Croydon Vineyard Estate Newsletter June 2024

AcrobAtic chAmpion i See tAble mountAin

cover photo

A pocket sized Croydonite has achieved

Western Province colours for acrobatics

Adriané du Toit participated in the ASSA acrobatics competition during May and achieved her Western Province colours. She will be representing Western Province at the South African Championships during July.

She also received the award for best highest score for the senior age group category.

CONGRATULATIONS Adriané!

Welcome to Our New Homeow N ers

• Chirene Jelbert & Pippa Karsen: 6 Cancer Close

• Lindie Speight: 9 Cancer Close

• Rohann & Leonie Moolman: 13 Cancer Close

• Andreas & Hubre Uys: 16 Sagittarius Lane

Our Very Own Croydon Resident Writes and Publishes His First Novel

article writte N a N d submitted by Nola N Spre N ger

Nolan Sprenger semi-retired from the business world and he and Maria moved to Croydon Vineyard Estate in 2017 with the hope of pursuing his dream of writing a book. The culmination of this aspiration finally became a reality when the last page of his novel ‘I See Table Mountain’ was written four and a half years later.

‘I See Table Mountain’ is a historical fiction set in the early 19th century.

It is a sweeping and powerful story filled with action, ecstasy, heartbreak and alternates between a peaceful English village, the restless early days of the Cape Colony and finally moves on to the turbulent and violent Eastern Cape Frontier. It is an epic account of a young British soldier, Captain James Earl, his loves, losses, remarkable adventures, and his troubled and tender relationship with an orphaned girl named Lily. 8

He is posted to Southern Africa and gets caught up in the Frontier Wars as the mighty Xhosa army rampages across the Great Fish River into the Cape Colony.

Woven into the story are two parallel narratives: first is of two young siblings brutally captured as slaves in East Africa and shipped to the Cape and the second is the story of the 1820 Settlers and the extraordinary challenges and terrible hardships they faced on landing in the Southern Cape.

as he had distant relatives who were involved in some of the actual events described in the book. For many years, Nolan was involved in the business world working for a large corporation and later on successfully ran his own company. He is now following his life’s interest of studying history, and his passion for writing and storytelling.

It is a raw, thrilling tale of love, war, and adventure with a fascinating insight into life in the Cape Colony and The Eastern Cape Frontier in the early 1800’s. Nolan has a particular interest in the geographical area in the story and its history

‘I See Table Mountain’ was launched at the Croydon Grape Expectations book club evening and was spectacularly well received and is currently being distributed to bookshops.

A copy of the book is available directly from Nolan at a special CVE resident’s price. Please contact him on 082 568 2294 to obtain a copy.

Croydon locals rub shoulders

W it H Royalty

Check out this exciting news! Two Croydon locals, Johann and Ansoné du Toit, had the incredible opportunity to meet King Philippe and Queen Mathilde of Belgium during their recent state visit to Cape Town. Why? Well, it turns out that the company they co-founded,

Simera Sense, just opened its global headquarters in Leuven, Belgium.

Not only that, but they also recently secured global funding to expand their operations both locally and internationally.

Talk about making waves on the global stage!

To read how Simera Sense has been taking Belgium by storm, click on the link below:

Simera Sense

social neWs

by tH aliza d u toit

The social calendar is always busy with new ideas and challenges, but it always ends with laughter and smiles. Our Quiz Night held with the amazing team from Laugh Out Loud was a huge success. According to the participants, their stomach muscles are still sore from all the laughter.

Our top event for the term was our potjiekos competition. Thank you to all the teams that participated and to our two amazing judges, Kitty and Annelie, who had very difficult decisions to make.

Congratulations to the Young family - “The Heat” who won the competition. The Heat is on for next year!

We had our blind wine tasting and who thought that understanding our wine could be so difficult, but gathering more knowledge about our Croydon Wine will make us all specialists in the future. In the meantime, come and enjoy our wine on a Friday evening at the Lifestyle Centre with the company of your fellow residents.

In the words of Casey Roberts-Baxter

We want to thank all the residents who support us at the Lifestyle Centre. To those who are a little bit shy to come around, we encourage you to join us one evening as we would love to build a relationship with all our residents.

Just to give you a glimpse of what has been happening, we kicked off the year with one of our signature events, Grape Stomping, which was a screaming success! This is a celebration of the start of the new harvesting season which is an annual event. We are confident to say that anyone who attended, most definitely enjoyed themselves. We hope to keep this spirit going and hope to grow this event each year. This event is a true reflection of the epitome of what Croydon Vineyard is all about.

Moving on to our Dinner Evening, which was also a resounding success. We had many people supporting us who thoroughly enjoyed the

food served with a glass of Croydon wine or a cooldrink for the kids. It was lovely to see families coming out and spending time together and sharing a warm meal.

Jumping right into another of our signature events! The Taste of Croydon – Potjiekos Competition, which was yet another successful event. It was a day full of laughter, spirit, food and wine. We would like to thank everyone for their participation and for bringing their best spirit on the day.

