Darling is like an ageing star of stage and screen: once moderately pretty and of mild allure and talent, but now the victim of several obvious face-lifts and a great deal too much pancake make-up. Once a dusty little dorp in the middle of dairy farms and a few wind-swept vineyards, it can now be divided into four definite segments: the Old Dorp, the New Dorp, Greenville, and the local RDP settlement (Revenge of the Dark People).

The Old Dorp consists of half a dozen streets lined with late Victorian cottages and houses built on either side of the local stream which dries up in the summer leaving only swarms of mosquitoes to mark its presence. Once standing in their own orchards on plots of about 1500 m2, many of these quaint buildings are now cheek-by-jowl with more modern pseudo-Victorians which have been built in their subdivided gardens. In the early 1990s Darling became "flavour of the month" and suffered in the ensuing gentrification, losing a great deal of its original rural character.

The New Dorp, through which one must drive as one arrives from Cape Town, is a motley collection of modern architectural styles from the ranch, through the 1960's tank-trap to the Olde Cape Gable and the downright ugly; its saving grace is that it has a good view over the Old Dorp and The Great Nothing.

Greenville is the local township (once "Coloured") and lies to the north of the main area on the west side of the road to Moorreesburg, while opposite and next to the small industrial area, spreading its ugliness north and eastwards is the inevitable Informal Settlement. This latter, only begun in the mid 1990s, is now an enormous sprawl which has entirely altered the impact of the town.

There is the usual ugly main street with its hotel, police station, Spar, chemist, various small restaurants and antiquey shoppes; each building is held up by large numbers of locals with nothing else to do but drink mysterious brews from brown paper bags and watch the passing scene. There is the usual large NGK (of no architectural interest), prominent in the middle of the Old Dorp, a smaller Chapel lying almost out of sight, and, of course, the New Apostolic Church in Greenville rearing its pointed roof skyward.

Darling's only claim to fame, apart from Evita se Perron on the old railway station, is the annual flower show. Because the wild flowers are usually at their best in August, this festival is held on the middle weekend of September when the muggies are at their absolute worst. Apart from its ability to claim the first prize in ripping the visitor off, the flower show manages to rip off the locals as well. Proceeds go to the local Club, and what it does with them is a mystery. Darling is hot and humid in the summer, cold, windy and wet in the winter, and still fights the Boer War on a daily basis.

Thinking of a weekend away? - there are better places to throw away your money!