worked as a trader along the railway line from Delagoa Bay (now Maputo) and ended up opening a hotel and shop above Kowyn’s Pass. “It was empty and wild back then,” Griet says. “Every day when I take a walk, I look at the mountains towards Pilgrim’s Rest. I tell myself that my great-grandfather looked at those very same mountains.”
Griet has travelled the world and lived all over, but four generations since Max set up shop, she still enjoys the same misty views. The Canadian writer and artist Emily Carr once said, when asked about why she loved
