In The Shadow of Mount Muozi

August 24, 2019 / stidyatkusane / 16 Comments

*Mount Muozi, in whose shadow I grew up*.

When it comes to mountains I am with the ancient Greeks – I believe they are the right and proper dwelling place for the Gods. My own sense of awe and wonderment when in their presence stems, in large part, from my childhood experiences on our farm, Nyangui, which lay at the very end of The Old Dutch Settlement Road, in Nyanga North, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

The mountain range which ran along our eastern boundary was shrouded in legend and was dominated by Mt Muozi, a steep, semi-detached peak attached to the main Nyanga plateau by a narrow saddle. Looking like some great fortress and frequently masked by cloud, it played a pivotal role in local belief system.

To the Saunyama people, who live nearby, Muozi had always been an extremely sacred site, harbouring a protective, if somewhat touchy, deity through whom all life was cycled and who had an important influence over both their lives and the weather. Upset it and you would be punished with the curse of no rain; give it the proper respect and make the right offerings, your crops would flourish and all would be well.

In an area where every stream, knoll, rock, cranny, glade, cleft and grove seemed to have its own special spiritual connection, it was the most revered of them all, the epicentre of an important rain-making cult, a mountain whose significance extended way beyond the mere physical. It was a gateway to another dimension, a bridge between past, present and future.

*Muozi – the centre of an imporant rain-making cult*.

When we were still on the farm a new chief was chosen for the Saunyama people and was then led by an ox up the mountain as tradition dictated. The fact that it rained, as he proceeded up its slopes, was taken as a sign that the ancestors had given their blessing to his appointment.

It may or may not have been coincidental that the three mission stations established in our area – St Mary’s, Mount Mellary and Marist Brothers – had all been built in the long shadow cast by Muozi (or Rain God Mountain as my father liked to call it).

To the bringers of light in a great darkness, carriers of the word of God to a heathen race, such beliefs and superstitions must have provided ready proof that their presence was urgently required. Here were souls in need of salvation!

One of the taboos concerning the mountain was that ordinary tribes-people were forbidden from climbing it. Determined to prove, once and for all whose God, was the more omnipotent, a local missionary decided to lead a party of school children to its summit.

*The summit of Muozi with my sister Sally sitting on cliff edge. Nyangui mountain in background. Picture courtesy of Sally Scott*.

Again, it may or may not have been a coincidence, but that year the whole region experienced a devastating drought.

Depending on what angle you tackle it from, it would, admittedly, have been a fairly tough climb. Vaguely volcanic in outline, although that is not how it was formed back in early geological time, the mountain has, at its top, a massive tower of square-sided, near vertical, rock. The easiest way to reach the summit would, in fact, be to double back to Nyanga and drive along the old road that runs along the top of the range and then walk over the saddle that links Muozi to the main plateau. That, however, would probably have felt like a cop-out – far better the little children suffer for their sins by making them slog their way up from the bottom!

*Muozi – connected by a saddle to the main Nyanga plateau. Nyangui in background. Picture courtesy of Paul Stidolph*.

Another legend concerning Muozi was that if there was ever a cloud in the sky, there would always be one hovering over it. We were constantly amazed by how often this proved to be true although I suppose a meteorologist may be able to come up with a perfectly logical and reasonable scientific explanation about precisely why this should be so.

It was easy to see why Muozi should have become an object for such devotion. Although by no means the highest peak in the range (neighbouring Nyangui, for example, exceeded it in height), its magnificence consisted of something else. With its dramatic cliffs and crags it was more sharply formed and was much more striking to look at than any of the other mountains in the Nyanga range

I was always fascinated by this mountain amongst whose vapours both good and bad spirits seem to have learnt how to co-exist. One moment it could seem dark and threatening, the next it was as welcoming as some benevolent old giant.

Cranky, changeable, a totem for our more fearful imaginings, it has, for me, come to symbolise an Africa that has increasingly become consigned to the world of books, banished by the rising tide of humanity and economic development. Here, something of the old magic still clings to the earth.

From this point of view, I, too, felt the mountains should be treated with circumspection – it was a deity to be wooed and won over and then revered and respected; its was not one you wanted to trifle with or cross.

*The original Summershoek house. Mt Muozi in background*.

When we were still in the process of moving out to the farm, way back in the early 1960s, we had often stayed in the cottage that J.Bekker, one of the original Afrikaner settlers in the district, had built, in the traditional Dutch-style, at its base. When we moved out there, Summershoek, the farm on which it stood, was owned by Marshall Murphree, an American missionary who in 1970 would become Rhodesia’s inaugural Professor of Race Relations. He and his family did not live there permanently but used it as a holiday home.

At night, with its peak washed white in the moonlight and a gentle wind sighing down from the slopes, I often used to feel like I had crossed through some portal into another world, one that was both a little scary and also unimaginably beautiful – a feeling that only intensified as more stars appeared and the nightjars started calling.

Adding to its allure was the fact that there were still leopard living on it. One of them attacked old Charlie, the aged caretaker of the property, as he was out rounding up cattle and was then swiftly despatched by his equally ancient wife who brought an axe down on its skull. Displaying still more commendable fortitude – as well as devotion to her spouse – she then staggered back home, carrying Charlie, so that my mother could attend to his wounds.

I was not the only one who felt Muozi’s strange power. Our Malawian gardener, Devite, who we had bought out with us from Salisbury (now Harare), lived in such fear of the mountain – he talked about seeing white, ghostly figures going in and out of it – that after a few months he decided he had had enough. Packing his few possessions in a battered old suitcase, he caught a train and headed ‘Down South’ to Jo’burg, to look for a job on the gold mines.

A couple of years later – by which stage we had moved to our new house on the neighbouring Witte Kopjes farm – we were astonished to see his thin, skeletal figure hobbling up the road. For him at least, South Africa had not proved to be the land of money and opportunity. He also appeared to have had a rethink and decided he could live with the ghouls and malign spirits that inhabited the mountain for he carried on working for us for the rest of his remarkably long life.

*All that remained of the old Summershoek house when I went back to visit it twenty-years after the Rhodesian bush war ended*.

When we were forced off the farm during the Rhodesian Bush War, I was sad to say goodbye to that great brooding mountain and the wild country at its feet.

Looking back on those days I realise what a pivotal role it played in my life. No other landmark has affected me as deeply or had such influence on my imaginative development or provided me with such a rich vein of memories. Living in its shadow, imaginative doors were opened, creative juices started to flow, ways of seeing begun.

Paintings and Travel

August 17, 2019August 18, 2019 / stidyatkusane / 6 Comments

The link between paintings and journeys is a close one. Both are forms of exploration.

Every painting involves a plunge in to the unknown and brings forth its own set of challenges. You have to choose a scene and then decide on your composition. You have to select the right colours so they express the mood or feeling you want to convey. You have to train your eye to perceive tones in order to get the right balance in your painting. You have to find a way to connect the different elements to create a pleasing effect..