We love a good laugh here at Croydon Vineyard Estate and there is no better way to bring laughter like a Quiz Night can. We had over 50 participants and from what we’ve heard, all 50 plus participants woke up with sore stomach muscles from the amount of laughter that was had. This is a great image of the kind of bonds we like to form here at Croydon.

Congratulations to the Young Family who entered as The Heat team and took the prize for best potjie of the day for 2024. The trophy is on display in the Lifestyle Centre and will now become the floating trophy for each year’s winners.

Once again, thank you to all of those who support us and continue to do so. We hope to see you all again at our upcoming signature events as well as our smaller events throughout the year, including Friday nights when the bar is open!

For any further information regarding our events, please feel free to contact us at

Ev EN ts Cal EN daR

Staff MatterS

As many of our Residents would have noticed, Casey has been assisting us at the Lifestyle Centre since mid-December 2023. She was kind enough to fall in temporarily and help keep the Lifestyle Centre operational while a replacement for Marilise, who left us at the end of December, was found. In this time, Casey has formed bonds with many of our residents and regular visitors to the Lifestyle Centre. She has been of great assistance to us all! Sadly, her time has come to an end, as our new permanent Lifestyle Co-

Ordinator joined us in the first week of June 2024.

The new face which you will get to know in time, is that of Bianca van Eyk. We know that Bianca has received the best training and support from Casey during the handover period.

We wish to express our thanks to Casey and wish her well in her future endeavours. We would also like to use this opportunity to welcome Bianca to the Croydonite family.

On the contrary, a communication was sent out regarding the Estate Manager, Chris Liddicoat’s impending retirement.

Chris has dedicated his leadership, commitment, and tireless efforts to ensure the smooth operation and maintenance of the estate. We are deeply grateful for his invaluable contribution.

To ensure the estate continues to be managed with due care and diligence, Chris will facilitate this transition by sharing his extensive knowledge of our estate and its operations with his replacement and with the Board of Trustees.

We will keep you informed of any updates regarding the selection and appointment of the new Estate Manager.

The Upgrade of the Kids PlayPaRK

By Geoff e ls

Thanks to Joseph, our kids park is looking new again. He has painted a number of homes on the estate and as a token of appreciation, he offered to paint our park at no cost. I’m sure you will all agree that it looks nice and bright and colourful again. Not only does he do painting, but can also assist with the following:

1. Replacing of wooden frames with anodised aluminium

2. Torch on waterproofing

3. Pool repairs

And many more general services around the home. Should you need anything done around the house, to renovate after the rainy season or paint inside now, please support Joseph. I can confirm his workmanship and reliability. He has painted 3

houses for me and I have not had to be concerned about supervision or reliability when he is around. Please contact me if you need any additional information. Geoff 082 900 1163 or visit me at 1 Sagittarius Lane. I would be happy to chat. Alternatively, contact Joseph directly on 068 593 1461 . 17

ten crazy factS about Sa

that you probably didn’t know!

1. South Africa is the only country in the world to have hosted the Rugby, Cricket and Football World Cups.

2. Mzansi is the only country in the world to have had two Nobel Peace Prize laureates living on the same street. This refers to Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu living on Vilakazi Street in Johannesburg’s Soweto township.

3. The country is home to the oldest meteor scar in the world, the Vredefort Dome. Two-billion years ago a meteor roughly the size of Table Mountain hit the earth not far from where the Free State town stands today. It is a World Heritage Site.

4. South Africa is the only country in the world to have voluntarily dismantled its nuclear weapons program. This took place near the end of the apartheid era. All bombs (six constructed and one under construction) were dismantled as we acceded to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of nuclear weapons in 1991.

5. Bloukrans Bridge Bungee on the Garden Route is the highest commercial bungee jump in the world.

6. South Africa is home to the world’s largest diamond, the Cullinan Diamond, which was cut into the Great Star of Africa and the Lesser Star of Africa.

7. South Africa is the only country in the world to have three capital cities: Pretoria (executive), Bloemfontein (judicial), and Cape Town (legislative).

8. Affectionally known as the ‘groot gat’ did you know that the Kimberley Mine is in fact the world’s largest hand-dug mine? Another fact about South Africa you didn’t know …

9. This is one of those facts about South Africa you almost certainly do know, but South Africa is home to the most official languages of any nation in the world. The country has 12, including Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans and English, with Sign Language added in 2023.

10. South Africa is the only country in the world to have an entirely unique floral ecosystem – the Cape Floral Kingdom – within its borders. Our proteas and fynbos are so world renowned they recently won awards at the 2024 Chelsea Flower Show.

Planned Events

With winter approaching, we will try our utmost to keep your hearts warm with events. Here are a couple you can look forward to, with dates and times to be confirmed.

• Riedel Glass Tasting

• Heritage Day

• The bar will be open for the Rugby Springbok games with delicious refreshments

• Shiraz wine tasting

• Poker evening

• Port launch

• Allocation tasting

All residents are requested to look at the calendar on the GLOCMS Community app under the Events icon. Should you wish to attend, RSVP’s take place on the app by clicking on the purple RSVP button.

If you have any requests or ideas, please email marketing@Croydon-estate.co.za as we would love to incorporate it in our planning.