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Date: 1968 Type: Farm Stall Status: Derelict   Click to view large map Coordinates: 32°56'21.23" S 27°58'36.68" E

See more photographs In 1967 Biggy Turner (later Barnard) and her husband Adriaan Barnard (Snowy) purchased property along the Gonubie Main Road, which was originally called St Annes. As Snowy was a big Rugby supporter, especially for the Springboks and Northern Transvaal, and since they started a poultry farm on the property, they decided to change the name to Springbok Chicks. The Springbok Farm Stall started in 1968 when it was just a table on the side of the Gonubie Main Road. At that time 12 year old Malcom Turner and his sister Jennifer sold vegetables that they had grown to make some pocket money. A lady by the name of Sheila Nel, who worked at Horwitz scrap yard in Abbotsford, built the wooden farm stall for them in place of the table. Later in 1971 it was converted into a small brick building and it grew from there. In 1970, Biggy Turner (later Barnard) came across a large rugby ball at Border Boxes, which had come from the BRU (Border Rugby Union) grounds when the All Blacks played in East London. She offered to buy the rugby ball and then came up with the idea to turn the rugby ball into an egg to advertise her egg business from the farm stall. She contracted Toby Skolmen (who was a good friend of her husband and regular customer at the farm stall) to have the rugby ball plastered with bricks and cement in order to turn it into an egg. According to Biggy the farm store did very well because there were no big commercial grocery shops and the iconic egg and divine, farm-fresh flapjacks attracted many customers. In 1976 the store won the Citrus Competition – green voters (there was a write up in the Daily Dispatch). Biggy kept the farm stall going till 1980 when she sold the store. At the time the farm stall was still very successful. Several people owned it thereafter, but Jenti Jeeva was the most successful and became very popular, he stuck it out longer than all the others. A decade later the president of South Africa at the time, F.W. de Klerk, came to Gonubie around 1990-1993 and they painted his face on the egg and it looked just like him because he was bald. According to Dave and Lynn Hulley, who owned the farm stall from 1994 to 1998, "Coke offered to redo the egg for us as advertising - they put on arms, legs, a red cap and a coke bottle in the egg's hand." Dave and Lynn also started restoring and selling cottage furniture which Dave was sourcing in the Transkei and Ciskei. They arranged it outside and passing traffic could see what they had, which did very well. Renee Ladwig owned the farm stall from 01/04/1998 to about Feb/March 2001. Renee and her husband sold the farm stall to Nico Venter in 2001. When the farm stall came available in 2003 Malcolm Turner and his wife Lila bought it from Jhart Venter (Nico’s father) and tried to rekindle the farm stall affect. They turned the garden into a tea garden, which they called the rainforest and built on to the building and made it into the old farm stall it used to be. The farm stall closed down on the 28th Feb 2005. The business was struggling due to fierce competition from the growing number of grocery outlets and garage shops in Gonubie, as well as the difficulty for cars to turn into the area where the farm stall was located as the Gonubie Main Road was often very busy. Later in 2005 Biggy sold the entire farm and Cypress Construction took over. Mark and Kerry Derbyshere took over the running of the farm stall. They painted the building purple and turned it into a pub named Rodillos. They were distinctly told not to move or break the egg. However, Mark tried to move it and the arms broke off, so they turned it into a Springbuck rugby ball. Later more moving of the egg ended with it crumbling and being permanently removed. Between 2007 and 2010 the farm stall was painted yellow and turned into an antiques shop named Something Old. After consulting the Gonubie community on Facebook, many remember the egg as a huge "Welcome to Gonubie." Others have fond memories of the tasty goods sold at the farm stall and the memorable stops when leaving Gonubie. Nowadays the farm stall is the abandoned yellow eye-sore along the Gonubie Main Road, a constant reminder of a great landmark loss for the Gonubie community. (Dayne Skolmen, October 2014) All truncated references not fully cited below are those of Joanna Walker's original text and cited in full in the 'Bibliography' entry of the Lexicon.