Having said that, if I have learnt one thing from my own dabbling it is that much of art is in the process. You can start out with one set of ideas and then see them evolve in to something completely different. Without even planning it, for example, I sometimes find my paintings take on a whiff of the supernatural or even the surreal.

Rather than fight these wellsprings from the deep, I find it best just to do what I do on my travels and that is go with the flow. Your muse usually knows what is best…

Travel with its association with adventure and discovery and the allure of the new has always proved irresistible to me – and, in the back of my mind, there is always the hope that I will be sufficiently inspired by the scenes I see to want to come back home and paint them (there are other reasons I seek out changes of place, of course, many of them anthropological. I want to study the flora and fauna although I tend to look at even this through the eyes of an artist marvelling, for example, at the beauty of a particular bird I have just successfully identified).

Such journeys by car, or even by foot, can produce insights and perceptions you would not get if you just sat at home all your life. They can provide stimulus, enrichment and a sense of achievement.

The urge to record these new discoveries are part of my motivation.

I try not to over plan my trips or put myself under the guidance of others (although, occasionally one needs to do just that) but, rather, just follow my nose and see where it leads me.

As Lawrence Durrell put it, so beautifully, in his book, Bitter Lemons:

“Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will – whatever we may think. They flower spontaneously out of the demands of our nature – and the best of them lead us not only outwards in space, but inwards as well. Travel can be one of the most rewarding forms of introspection….”

Here are some paintings inspired by my own voyages of discovery…

Ruins, Nyanga. 2013.
Bosberg, summit. 2013.
Lake Fundudzi, Limpopo. 2014.
Summit of Mt Nyangani. 2014.
Old Mill, Somerset East. 2016.
Kransberg, Marakele. 2017.
Legogote, Mpumalanga. 2017

Flights of Fancy – Birding in Kusane

August 10, 2019August 12, 2019 / stidyatkusane / 6 Comments

When I moved up to Kusane Farm I made two resolutions: I would enjoy a glass of red wine every evening for the rest of my days to celebrate my lucky escape from poor, sad, decaying Pietermaritzburg; and – released in to space, sky, clean air and a land with horizons – I would not to waste any more time than necessary. Obeying my own questing instinct I would immediately set out to explore the countryside around me and get to know the birds that shared it with me.

There was a lot to see. Beyond the ridge, immediately above my house, the land rolled and sloped in its own emphatic way down to the Kusane River.

This area became my initial focus of interest.

As dawn was breaking, on the first morning, I set off along the road that zig-zaggs its way down to the swampy ground at the bottom of the valley. The whole landscape was alert with life although you couldn’t always see it.

It took me while to twig on, for example, that the strange, fluting, bird-like call I kept hearing was not actually a bird at all but a reedbuck male communicating with its mate – and that there was no point continuing to scan the sky trying to locate it. There was no mistaking, however, the plaintive calls of Yellow-throated Longclaws as they rose high in the air in front of me or the raucous screeching of a pair of Natal Spurfowl in their hideout down by the river.

Not a bird calling…although it took me a while to figure it out.
Yellow-throated Longclaw.

Over the following months I repeated this walk again and again. Slowly, patiently I began to build up a picture of who I was sharing my new home with. Like any good explorer I started to keep a record of my sightings and observations.

My bird list has now passed the 160-mark which is, I like to think, not at all bad considering that, with the exception of the river line and the area around the house, the farm consists entirely of mist-belt grassland. Because of this lack of variation in habitat you would not normally expect to find a huge selection of birds although, being in a transitional zone between the hot coastal lowlands and the more temperate mountains, a lot of the Drakensberg “specials” do move down here at various times of the year.

Among the more interesting of these is the Sentinel Rock Thrush, Red-winged Francolin, Drakensberg Prinia and Gurney’s Sugarbird.

Sentinel Rock Thrush.
Gurney’s Sugarbird.
Drakensberg Prinia.

These specials are not, of course, the only species which draw birders to the KZN Midlands. The Karkloof valley’s biggest attraction is, undoubtedly, its cranes; a bird which has, since antiquity, exerted a peculiar pull on the human imagination. Beautiful, graceful, stately, with their elegant courting rituals, fidelity and haunting calls, they seem to be the physical and spiritual embodiment of some sort of Utopian ideal.

All three South African species – The Blue Crane (endemic to the country and its national bird), the Grey Crowned Crane and the regal Wattled Crane – occur here although sadly, like their counterparts elsewhere around the globe, they have become victims of the environmental consequences of human activity. With their natural habitat shrinking and their numbers rapidly declining, no fewer than 11 of the world’s 15 species are now threatened with extinction.

In South Africa, the Wattled Crane is especially vulnerable with only 2000 birds left in the entire country.

Wattled Crane.
Wattled Crane.
Grey Crowned Crane.
Ritual display. Grey Crowned Crane.

Another large bird I have seen here – twice – is Denham’s Bustard (formerly Stanley’s Bustard. I have no idea why the experts, who decide these things, chose to take away the first honorific title and award it to someone else). Although big in stature, they are extremely timid in nature and I found it impossible to get close enough to take a photograph of one.

Like the cranes and the bustards – birds dependant on wide open spaces – South Africa’s raptors are also having a hard time of it. Of the eagles, the striking Long-crested Eagle – a regular in the Midlands – is one of the few (the Fish Eagle is another) that seems to have been able to adapt to human encroachment in to their traditional territory. Another common raptor, one that seems to favour hilly country like ours, is the Jackal Buzzard. I often see a pair of them circling overhead, calling to each other, on my walks.

Long-crested Eagle. The common eagle of KZN Midlands.
Long-crested Eagle.
Jackal Buzzard. A common resident in KZN Midlands.
Jackal Buzzard – preparing to launch.

Both are resident all-year round on Kusane.

The Steppe Buzzard also likes to come calling but because it is a migrant you only see it in summer. The same applies to the Yellow-billed Kite. It is usually the first bird to return at the end of the cold season.

For farming folk and those dependant on the land, its arrival confirms that spring is on its way and it is time to plant.

Another species you occasionally see gliding low over the vleis, wetlands and open grassland, are the harriers. Of these the most common is the African Marsh Harrier although I have also recorded Black and – even more unusual – Pallid.

Then there is the Lanner Falcon. Not only are they beautiful birds to look at, they are incredible to watch in motion. Like their close cousin, the Peregrine Falcon, evolution has shaped their wings to supply the particular combination of speed, stamina and agility that suits their lifestyle. As hunting/ flying machines they are about as perfect as you can get.

Our smallest raptor is the russet-coloured Rock Kestrel, one of whom lives near the twin hillock, I pass by on my daily walk, which we have named “Big Women’s Blouse” for self-explanatory reasons. The kestrel can be spotted, fairly often, cruising along the rocky hill sides looking for mice, lizards and such like.

The similarly small Black-shouldered Kite is likewise a rodent specialist. We have a resident pair who nest in a tree not too far from the main farm gate and can regularly be seen perched on top of a nearby dead gum tree.

Rock Kestrel.
Black-shouldered Kite.

