It was at the end of the 1990’s that I started setting up my woodworking workshop. At that stage I bought second hand machines and overhauled them over time while I was busy farming and working with my dad in the engineering workshop. My idea was to start with the basics and gradually build it up from there. It was interesting, reading up on articles from a variety of woodworking magazines, what was regarded as “the basics”. Some said a table saw and a planer-thicknesser. Others thought you could not be without a band saw or a router. To a novice like me it was confusing and in some ways debilitating. Quite often during that period I said to myself that I could only start thinking of any project once I had the right machines and the ideal workshop. Which meant that it took a long time for me to actually put my hands on a piece of wood and make something, because for a long time I was under the impression that I didn’t have any of the two. Then one day, on a journey into town, I h...
The Restory is a Retreat Centre nestled against Tafelkop, a singular mountain head near Wakkerstroom, South Africa. Here we live a simple life as contemplatives. It is a place of re-connection: with ourselves, people, Nature, Silence and Creativity. Our retreats are aimed at this. Our conversations, writing and art centre around the univocity of life. We need a place that reminds us that we are all one. The Restory hopes to be such a place and space.