Welcome to Week 42 of my #Gauteng52 challenge, for which I visit and blog about a new place in Gauteng Province every week for 52 straight weeks. This week I visit Rhodes Park in Kensington.
Kensington is one of Joburg’s most interesting neighborhoods and I don’t get over there enough. I have this idea that it’s on the opposite side of the world from Melville, even though it’s less than a 20-minute drive without traffic.
My friend Gail lives in Kensington and she’s always posting pretty photos from her walks in Rhodes Park. So when I heard Gail was organizing an art exhibition at the park called “The Land That Never Forgets”, I made a point of taking myself across town to check it out.
Exactly two years ago there was a terrible crime at Rhodes Park. Since the tragedy Gail and a group of her friends have been holding weekly cleanups and other events to help uplift Rhodes Park, and it seems like they’ve made tremendous progress in making it a safe, welcoming place for the community.
This exhibition – consisting entirely of land art – was planned to honor the victims of the crime.
Rhodes Park isn’t as big as Zoo Lake or Emmarentia and it doesn’t have the sweeping vistas of the Melville Koppies or the Wilds. Nonetheless, it’s lovely. There’s a nice big dam (lake), tons of old trees, birds, and acres of green grass. It’s a great place to sit on a tree stump and look out at the water and meditate/ponder life/have a good cry.
There’s also a lawn bowling (bowls) club and various sports fields and an amphitheatre, although I didn’t explore those places. I just walked around the dam and looked at the art.
And then there were the weddings. As with many other parks in Joburg (I’ve seen it often in the Rose Garden at the Johannesburg Botanical Gardens), wedding parties frequent Rhodes Park on sunny summer Sundays. I think it’s quite common to have your wedding in a church and then go to the park for photos and a picnic.
I saw two big wedding parties while I was there. I didn’t photograph the brides but I did snap some of the bridesmaids and guests.
Thanks so much to Gail and all the other private citizens working to make Rhodes Park (and all the other city parks) better places for the people of Joburg.
Rhodes Park is at the corner ofCumberland and Ocean Streets in Kensington. As with all Joburg parks, it’s best not to visit alone.
Read all of my #Gauteng52 posts and check out the interactive #Gauteng52 map.
How have I never blogged about 44 Stanley Avenue, the coolest shopping and dining complex in Joburg, which is only five minutes from my house?
I guess it’s wrong to say I’ve never blogged about 44 Stanley; I’ve mentioned it countless times over the years (see here and here) when writing about specific restaurants or shops that are there. But I’ve never written a dedicated post about 44 Stanley as a destination and it’s about time I did – especially now, with the holidays upon us.
I’ve been dreadfully uninspired lately, struggling to think of anything I want to blog about despite having a long list of great ideas (many of which you, my readers, provided in September). I’m finding it hard to feel positive about life at the moment. But on Saturday Thorsten and I got the chance to visit Indwe Park, an indigenous garden and sculpture park in Braamfontein, and I knew I had my topic for today.
Given this week’s political nuclear bomb blast, it feels like a weird time to publish a light-hearted post about my recent (pre-election) jaunt through the United States. But I’m hoping you’ve have had enough of the U.S. election horror show – I know I have – and are ready (at least temporarily) for some wholesome American travel adventures. If so, please read on about my four-day visit to Maine, the northeastern-most state in the lower 48, with my sister, Susanna.
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It makes me smile, when I see it.