There are also several types of game birds. Besides the Natal Spurfowl we get the Red-necked Spurfowl and the Red-winged Francolin. Unlike the Natal Spurfowl, who prefer riparian thicket, the Red-winged Francolin is essentially a mountain grassland species with a softer, more, melodious piping call. When you disturb them they rise at your feet with a loud whirr and hurtle in to sky leaving a trail of feathers and bitching noise behind them.

Natal Spurfowl.
Red-necked Spurfowl.

Another bird I frequently find myself almost treading on is the Common Quail which, similarly, all but knocks your socks off as it shoots out the grass like a tiny, but big-sounding, missile.

At the other end of the scale are the LBJs (Little Brown Jobs). Not surprisingly, given the preponderance of grass, Kusane is great cisticola country. On the one hand this is a good thing, on the other it can be extremely frustrating as they are notoriously difficult to identify.

So far I have recorded Le Vaillant’s, Ayres (or Wing-snapping), Pale-crowned, Zitting (formerly Fan-tailed), Wailing, Lazy and Croaking Cisticola. And Neddicky (one of the Plain-backed Cisticolas). They may all be of uniform appearance but they do, at least, have lovely, descriptive, names!

LeVaillant’s Cisticola.
Wailing Cisticola.
Zitting Cisticola.
Ayres Cisticola.

If the cisticolas are hard to differentiate, the pipits are well nigh impossible. My list so far includes African and Plain-backed and a bunch I am still trying to make my mind up about…

African Pipit.
Plain-backed Pipit.

It would help a lot if they did what there neighbours, the Widow Birds and Bishop Birds, do and that is shed their drab costumes as soon as the rains break and go through a miraculous transformation which turn them in to beaus of the Ball! This only happens to the males, of course; the poor female has to continue to make do with what little she has in terms of finery (most widow birds are polygamous, having a whole harem of dowdy little wives).

Quarreling female Widow Birds of some sort (possibly female Long-tailed).

Southern Red Bishop
Red-collared Widowbird.
Long-tailed Widowbird.
Long-tailed Widowbird in flight.

Although I see pipits most of the year around their numbers always seem to multiply when we start burning fire-breaks which, as a mostly ground-dwelling species, makes it much easier for them to forage around. Another bird that seems to like it when we burn are the neat little Black-winged Lapwing with their slender legs and piercing call.

Black-winged Lapwing.
Pair of Black-winged Lapwing.

For different reasons, the more aerial Fork-tailed Drongo also likes to seize this opportunity to hawk the insects fleeing the life-destroying flames.

Another grassland variety I was pleased to discover on my early morning walks was the Broad-tailed Warbler. Up until then, I had only seen it once before (In Queen Elizabeth Park in Pietermaritzburg courtesy of veteran birder, Mike Spain). Suddenly I was seeing them everywhere, in summer at least (it is another migrant) although for the last couple of years they seem to have stayed away.

I have a suspicion this may be because they are birds, who are quite fussy about how high they like the grass to be, have decided it is now too short because we have taken to burning large sections of the farm at the end of each winter. What pleases some, displeases others.

Perhaps the best way to describe the bird is to say that with its rather large, un-warbler-like tail, it most closely resembles a miniature coucal.

These are just some of the birds I have observed since I came to live at Kusane. In my future postings I hope to mention a few more.

What I have also discovered, in the course of my tramping across the countryside, is that, in the world of birds, the more you understand, the more wonderful it gets. And so, armed with nothing more than a boundless curiosity and an imaginative sympathy with the natural world, I intend to continue with my explorations, my binoculars and a well-thumbed copy of the SASOL Birds of Of Southern Africa hanging by my side.

Who knows what more surprises lie in store?

In the mean time here, in no particular order, are my top ten specials for the Kusane Farm area:

Wattled Crane (and Blue and Crowned)

Denham’s (formerly Stanley’s) Bustard

Red-winged Francolin

Black-winged Lapwing

Southern Bald Ibis

Broad-tailed Warbler

Buff-streaked Chat

Olive Woodpecker

Sentinel Rock Thrush

Gurney’s Sugarbird

Aloes in Albany, Coffee in Kommadagga: an East Cape Odyssey.

August 3, 2019 / stidyatkusane / 9 Comments

I sometimes think that when I travel what I am really looking for is proof that the world is at varied as I want it to be. That is certainly the case when I drive between my home in Kwa Zulu-Natal and Grahamstown, in the East Cape, where my sister, Sally, lives. It is a journey I have made many times and on each occasion I am struck by just how different the two provinces are even though they border on to one another.

Once you get past Queenstown and descend the Nico Malan Pass, near Seymour, an entirely new geography asserts itself.

You are now on the fringes of the Karoo, that immense, dry, sun-scorched, almost mythical, landscape that was once part of a vast, shallow lake. In ancient times all sorts of strange reptilian creatures and other odd-looking beasts roamed this area, thoughtfully leaving their bones behind, embedded in the rocks, for the scientists to study.

The air here is drier, the distances much clearer; the more you travel in to it, the more the sky asserts itself. I can think of nowhere else where it seems so big and blue and empty.

The weather can be extreme, the summers blazing hot, the winters freezing cold. The rainfall is patchy and unreliable and the vegetation has adapted to meet its capriciousness. There are lots of succulents and aloes and squat, low bushes with tiny, tough leaves. Here, almost no tree grows higher than a man’s head except in the mountain valleys and along the river lines.

There is a spirit too, a presence, an unseen power that is very old and has little to do with man. After a while the sheer breadth and weight of the land gets to you. You begin to forget the world you have just come from existed, you can’t help thinking that the whole country looks like this.

The Karoo has the capacity to inspire wonder in all who behold it.

Perhaps not surprisingly, many famous South African writers and artists haled from here. Olive Schreiner, author of the early South African classic, Story of an African Farm, grew up in Cradock. So, too, did the poet and writer Guy Butler.

Thomas Pringle, who came to the Cape as leader of the Scottish party of British settlers of 1820, was allocated land in the valley of the Baviaans River near present-day Bedford. It is still known locally as “Pringle Country”. Eve Palmer who wrote that other classic book about the Karoo, The Plains of Camdeboo, grew up on the farm, Cranemere, down the road from the Bruintjeshoogte and between the towns of Somerset East and Graaf-Reinet. The artist, Walter Battiss, also spent his childhood years in Somerset East (you can see his work in the local gallery dedicated to him).

Even members of my own family have found themselves succumbing to the insistent blue skies and lyrical qualities of the Karoo. Sally, an art teacher, has built up a big following with her East Cape landscapes which often have, as their focal point, the aloes which are such a feature of this region. My other, Nicky, also an art teacher, who lived in Somerset East for a while, also felt the urge to record the unchanging strength of the countryside.

How strong this influence has proved can be seen in the examples of their work I have included in the gallery below.

The area around Grahamstown, to which I recently returned, used to be known as the Zuurveld, and later as the Albany district. It is also known as “Settler Country” for it was to this part of the Cape Colony that the early 1820 British settler party came.

