Kruisrivier Gallery: A tough and talented couple, living and working in majestic mountain solitude

Entering the Kruisrivier Gallery on an afternoon in May, you might find Roger Young packing away a hand-crafted wooden piece for dispatch, and his partner Phyllis Midlane carefully working with pins, needle and thread on the floor.

She would be sewing together coverings for frost-sensitive plants, with the meticulous care of someone stitching crystal beads onto a wedding dress.

It’s autumn, and the first frost is only weeks away. The plants to be protected are mostly in her vegetable garden, where cauliflower, aubergine, chillies, chives, sweet potatoes, basil, rocket, leeks and lemongrass grow.

Phyllis needs the veggies for her delicious gallery dishes. She has a talent for making something tasty, fresh and quick. On the menu are chicken pies and savoury tarts. She also bakes a mean biscotti.

Roger, a photographer and bespoke wood crafter, moved from Cape Town in 2006 to this out-of-the-way place, surrounded by the Swartberg crags and valleys between Oudtshoorn and Calitzdorp. Phyllis arrived three years later.

Apart from being a retired ballet dancer with perfect posture, Phyllis makes costumes and puppets for major theatrical productions. She also sculpts and fashions felt hats. Phyllis always sees the world in three dimensions. And she’s always on the go.

Both Roger and Phyllis live extraordinarily artisanal lives. Most things are hand-made around here.

Master crafter and photographer

Roger is a master of wood, and can go on at length about his past discoveries at various Cape lumber yards.

He is also a photographer with a newsman’s eye for that distinctive moment. His black-and-white images don’t just reflect the sweeping landscapes of his neighbourhood, but also the poignant beauty of its people. They could move you to tears.

He captures the little big moments of life in the mountain community that is Kruisrivier: the awkward hug between a man and his son after a fight, the shy smile of a farmworker’s wife, a bride and groom cutting into a wedding cake, he grinning with joy and she with a look of absolute dread, a daughter standing over her half-glimpsed dying mother. The caption reads: “Slipping Towards the Light.”

Roger had not planned on a photographic career out at Kruisrivier.

“I would be invited to someone’s wedding,” he says. “I’d shoot the pictures for free. Then I would be invited to photograph funerals in the area, and it all became a bit of a spiritual connection between the land, the local people and my camera.”

Early days at Kruisrivier

This tiny settlement of Kruisrivier was built in 1890, no bigger than a spit on the national map: a little farm school, a few houses and not much more. Roger bought the old school and the derelict house across the road.

He hired some local labour and set to work, transforming what was once dead and abandoned into a creative living and working environment.

“I sold my house in Simon’s Town for exactly what I spent on buying and renovating the schoolroom-studio and our house,” he says.

The dancer

The theatre is Phyllis’s life. She used to dance with the Cape Performing Arts Board (Capab).

You can tell by the way she walks: chin up, hips open and shoulders thrown back like an angel trailing invisible wings.

“When I was three years old, my uncle took my cousin and me to fetch my granny, who was at a ballet performance in Joburg,” she says. “The usher allowed us to slip in and watch the final few minutes – and that was it for me.”

Phyllis matriculated in ballet, went on to dance with the Johannesburg City Ballet, before joining the Royal Ballet School in London for a year. On her return to South Africa she joined Capab and danced with the company for 12 years.

Phyllis no longer dances, but she makes special wedding dresses and costumes. Her creations have been on stage as part of productions that include Phantom of the Opera, War Horse, Don Giovanni, Evita and The Life and Times of Michael K.

And living in the middle of mountains, far from the world, has its definite perks. Roger and Phyllis still sit outside on their stoep in the summer evenings, sipping something cold and drinking in the golden mountain ridges of a backyard few people possess – the sweeping Swartberg Ranges of the Klein Karoo. DM

Klein Karoo Magic (390 pages, full colour) by Chris Marais and Julienne du Toit is being released in May, 2026. To order your author-signed first edition copy (R400 including SA courier service), email Julie at julie@karoospace.co.za