Tumbling tumble weeds. That is what I suspected we would find when we decided to take advantage of the good weather one Sunday and enjoy a lunch in Cullinan. With only a limited amount of time (the drive there) to do research, I quickly discovered that we were essentially looking for one road: Oak Avenue.
Main Street Shopping
Oak Avenue is the main road in this small mining town. It’s lined with Jacaranda and Oak trees which I’m sure will soon start to bloom. I imagine it will be even prettier then. At the bottom of Oak avenue there is a historic village which is where you’ll finding many of the tourist activities. The historic village is where it is all happening. Here you will find the mine manager’s house, a variety of little shops with interesting products from second-hand junk sales to incredible hand-made jewellery and art work.
There’s a tourism office where I thought we would get some information about the history of the area, places to eat, things to do and places to see but it was actually just the Cullinan tour office. What does this mean? You can book and pay for a tour but that is pretty much the only information they have. You can find out more on the tour. Well, we had just missed the second and last tour of the day, so we did our own little tour.
Mine Manager’s House
We visited the mine managers house and received a short tour from room to room. The tour started out well until one of the members of the tour started asking questions and this really irritated the guide for some reason. The tour became VERY uncomfortable with a lot of sighing and dagger eyes. Aside from that, it was actually quite interesting. After the mine manager died, his two daughters lived in the house until they died in the same week. They were 94 and 98 years old. I remarked that the other sister may have died of a broken heart, to which the guide responded, “no, she was just old.”
I always feel bad going into people’s houses and looking at their rooms being in their space. It feels so invasive sometimes. Then again, it is a museum.
There are many restaurants along the road to choose from. Sunday in Cullinan is a busy day, so you may want to book a table before you go. We had lunch at the Cockpit Brew House which had tasty burgers, live music, craft beer and the most epic chilli poppers in Gauteng. I’ve tried a lot of chilli poppers in Gauteng and I promise…these are the ones!
On our way back out, we took a drive to the lookout point, where we thought we could see their the big hole. I don’t think the point was high enough though and I actually think they might want to consider calling it something else. We couldn’t really see the hole. It was more like “hmm…. if we go over the bush there, there might be a hole.” I guess, if you take the tour it’ll take you closer and you can see the hole. Note for next time.