To these early settlers this harsh, dry country also marked the beginning of the hinterland, that half-known, half-feared region that stretched endlessly onwards. The further west you travel the wider and emptier it seemed to get. In the far distance stretched ranges of mountains. What lay beyond them was just a rumour, a region of fancy and conjecture.

*Karoo Mountains beyond Plains of Camdeboo.*

Even today the land still feels like frontier country, wild and sparsely populated. Far more than in Kwa-Zulu-Natal, where, I come from, you get a real feel of what it must have been like for those early settlers, struggling to eke out a living in these remote and isolated outposts.

In KZN development after development has blighted the province: holiday homes, retirement homes, bungalows, duplexes, massive walled complexes that stretch for miles. Factories belch out smoke, power lines criss-cross the countryside, an endless stream of traffic pours down its main arteries, the urban sprawl and shack-towns seems to grow bigger by the day.

Aside from its coastal areas, you don’t get that feel at all in the East Cape. You can travel for miles through the Karoo without seeing another vehicle. It is like you have the universe all to yourself.

Every time I pass through it, I find myself trying to imagine the feelings of those early arrivals. How alien the harsh landscape must have seemed after the soft green of England.

Many of them must have felt they had been hoodwinked. The pamphlets that had been dangled in front of their faces, back home, promised the prospect of great self-improvement, a land of milk and honey, an amazing opportunity. The reality was completely different with many of them finding themselves stuck in the middle of the no-man’s-land between the white settlers moving north from the Cape and black settlers moving southwards. The Fish River which winds its way through this area was often seen as the dividing line with the British authorities building a line of defensive forts along its banks. In places you can still see the remains of these.

Some settlers stayed on on these outlying farms, braving the dangers and determined to make a go of it; others found the country uninhabitable, packed up their belongings and headed off, blazing a trail of retreat that others would follow.

Every so often you come upon a solitary farmhouse, each one part of a narrow stream of civilization that wound itself through the wilderness. Sometimes there will be a steel wind pump and a circular water tank around which some cattle have listlessly gathered. Mostly, though, this is sheep country.

And goat country. There are lots of goats in the Karoo.

Angora Goats.
Boer Goats.

We did a day trip out of Grahamstown, taking the road, which leads past Table Farm with its wonderful old, double-story settler house and small stone church, and ends up in Riebeek East. Situated in some hilly country, the town – if such it can be called – was founded in 1842 and initially named Riebeek after Jan van Riebeek, one year after the local church was built. It was erected on part of the farm Mooimeisjesfontein that was subdivided and sold by the subsequent Voortrekker leader, Piet Retief. His old home is situated just east of the town and has been declared a national heritage site.

Old Settler home, Table Farm.
Old Church, Table Farm.

As in most small South African dorps, the church dominates the town. When we stopped outside it the only sign of a congregation was a herd of cattle grazing in its grounds. It was a very impressive structure, nevertheless, which seemed far too large and grand for such a sleepy little hamlet.

Church in Riebeek East.
Old settler home, Riebeek East.

Maybe it had once been different around here. Indeed, visiting many of these old Karoo towns, one gets the feeling that at one time they supported much larger populations, especially when the wool industry was in its heyday. With the boom years gone most of the young folk trekked off to the cities and towns.

From Riebeek East we followed the dirt road that eventually leads to the main Port Elizabeth highway although we planned to turn off before that.

To our left, ran a long, low range of hills where you could see how the exposed rock had been buckled and folded, like a carpet you have just shoved with your foot. In front of us the road rose in to crests and sank in to hollows.

Eventually we came to a junction where we branched off down another dirt road leading to the curiously named, Kommadagga. It was a place I was keen to see.

Kommadagga (the name is believed to be Khoekoen meaning “ox land” or “ox hill”) was a small, purpose-built, settlement constructed by the South African Railways, in the early 1950s, to house the workers involved in the construction of the nearby railway line. At the time it had over 1 000 residents, with an elementary school and a recreation hall. Once their work was finished, its population was uprooted and moved further north to the next section of the new railway line.

Now it is a ghost town, its reason for existence long since vanished. The houses are just shells. You can see right through them, the sunlit, empty rooms with their peeling walls; windowless, door-less, their roofs caved in. In places they had broke clean in half, the bricks scattered over the veld.

Old buildings, Kommadagga.

Across the road, a couple of hundred yards away, crowning a low hill is an old water tower and to the side of that some concrete pillars whose former purpose I could not fathom although I imagined it had something to do with the railway line..

We pulled up beside one of the wrecked houses and while Professor Goonie Marsh, our amiable driver, long-time Grateful Dead fan and expert on matters local, fired up his volcano for coffee on the side of the road, I set off to explore. I made my way through the remains of gardens, past rusting fences, auto parts, old cement water storage tanks and all the other scattered detritus that suggested a civilisation of sorts.

*Goonie fires up his Volcano. Sally plays Lady of the Manor*.

There was one house which was in better shape than the rest, an empty wine glass on the verandah wall suggesting it might still be occupied but by whom I had no idea. Near another house there was an outbuilding full of old shoes, in another a collection of goat skulls which got me wondering just how they had passed their time around here.

In such a place, one can imagine there was not much to do. They probably smoked, played cards, drank too much. On Sundays, the more God-fearing among them most likely trekked off to that fine-looking church in nearby Riebeek East.

From Kommadagga, we followed the old rail bed until we reached the Kommadagga Station, some distance away, where the railway line and the road diverged. Cresting a rise we found ourselves looking over a vast basin through which the Fish River flowed, its presence marked by a line of trees.

Along its edge a large expanse of land had been cleared and bought under irrigation, the verdant green contrasting sharply with the surrounding dry bush. To the south and the west, glowing in the morning light, the thin, distant, blue outline of the Bosberg rose through the haze.

We drove on, stopping every now and again to take photos of the aloes which grow is such profusion around here. Their candelabra of flowers were aflutter with sunbirds (mostly Malachite and Greater Double-collared with a few Amethyst) – such a bright, fragile, flowering of plants and birds in this hot, dry, khaki and grey landscape.

Out here, one gets the feeling no one seems to be in a hurry. Flocks of lazing sheep gaze at you from underneath the shrubbery. Small groups of cattle pose amongst the aloes, nonchalantly chewing the cud. They give the feel of being completely cut off from the world and not minding a bit.

Sheep with Aloe striata in foreground.
Cow in Aloe ferox.

This, we discovered, was not altogether true. Crime – the curse of modern South Africa – has spread its tentacles even to out here in the boon-docks. When we stopped to take pictures of some sheep, grazing in a field, the local farmer came hurtling up in a cloud of dust with a bakkie full of security guards. He was worried we were rustlers!

Karoo rush hour traffic jam…

Having convinced the farmer we had no ill-intentions, we continued on our way. As we drove the views changed but not suddenly or sharply. Nearing the main Grahamstown to Bedford road more mountains hove in to view – the Winterberg, the Katberg, the Hogsback. Between them and us there was yet another huge, aloe-dotted, plain.

Aloe ferox next to Grahamstown to Bedford road.
Katie finds a view point.

