It’s not often that a travelling tourist attraction comes home to roost.  Writer and satirist Pieter Dirk Uys comes originally from Cape Town but for decades has been a citizen of the world. 

He and his coterie of alter-egos (including the fabulously famous Evita Bezuidenhout, inspired by Australian comedian Barry Humphries’ comic character, Dame Edna Everage) became internationally famous.  He has the unusual ability in his shows to insult people so that they thoroughly enjoy it and clamour to hear more. However, 15-odd years ago PD decided it was time to retire and find a place to put down roots.  He went to check out the pretty little Cape village of Greyton, but got lost and landed up in the equally pretty town of Darling instead, where he fell in love with an old Victorian house.  At about the same time the local disused railway station was being auctioned off as scrap.  This was absolute grist to PD’s mill:  a town called Darling?  (Evita calls everyone ‘skattebol’, Afrikaans for ‘darling’.)  A real station with a platform…in Afrikaans called a ‘perron’?  (Evita is named after the Argentinian First Lady Evita Perón). 

An hour’s drive from Cape Town on the easy R27 West Coast Road?  It was a match made in heaven. Initially the small farming community of Darling did not know what to make of this peacock in their midst. But Pieter Dirk is an ebullient character with a razor-sharp tongue and a good heart, and within a very short while he was giving concerts to raise funds for the local school, being the guest of honour (in his Evita costume) at the Boerewors Festival, and attracting numbers of his creative and artistic friends and colleagues to visit. “Before Pieter Dirk arrived we only really had the wildflower show,” says Darling tourism officer, Dianne le Roux.  Darling is in the middle of the annual wildflower spectacle. “Then he started giving concerts and shows and got involved in the community. This attracted a lot of creative and artistic people, and before too long there was a year-round programme of very popular events.” The station building is now a theatre which stages nightly shows.  It is tiny and glittery and completely over the top, just like the owner himself when in his working clothes. The Rock the Daisies music festival is coming up in October, attracting the young alternatives to the town.   Artists and crafters have set up shop in the High Street and in the character-filled side streets, with restaurants and coffee shops aplenty.  The surrounding rolling fields of wheat, interspersed with dairy farming, are now also sporting vineyards, with a vibrant Wine Route.  The entire town is enormously proud of its Country Museum. The !Khwa ttu San Educational and Cultural Centre has a craft village and tours by San tour guides, which includes a genuine San village with little reed houses and a display of crafts and the almost-vanished San way of life. A complete innovation is the Voorkamer Fees (front-room festival).  The brain-child of visiting Dutch actors, the Voorkamer Fees is a sort of lucky packet of a theatrical experience.  You buy a coloured ticket and get into your group. Shortly afterwards your taxi arrives and takes your group to someone’s house where you sit in the front room (die voorkamer) and watch a completely unexpected performance: either a poetry reading or a short play or a musical interlude, while enjoying the hospitality of the home-owner.  When the performance is over, it’s time to move on to the next voorkamer.  The only thing you can expect is a high standard of performance and something completely different. Dianne recommends that people come to Darling for a few days.  “There is a wide variety of places to stay and things to explore,” she says.  “The houses are beautifully Victorian, there are shows and artists’ studios and wine tours.  There’s an olive farm where they make, amongst other things, olive chocolate.  There is something different and quirky every day.” The town’s most famous citizen has certainly put it on the map.  But he has not really transformed anything – the town was already a gem waiting to be mined. “Pieter Dirk is a very good ambassador for the town,” says Dianne.  “He promotes the town and the Swartland at every opportunity.” And apart from the outrageous personality of the town’s First Lady, what do visitors enjoy the most? “I think that people like the atmosphere of the town,” muses Diane.  “Visitors comment that they come here to visit and they end up making friends.  They go out to a restaurant for dinner and find themselves in the pub talking to the locals.  This is a small community, but a friendly one.  It is hard not to make friends here.” For more about Darling (and to find out how to say ‘darling’ in every language in the world), visit the website www.darlingtourism.co.za