Holiday photos: Part 3

One thing I love is old buildings - compared to buildings today, those built in the past are full of character and style. So whilst on our day trips, I took photos of old buildings - most were taken (don't laugh) when we stopped to find a bathroom!!  These first three fit that category.  This is a typical  country street-scape in many parts of South Australia (SA) - in particular in the mid-north wheat belt. This was taken at mid morning on a Monday - where are all the people?  We didn't see a sole.

The next three photos were taken in a tiny town (village) as we were returning to the city. I just loved the detail on the cottage (which is attached to a small church). Just up the street is another little church.
Another church, this time in the town of Hahndorf - an early German migrant settlement and now a booming tourist town - can get very overcrowded.  Sadly I can't remember the name of this church - perhaps my brother does.
This last photo is of a house ("Hatchlands") that is hidden away in a narrow valley not far from where I grew up.  As a young child we use to play in the house - as at that time it was a ruin, and falling down  (my brothers did help just a little in the falling down process!) -  since then it has been renovated and is meant to be very nice inside.  It was built in the mid 1800's and one of the first homes in the region. I don't understand why anyone would built a house in such a hidden spot, difficult to get to even now (very poor road) but it must have been worse with the horse and cart.
The view away from the house on a winters morning with frost melting on the grass.
Clover Soursobs (which produce a yellow flower and quite an invasive weed in South Australia) wrapping a blanket of green around the feet of pine trees along the driveway to "Hatchlands".

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Comments

  1. Your photos are just lovely Jo. I love the old buildings, they had such character.

    I love the last two photos as well. Very nice!

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  2. St Michael's Lutheran Church - the history has a couple of interesting facts:

    By 1857 the congregation had grown considerably due to more emigration and the old mud-walled church had become so dilapidated that it was decided to build a new one. It was to be erected of hard stone with brick corners, around the existing church, which would be demolished when the new structure was neared completion. The new church was erected at a cost of £1,181.18.4 and was dedicated on 3 July, 1859.

    Few changes took place in the building until 1908 when the vestry was rebuilt, giving more space. The pulpit was removed from above the altar in 1928. The porch was completed in 1931 and the bell-tower in 1938. As a centenary gift, four members purchased a new church bell from St. Louis, USA. The old tradition of tolling the bell at noon, for each year of a recently deceased person’s life on this earth, continues to the present day. The old bell was transferred to the school yard over the road. It is one of many cast in bronze from guns and war weapons in Germany at the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) by order of Prince Otto von Bismark, who presented them to the Lutheran Church in Europe

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  3. I love old churches ~ especially ones with bells. I particularly like the tradition of peals numbering the years of the deceased life. Taking note in cae I ever get to S.A.

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  4. Beautiful pics, Jo. I especially love stone buildings.
    The second last photo is really lovely, too!

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  5. Thanks for the building photos! I was very excited to see them. Isn't it interesting how our two countries, so alike in many ways, have simultaneously similar and different buildings?

    I do think that the first building is my favorite, though I do really like the house attached to the church as well. The cresting (ironwork along the roofline) is lovely....are those little crosses? How very appropriate! By any chance was there a fence to match? I do like old iron fences, though those often fell victim to our WWII scrap metal drives here in the States....I wonder if you had such things in Australia as well?

    I was amused by the long look down the village street. I was struck, first of all, by how many of the buildings are seperate. That's very unusual here....most 19th century city blocks are full of buildings that are either all one large structure or many buildings built wall to wall to wall. I found myself wanting to laugh, though, because it looks almost like the set for an old Western movie from the 1950s! I can almost see John Wayne riding in on his horse!

    I do love that photo of the house on the hill - Hatchlands, I believe? It looks very much like a Southern plantation would have in the deep South. Double front porches under a hipped roof were brought into the US from French immigrants that came from the Caribbean Islands. What a lovely place to try and catch a cool breeze! Yet at the same time, most of these houses have exterior chimneys instead of the interior chimneys found here...that way the house stays cooler when you are cooking. In American, 18th and early 19th century houses can be identified by region simply by their chimneys - inside chimneys up North, where it is cold, and side chimneys in the South.

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  6. Oh Jo - Your photograpy is amazing - these photos are mesmerizing! What a wonderfulplace to visit!

    vicki

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