Despite its timeless feel, some things are changing. In this harsh environment, many farmers have discovered that tourists pay better than sheep, cattle and crops. As a result they have started restocking their properties with many of the same game species their ancestors so casually shot out.

Back on the tar I continued to study the ground topology. To me it looked like the worst soil imaginable but the termites obviously liked it because the veld was littered with their pinkish-yellow, nipple-shaped mounds. In between their habitations were yet more flowering aloes full of twittering sunbirds.

Then we were driving back through the outskirts of Grahamstown, past the municipal dump out of which much of the rubbish had been blown and now lay piled up along the side of the road. Or had been left hanging on the fences like some sort of weird, welcome-to-town, decoration.

There had obviously been a big fire in the dump recently, too judging, by its burnt colouring and the pungent smell in the air.

At this point, I found myself wishing we could turn around and head back the way we had just come. Then I remembered I had an appointment at the local craft beer brewery, in the hills outside town, and changed my mind again…

GALLERY:

*My two talented artist sisters, Sally Scott (on left) and Nicky Rosselli.*

Here are some examples of Sally’s artwork:

Kommadagga.
Asante Sana.
Grasslands.
Ecca Pass.
Cradock Road.
Aloes 1
Aloes 2
Kaboega – Suurberg.
The Fish River.
Table Farm.
The road less travelled.
Viewpoint.

And here are some examples of Nicky’s work:

Dassiekloof – Witmos.
Camdeboo evening.
Bridge over Baviaans River.
Blue mountain – Coetzeeberg.
The Winterberg.
Dirt road, Swaershoek Pass (near Somerset East).
Dorper sheep.
Angora goat.
Brahman bull.
Aloes 1
Aloes 2.
Merino ram.

To see more examples of Sally’s work visit:

Website: www.sallyscott.co.za

Blog: http://sallyscottsart.wordpress.com/

To see more examples of Nicky’s work visit her website: http://www.rosselli.co.za

Book Review – The Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline

July 27, 2019 / stidyatkusane / 2 Comments

Conventional wisdom has it that one of the biggest threats facing the planet is is our burgeoning population. No less a body than the United Nations has forecast that it will increase from seven billion to eleven billion before levelling off after 2100.

In this provocative book, authors, Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson take a contrary view, insisting that this is simply not true. Rather than continuing to increase exponentially, they maintain, the global population is, conversely, headed for a steep decline.

At the heart of their argument is the world wide trend towards rapid urbanization. The more a society urbanizes, they believe, and the more control women exert over their bodies, the fewer babies they choose to have.

This declining birth rate will, in turn, produce its own set of challenges – an ageing society, fewer workers, a smaller tax base. These forces will compel people to put off retirement; they’ll force them to spend more time and energy looking after their parents than they had planned.

One of the obvious ways to offset a declining population is through immigration. Far from posing a threat, they maintain immigration may actually help save some countries economies: these migrants fill gaps in demand for high skilled workers, create jobs through their entrepreneurial drive and rarely generate competition for jobs between immigrants and the native-born.

In this respect, they argue that Donald Trump is fighting a lost cause with his divisive policies and hard line stance on immigration. Contrary to what he believes, the only way for America to remain great is to continue welcoming immigrants.

Not that the USA is in any way unique in its position. Most Asian countries accept virtually no refugees at all and many are now paying the consequences. Japan’s population, for example, is not only ageing but shrinking, leaving a much smaller work force. This is, in turn, has lead to a weakening of their economy.

They cite Canada as an example of a country whose more progressive immigration laws have worked in its favour.

With regard to Africa the UN doesn’t hold out much hope either, believing that the fertility rates will remain high for decades to come. Again the authors don’t agree, predicting a slightly more encouraging scenario. While acknowledging the huge problems the continent faces they believe the commingling of capitalist and traditional values will very likely slow the massive population growth that most modern modelers are projecting.

While careful not to overstate their case, Bricker and Ibbitson’s central thesis is quite different to the bleak world view and dismal remedies of the neo-Malthusians. Nor is it just wish-thinking either; they have obviously put in a great of research in to the subject and marshalled a great deal of material together with commendable skill.

With immigration and population-control both hot political topics at the moment, the book’s arrival is perfectly timed. Its conclusions will certainly warm the hearts of the increasingly beleaguered multiculturalists and those who oppose isolationism.

Book Review – Arabia: A Journey Through the Heart of the Middle East

July 20, 2019 / stidyatkusane / Leave a comment

published by Hodder and Stoughton

There is a class of travel writer who seem to delight in deliberately seeking out danger and are at their happiest when the going is manifestly not good. For them such journeys can be redemptive. They escape feeling a little wiser and – equally important – they have an exciting story to tell.

Levison Wood clearly belongs to this group: a man who is not one to flinch in the face of adversity.

Ignoring the advice of the pundits and the doom-sayers he, in 2017, embarked on an epic 5000 mile journey through the Mid-East, knowing full well that much of it was in turmoil and that as a Westerner he could have easily found himself a target..

Travelling sometimes on foot, at other times by camel, mule, donkey and battle tank, his 13-country odyssey would take in such hotspots as Syria, Iraq (where he would find himself witness to a battle between its Government forces and ISIS) Yemen and the pirate-infested waters of the Gulf of Aden.

The Arab world he journeyed through has, of course, long exerted a mysterious fascination on a certain type of English adventurer; in part because its landscape is so dramatically different from the one back home and partly because its people seemed to embody strengths and virtues that challenged European arrogance.

The world that these classic “British Arabists” – Richard Burton, TE Lawrence, C.M Doughty, St John Philby, Wilfrid Thesiger, Gertrude Bell etc – wrote about has, of course, been radically transformed by the discovery of oil, with even the Bedu now swapping their camels for the latest 4 X 4s. Part of Wood’s self-imposed mission was to discover just how much it had, in fact, changed.

Following in the footsteps of Thesiger he crossed the waterless Empty Quarter. He also retraced the route taken by his idol, Colonel T.E.Lawrence, along the old Hejaz railway line.

Rich in character and anecdote Wood’s book conveys with unusual immediacy both the stark beauty and the volatility of the Middle-East. While the scale of the problems that beset the region defies anything that could be dignified as solutions, he finds its people stoical in the face of adversity and not without hope.

Book Review – The Last Hurrah: South Africa and the Royal Tour of 1947

July 13, 2019 / stidyatkusane / Leave a comment

published by Jonathan Ball Publishers

In 1947 South Africa welcomed King George VI and Queen Elizabeth and their two daughters, Princess Elizabeth (the future Queen) and Princess Margaret on a Royal Tour which the then Prime Minister, General Jan Smuts, hoped would put a positive spin on the country and its achievements. For their part the British saw the visit as an opportunity to not only thank South Africa for their contribution to the war effort but also to reinforce the concept of a constitutional monarchy as the binding force behind the Commonwealth.

As the author of The Last Hurrah: South Africa and the Royal Tour of 1947, Graham Viney, shows, in his persuasive and beguiling guide, not all went quite to script. Indeed, the whole lengthy and carefully planned shindig proved to be something of a double-edged sword.

