Bethany: A Step Back In Time
April 14th, 2009
Rose wanted to visit the Bethany, Step Back in Time family day. Bethany is a small, South Australian, rural town just before you get to the larger town of Tanunda. It's main attraction is the German 'village' which these days consists of a church, tea rooms and school house art gallery as well as a few smaller surrounding structures.
Rose and I decided to head through the School house art gallery first where the Barossa Art Society had a display of paintings. The exhibition wasn't particularly large and there were certainly a number of nice landscapes and animal pictures however nothing particularly stuck out in my mind to single it out here.
The brochure for this event said there would be demonstrations of traditional bread making, butter churning, noodle making, rope making and more. When we got there the bread making stall was vacant, I heard someone ask the rope making person if he'd be demonstrating (he said "no"), and nothing was happening at the butter churning stall.
There were a couple of men hollowing out a log with axes to make a trough and the noodle lady was kind of making noodles.
At about this point it was time for lunch and, to the organizers credit, the tea rooms made some very nice sandwiches along side a serving of German Cake. The pleasant environment and friendly staff were a welcome contrast to the rest of the stalls and demonstrations.
I don't like to knock events like this because I do realize they take considerable time to organize and many of the people operating the displays are often volunteers however, everyone in period dress seemed to be on an extended tea break. After we had finished our lunch we went back out to see if any of the other demonstrations were under way only to see a tray full of cups of tea and coffee being brought out to the demonstrators. I guess it's pretty tiring standing around and talking to each other.
With not much else to see or do (beyond listening to the historical church organ play) Rose and I left for Mengler Hill, the site of the Barossa Sculpture park, which was just up the road. I'll write about that next post.
April 14th, 2009
Rose wanted to visit the Bethany, Step Back in Time family day. Bethany is a small, South Australian, rural town just before you get to the larger town of Tanunda. It's main attraction is the German 'village' which these days consists of a church, tea rooms and school house art gallery as well as a few smaller surrounding structures.
Rose and I decided to head through the School house art gallery first where the Barossa Art Society had a display of paintings. The exhibition wasn't particularly large and there were certainly a number of nice landscapes and animal pictures however nothing particularly stuck out in my mind to single it out here.
The brochure for this event said there would be demonstrations of traditional bread making, butter churning, noodle making, rope making and more. When we got there the bread making stall was vacant, I heard someone ask the rope making person if he'd be demonstrating (he said "no"), and nothing was happening at the butter churning stall.
There were a couple of men hollowing out a log with axes to make a trough and the noodle lady was kind of making noodles.
At about this point it was time for lunch and, to the organizers credit, the tea rooms made some very nice sandwiches along side a serving of German Cake. The pleasant environment and friendly staff were a welcome contrast to the rest of the stalls and demonstrations.
I don't like to knock events like this because I do realize they take considerable time to organize and many of the people operating the displays are often volunteers however, everyone in period dress seemed to be on an extended tea break. After we had finished our lunch we went back out to see if any of the other demonstrations were under way only to see a tray full of cups of tea and coffee being brought out to the demonstrators. I guess it's pretty tiring standing around and talking to each other.
With not much else to see or do (beyond listening to the historical church organ play) Rose and I left for Mengler Hill, the site of the Barossa Sculpture park, which was just up the road. I'll write about that next post.
Pity the festival isn't living up to its expectations at the moment, especially as Rose was looking forward to that event. Wonder why the demos weren't being done - it's false advertising!
ReplyDeleteThe tea rooms would have made up for it for me too! I like good food, and enjoy having it whilst I'm out! Is that imitation bread on display there? Hope so, even though it looks good!
I think it was actually real bread though I didn't take a close look to know for sure.
ReplyDeleteIf it weren't for the tearooms I'd say forget this event based on my experience. Perhaps the demonstrators put their hand up for a lot more work than they had anticipated?
It's a shame because there were enough people wandering around looking at the demonstration area to have everything going. It's not like Rose and I were there by ourselves.