Home At Last

After seven long years spent searching for just the right spot in the countryside, the Koegelenbergs have created their own platteland paradise.

- Marian Van Wyk

Martie Koegelenberg sings the praises of her family’s charming home in the Overberg, but the house today is a far cry from the smallholding they saw for the first time in 2007. The property had been sorely neglected and the asking price was way more than they could afford – they didn’t even venture through the gate.

Back then, the Koegelenbergs lived in Hout Bay. “We'd promised our daughter Annieke that she could get a horse when she was 12 years old and we were running out of time,” says Martie, a DA councillor in Caledon. “We searched for the right place in the countryside for seven years – every weekend, we would go village hopping!”

Gert, an electrical contractor, recalls: “I took a map and used a compass to draw circles with a radius of 50km and 200km from Cape Town in an attempt to find the ideal town.”

Caledon, however, wasn’t on the list – although it's only 112km from Cape Town. But then an agent called them a year later to tell them about a 1.1ha smallholding that had been on the market for three years – the same property where they’d made a hasty U-turn at the gate! “It was badly neglected and the stoep was dilapidated. There were no outbuildings to speak of except for a semi-repaired barn and we had to walk through the empty house four times before we could make sense of all the rooms.”

Nevertheless, the place stole Martie’s heart – and very quickly too. “I remember sitting down in the middle of the living room floor, trying to regain my composure. The asking price was a lot more than we could afford. We’d also just finished renovating our house in Hout Bay. The whole way back home, Gert and I said not one word to each other!”