While most English-speaking, white South Africans greeted their Royal Guests with an enthusiasm and patriotic fervour that is now hard to imagine, others saw it as a golden opportunity to highlight their various causes. Many Afrikaners, still smarting from their treatment during the Boer War, were deeply resentful and used the visit as a platform from which to push their conservative, pro-republic, agenda. At the other end of the political spectrum, the ANC saw it as a chance to expose the evils of racial segregation

Although it brought the world’s focus on to South Africa and it policies, the Royal Tour of 1947 was not able to stall the country’s massive lurch to the right. Shortly afterwards, Smut’s government was defeated at the polls and the National Party took over the reins of power. The apartheid era was about to begin.

Reading about it all, seventy-odd years on, it is hard not to be impressed by the sheer stamina of the Royal Party as they travelled 11 000 miles, mostly by train, visited hundreds of out of the way dorps, shook hands with over 25 000 people, attended countless boring functions, and were seen by 60-70 per cent of the country’s population. Queen Elizabeth, in particular, proved a fine ambassador. Gracious, friendly, beautiful and reassuringly normal, she seems to have charmed everyone she met.

Very much a blast from the past, Viney’s book offers a revealing snapshot into a now all but vanished world. Shrewd and absorbing in the way it captures the complicated politics of the time, his fast-paced account pedals along with never a dull paragraph as facts, events, characters and period photographs flash by.

The Elections and After: Cartoons for May and June, 2019

July 6, 2019 / stidyatkusane / 2 Comments

SUMMARY:

With only a few days to go before the May 8 general election, all South Africa’s political parties were in a final push to woo citizens. Among those visiting KwaZulu-Natal were President Cyril Ramaphosa, former president Jacob Zuma and former deputy president Kgalema Mothlanthe.

As expected, the elections were won by the ANC, although the official results – which saw the party down to a 57% share of the votes from 62% in the 2014 elections – underlined the huge task which faces President Cyril Ramaphosa as he tries to push through his reformist agenda. For their part, the official opposition, the Democratic Alliance, failed to make any gains while the radical Left, Economic Freedom Front, led by firebrand Julius Malema, was in third place – up four per cent from 2014. Reflecting a world-wide growth in nationalism, the Afrikaner-rights FF+ and the Zulu-orientated IFP also made substantial gains.

With the elections over, speculation next turned to what changes President Ramaphosa would make to his cabinet and whether he would cut the number of Ministries. Hopes were also expressed that he would use the pending cabinet reshuffle as an excuse to get rid of some of his more controversial ministers such as Bathabile Dlamini and Nomvula Mukonyane.

Cyril Ramaphosa was duly elected unopposed as president by the National Assembly. In a unifying speech in Parliament he promised to be “a President for all South Africans and not just the African National Congress”.

His message of inclusivity was not, unfortunately, picked up by all members of the party. In his inaugural address to the provincial legislature, the newly appointed premier of KZ-N, Sihle Zikalala, declined to pay tribute to the new official opposition, the IFP, by neglecting to mention that party’s previous premiers when he praised previous ANC premiers..

On the 29^th May, President Cyril Ramaphosa finally announced his new cabinet in the process downsizing his number of ministers from 35 under Zuma to 28.The big surprise was his appointment of Good Party leader, Patricia de Lille, who had quit the DA after months of acrimony, as Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure.

Underlining the huge problems facing Ramaphosa, was the news that South Africa’s economy had shrunk by more than three percent in the first quarter of 2019 – as load-shedding, a strike on the gold mines and a dire lack of investment hit growth. In KZN there was another fiery weekend on the roads with 17 truck-and-rigs being torched on the N3 between Johannesburg and Durban. To date over 200 people have been killed, 1400 vehicles damaged and R1,2billion lost as result of these ongoing incidents – losses the country can ill-afford with its economy under huge economic strain.

The divisions within the ANC once again came under the spotlight when it was announced that the ANC would launch a probe, chaired by Kgalema Mothlanthe, in to claims that its Secretary-General, Ace Magashule, was involved in the formation of the African Transformation Movement (ATM) – a rival political party – ahead of the previous month’s election. Former President Jacob Zuma’s confidante, Bishop Timothy Ngobo, who had aggressively campaigned for the new party, to which Zuma had also been linked, immediately rubbished the probe as being a “witch-hunt”.

Delivering his State of the Nation (SONA) speech in parliament, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a number of measures to grow the economy, tackle poverty and unemployment and fight corruption. Whether the ambitious targets he set – such as halving violent crime in the next 10-years and creating two million jobs for youth over the same period – are achievable remains to be seen.

The following week, his predecessor, Jacob Zuma, confirmed he would testify before the Zondo Commission in to State Capture even though he believed it is “prejudiced” against him and “lacks requisite impartiality”. According to his lawyer the former president “can’t wait to attend…he is relishing the moment.”

Election time – the politicians mysteriously reappear.
The ANC wins the election.
President Ramaphosa considers his new cabinet.
A heavy load to carry.
Helen de Lille is a surprise cabinet appointment.
It is another fiery weekend on KZN roads.
The divisions within the ANC once more come to the surface.
President Ramaphosa aims for the stars in his SONA speech.
Former president, Jacob Zuma agrees to testify before the Zondo Commission.

On the Road Again – Kosi Bay and Black Rock

June 28, 2019 / stidyatkusane / 6 Comments

Back in the day, I used to have my own favourite road tracks on a compilation tape I kept in my car. I would slip it in to the machine every time I set off on a long journey just to get me in the right mood for the long haul ahead of me.

The one that has always stuck in my mind is Canned Heat’s On the Road Again, probably because I like the whine of their voices and the songs slightly manic, repetitive, feel. The tape long ago wore out and the CD Player in my old Hyundai no longer works but its words were buzzing around in my brain when I drove, in high spirits, through the gates of Ndumo Game Reserve.

It seemed to catch the personality of the country I was driving through.

My destination was Kosi Bay, a place I knew very little about having never been there before. What I had heard, though, was enough to convince me it was somewhere worth seeking out.

Reaching the tar road that eventually leads to Ponto do Oura in Mozambique, we turned east, crossing the Pongolo and skirting Tembe Elephant Park with its tangled, labyrinth of trees. The last town we came to, before the turn-off to Kosi Bay, was Manguzi.

As we were running low on provisions we had decided to stop and stock up here.

I duly swung in to the local supermarket and was immediately up to my bumper in the biggest crush of people, animals, taxis and bakkies I had encountered on the entire trip (although Jozini came in a close second). Loud music blasted out from several makeshift stalls that had been set up along the side of the car park and an aroma of choking smoke and sizzling meat pervaded the air.

My immediate instinct was to panic, turn tail and bolt for the nearest exit but my birding colleague, Ken, who has a much more phlegmatic disposition than I do, was not to be denied his resupply of ice-cold Windhoek Lager. We stayed.

It was at this late stage of our journey that Ken, who, unlike me, had been to Kosi before, also chose to announce that he didn’t think my old Hyundai would cope with all the sand in the park. “You really need a 4X4…” he said, helpfully, before, smugly, climbing back in to his one.

I gave him the full force of my Evil-Eye for only telling me now, when it was much too late to turn back, but, as usual, it had absolutely no effect. The man is impervious to criticism, especially mine…

So on we went.

Shortly after Manguzi we turned off the main tar road and drove down a cow-dotted sand track with scatterings of trees and fields of stubby, overgrazed grass on either side. As I got to the top of the one rise, I finally spied the Indian Ocean, vivid and alluring in the shimmering heat haze, ahead of us.

Arriving at the entrance to Kosi, Ken informed the man at the barrier that we intended to leave my car parked outside for the duration of our stay. The guard looked horrified: “It will be stolen if you do that!!!”

I did a quick mental weighing-up of options in my head – stolen or stuck?

“I’ll risk the road!” I cried. And so, full of false confidence, I drove through the gate.

Kosi Bay Nature Reserve, which lies several kilometres south of the Mozambique border, consists of four lakes and a series of interconnecting channels which drain via the sandy estuary in to the Indian Ocean. Our camp site was in a patch of dense coastal forest full of raffia palms whose feathery branches met overhead like the tracery in a medieval cathedral. In front of us stretched KeHlange, the largest of the freshwater lakes.

KeHlange, largest of the fresh-water lakes.

The estuary, which is most famous for its for its Tsonga fish traps, is an area of peerless beauty but not without its hidden dangers. Its waters conceal, among other things, the deadly – and incredibly ugly – stonefish. The currents can also be very strong which is why we prudently decided it would be safer to pay one of the locals to paddle us to the other side.

Ken the Fearless sails forth in to the Great Unkown…

We spent most of our first day here. While Ken, who had also forgotten to remind me to bring my flippers, mask and snorkel (not that I have any), splashed and snorted and blew big galoops of water up in to the air like a learner baby whale showing off, I sat on top of a high dune and watched the sea birds through my binoculars, wishing I hadn’t left my bottle of cold water in the car.

Obeying the same irresistible urge to look for new and wilder places that had brought us here in the first place, Ken and I set off the next day to try and reach Black Rock, an isolated but beautiful stretch of beach on the north Zululand coast. We had barely driven out the park gate when we got our first good sighting of the day – a Eurasian Hobby sitting in a small Water Berry tree (Syzygium cordatum).

Like the road down to the estuary, the one to Black Rock is strictly 4X4. First, though, we headed back to the tar before turning left and following a complicated network of minor and diminishing tracks, through every thickening sand in what the guide, we had hired, assured us was the right direction.

As we drove the sun bore down like a jack-hammer. We saw no other vehicles and the few settlements we passed seemed mostly deserted.

Then abruptly we entered an area of lush coastal bush and found ourselves breaking through onto a beach of dazzling white.

While Ken had been wrestling his way down the treacherous road I had deconstructed and reconstructed the surrounding scenery in my mind. Mentally, I removed all the asphalt, electricity poles, brick buildings and other vestiges of our grubby civilization and tried to imagine what it must have looked like when this was still unexplored country.

Looking at the beautiful beach in front of me, I now got a much clearer image. Like something out of the pages of an old-fashioned adventure yarn, it had the romance of distant continents, faraway islands and lost lands.

We were not the only ones on that little slice of paradise, however. There were three young men snorkelling in the clear, crystalline waters in front of us.

They had obviously come here, for the day, not only to swim but to conduct some sort of scientific research because, when they finally emerged out the water the one, who I took to be their team leader, ambled over and asked us if we would like to see a Bouton’s Snake-eyed Skink? Not wanting to reveal my ignorance on matters Skink or admit that I had never heard of this one I nodded my head enthusiastically in assent.

There were quite a few of these dark-coloured, unprepossessing little lizard-things darting backwards and forwards over the jagged dark rocks that give this stretch of coastline its name. What makes them interesting, the man told us, is that they are a Malayan species whose ancestors must have floated over the ocean on a pile of driftwood or some such, adapted to their new environment and successfully started breeding here. Darwin in action.

Taking the same torturous route that had got us to the beach, only in reverse, we later headed back to camp.

We arrived in time to witness a dramatic change in the weather. A sharp new wind had risen that brought sudden whirls of spray spiralling like furious little water-sprites across the lake. A solitary Caspian Tern was fluttering hard against these winds before it decided to give up and headed off to find a more protected spot.

Everything, including the sun, was pulling out. It made me feel quite melancholy especially as I realised I, too, would be leaving the next day.

For a while I sat on the bench at the end of the pier and watched the waves grow more boisterous. Splish and splosh turned to slap and then headbutt. Under the leaden sky the water became a strange mineral-green.

That night the trees and palms heaved above our tents with an end-of-the world fury. Snuggled up inside my sleeping bag, I could easily imagine how similar winds must have once hammered old sailing ships and driven them on to the rocks.

There were sudden jolts of lightning and explosions of thunder. I thought we were in for a thorough drenching but, as it turned out, there was surprisingly little rain.

When I awoke it was all stillness. I did a quick reconnoitre but could find little sign of damage while the denizens of the forest seemed completely unfazed by the previous nights theatrics. The Red Bush Squirrel – this is one of the few places in South Africa where it occurs – that had befriended us came down, as it had the previous day, to hunt for rusk crumbs while we were drinking our coffee. A Livingstone’s Turaco, its crest sticking up like an antennae, landed in the dense foliage above us.

And then it was time to leave. Having slung all my gear in to the boot of the Hyundai I contemplated my prospects of successfully negotiating the thick sand.

I was lucky that morning. My biggest worry had been surmounting the steep section of road that takes you over the main dune. With a sceptical Ken looking on, I revved the car’s engine and hit the slope at full tilt. The next thing I knew I was up and over. As I crested the summit I turned around and gave Ken a big thumbs-up and a triumphant grin.

It was my turn to feel smug and very pleased with myself. My little Hyundai had done me proud.

I was on the road again…

Getting Lucky in Ndumo

June 22, 2019 / stidyatkusane / 4 Comments

Like some migratory waterfowl, I find myself continually being drawn back to Ndumo Game Reserve. The remoteness, the vegetation, the balmy, sub-tropical heat, the feeling of freedom and space, the thin, pure light, the distant grape-blue outline of the Lebombo mountains and the beautiful, sun-dappled, pans of the Pongolo-Usutu river floodplains, all make it a place one can never forget.

Also the birds. A lush ecological mix of wetlands, riverine forest, sand forest and acacia woodlands, has made Ndumo famous for its birds. Its impressive list of species include many of the Mozambique ‘specials’ which you won’t find anywhere else in South Africa.

For any aspiring birder the reserve should be near the top of their list in the Must-Visit stakes.

And so it was I found myself meandering back to what has almost become my second home, in my beat up old Hyundai Getz…

I had arranged to meet my birding colleague Ken, who was driving down from Jo’burg, at the Ghost Mountain Inn, at Mkuze. Wanting to avoid the mad highway, I thought I’d allowed myself plenty of time to navigate the back roads that took me from my home in the Karkloof through Rietvlei, Greytown, Kranskop, Nkandla (as far as I could tell our erstwhile Number One was not at home) and Eshowe then on to the N2 but I hadn’t factored in all the speed bumps along the way which slowed my progress down considerably.

Much to my surprise – for I am usually a lot more punctual then he is – I arrived to find Ken sitting, waiting for me. As soon as I saw his smug, self-satisfied expression I knew he was not going to let me forget this…

Having re-filled with petrol, we headed north, driving up the steep shoulder of the Lebombo range with its impressive cliffs and immense view over Jozini dam to the hills of Hluhluwe and beyond. A few patches of forest still clung to the hilltops but many of the trees had been felled.

On the other side, the land became flat, wide and featureless with only the distant edge of the Swaziland mountains to provide any sense of perspective.

There were a whole lot more speed humps on this stretch of the road. By the time we reached Ndumo, all the braking, stopping and crawling forward again had left me feeling severely jittered. I quickly regained my equilibrium, however, once I passed through the main gate and found myself driving down the familiar avenue of thorn and Silver Cluster-leaf trees.

It was all just as I remembered it: the film of dust over the pale, sun-bleached grass and the twisted trees, the languid giraffe looking down at you from their lofty heights, the familiar ‘whit-purr’ of the Greater Honeyguide drifting across the veld, the cheerful banter and chattering of a party of White-crested Helmetshrike on the move…

At the far end of the low ridge along which the road runs, overlooking the Pongolo floodplain, is the hutted camp. Unlike most game reserves in South Africa, it is unfenced despite the presence of buffalo and hippo (on our previous visits there had also been white rhino but they, sadly, seem to have all gone). Sitting out under the stars at night really gives you the feeling of getting up, close and personal, with nature.

Once we had pitched our tents we decided to take a drive down to the Nyamithi Pan, slowing down, along the way, to gaze at a gang of Wooly-necked Storks and a solitary Palm-nut Vulture eating a dead giraffe near the side of the road.

The outline of the pan had changed dramatically since my last visit. Because of the poor rains, the water that normally lapped at the side of the hide, had retreated several hundred metres back up the channel, leaving a big flat grassy space in front of us.

The withdrawing water had obviously left some rich pickings in its wake. The plain was alive with birds. Among them were Kittlitz, Three-banded and Ringed Plovers and some nesting Collared Pratincoles, a species of bird I had hitherto only seen in flight.

The whole scene was wonderfully convivial. As the birds started flying off to their nightly roosts, we cracked open a beer and sat watching the sun, a great red ball on the horizon, sinking over the distant Lebombo. As it did so it turned the bark of the fever trees, that grew along the edge of the pan, a beautiful yellow-gold.

Sunset over Nyamithi Pan. Lebombo mountains in distance.

It is at moments like this, when you have been able to briefly loosen the chains of civilisation and escape, for an instant, from the daily grind that you begin to understand the nature of spontaneous happiness.

With the disappearance of the sun, everything began to lose its sharpness, the whole atmosphere was transformed: one became aware of a changing of the guard as the night creatures started emerging and the bush became alive with a secret activity that shut out man.

The next morning we were up early and heading back to the pan for a guided walk along the one side of the water’s edge. The sky was gunmetal grey going on stormy black, with rain threatening, but this did not seem to have put off the birds.

The pan was still a mass of bustling, feathered activity.

Like a carefully choreographed troupe of dancers, a small flock of flamingo moved gracefully back and forth through the shallows. A pelican, immense and white with its great beak, floated on the water. Elsewhere there were waders and ducks and stilt and storks and egrets and herons.

Yellow-billed Stork and Greater Flamingo, Nyamithi Pan.

Nor were the variety of birds confined to just the water loving ones. We had several good sightings of a rare Sooty Falcon as it skimmed, open-eyed and alert, along the tops of the fever trees and Ken picked up his first lifer of the trip – a Stierling’s Wren-Warbler. We also got another Ndumo ‘special’ in the form of a Rudd’s Apalis.

There are several other, equally rewarding, guided walks you can go on at Ndumo. The 5 kilometre North Pongolo walk, which is easily accessed from the camp site and takes you through some magnificent riverine forest, is a must. African Finfoot, Pel’s Fishing Owl, Narina Trogon and White-eared Barbet all occur here. It is also where I had my first sighting of the strange little African Broadbill, a bird that looks like it could have stepped straight out the pages of Lewis Carroll. Another good walk is the ones that takes you through the Sycamore Fig (Ficus sycomorus) Forest on the edge of Shokwe pan.

Because we had decided to do a day trip to the nearby Tembe Elephant Park we did not have time to do any of these walks on this trip but there is one place I make it a point of honour to go to every time I return to Ndumo – the picnic site at Red Cliffs.

The picnic site, on the northern edge of the park, has lodged in my mind with absolute clarity. Every time I go back its aspect never ceases to amaze. It is that beautiful.

There is no better place to fire up the skottle and cook breakfast (in addition to this, it has probably the best situated long-drop in all of Zululand although I have always been a bit hesitant about using using it for fear of what nasties might be lurking in its murky depths)..

From where I found myself sitting, propped up against the trunk of a shady tree, eating my eggs, tomato and bacon and sipping a cup of coffee, I had a panoramic view over the Usutu, a lazy, gently-flowing, river, broken by sand spits and clumps of reeds and lined by a dense network of tall, overhanging, trees. On its far bank, its presence flagged by a grove of massive Sycamore figs, lies Mozambique.

Red Cliffs is one of those places where time really could be described as having stood still. You have that feeling of being completely alone with creation. There are no signs of habitation, nor any tracks or roads, nothing seems spoiled or sullied or abused. Below us a few crocodile lay doggo on sandbanks or drifted with the currents, only their nostrils showing, coloured like logs.

Nearby there is a good 4X4 track that runs along the river line; edging its way past the bases of a seemingly endless variety of trees. Prominent among these are the huge figs, supported at their base by mats of root fibres, or buttresses or tap roots like wigwam frames.

On several occasions, in the past, we have got lucky on this route and got the elusive Southern Banded Snake-Eagle (its limited distribution in South African makes it another Ndumo ‘special”). It didn’t put in an appearance this time but I was quite content just to be driving through this magnificent countryside.

For our final day’s outing we chose to take the dirt road that runs along the southern boundary fence of the reserve and which forms part of the Manzimbomvu Loop. The country grows more and more open as you drive along the loop with thorn trees and a grove of tall Knob-thorn woodland on the far western side, making it a good place to pick up your more typical bushveld species.

The next morning I went for one last stroll around the camp. It was a grey day, with a cold wind gusting in from the south, and occasional spits of rain. I felt a little melancholy to be leaving this special place but also full of anticipation. Ahead of me lay the open road – okay, a road full of irritating speed humps – and my next destination, a place I hadn’t been to before: Kosi Bay.