The Circle of Life

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Away to the north of Nyanga, in Zimbabwe, at the base of the range of mountains that forms its eastern wall, there was, once, an isolated group of farms. In a gesture which seemed quite out of character for a man who had never shown much sympathy for the Boer cause – and had, indeed, gone out of his way to thwart their political ambitions – they had been granted to a small party of Afrikaner farmers by the arch-imperialist, Cecil John Rhodes, himself.

In recognition of this fact, the dirt road that ran through the middle of them was known, in years gone by, as “The Old Dutch Settlement Road”.

The Old Dutch Settlement Road, looking from our farm towards Nyanga.

Although seldom visited by all the tourists who like to holiday in the more temperate Nyanga uplands (many staying at Rhodes’ old estate), it is an area I used to know well because it was here we had once farmed too.

When we arrived in the district, back in the 1950s, there was only one surviving remnant of this original group – Gert “Old Man” Mienie who farmed at Cream of Tartar Kops. A jovial giant of a man with twinkling eyes and invariably dressed in stained khaki, he had worked as a transport rider before ending up in Nyanga North where he grew mealies and farmed cattle.

Long before it became fashionable to do so Gert Mienie lived totally off the grid. He had a house generator that operated off a Pelton wheel with buckets on a water furrow. His wife made soap and candles from the fat stored in the tails of their Blackhead Persian sheep. They never bought medicines either, preferring to manufacture their own concoctions which they used to treat both man and beast.

He also had his own brandy still while his old ox-wagon remained parked around the back.

Mr and Mrs Gert Mienie with my parents, Reg and Monica Stidolph. Cream of Tartar Kops.

Although the rest of these pioneering farmers had either long since left or died, their presence still lingered on in the names of many of the properties – Witte Kopjes, Groenfontein, Summershoek, Doornhoek, Flaknek etc. Mount Pleasant, the farm to our immediate south, on which there stood the remains of some crumbling tobacco barns, was still referred to, in our day, as Bekker’s Place.

If you hunted around you could occasionally stumble upon the remains of their old homes (there was one on Witte Koppies, for example, which had been built out of white quartz quarried from the nearby hill) and even the odd graveyard. The two young Oosthuizen children who lay buried on our farm had both died of Black-water Fever back in the early 1900s, a common cause of death in those days.

There was something quite sepulchral about the mountain-fringed valley in which they had chosen to live. Maybe it had something to do with all the old ruins, perhaps it was the mountains themselves, with their constantly changing moods, but there seemed to be a presence here, a spirit. I sometimes felt I was walking among ghosts I could never see.

I had some idea who they belonged too. The original Afrikaners who had settled here, courtesy of Mr CJ Rhodes, had not been the first cultivators of this land to have suddenly packed up and left without explanation.

There had been others before them.

The whole country from the Nyanga uplands, north to the Ruenya River and westwards to the Nyangombe River, was strewn with relics from their stay – dozens and dozens of loopholed stone forts, look-out points, pit structures, furnace sites, grinding stones, monoliths and miles of terracing stretching along the mountain sides; the latter were often irrigated by means of furrows that carried water long distances from the streams.

Nyahokwe Ruins with Sedze Mountain (the “Rhino mountain” as we called it) in background. Note monolith.

The amount of rock that had been moved to build all this was astonishing although, as Herculean as their labours had been, the stone fortifications tended to suggest that the ordinary villagers had lived in constant fear of attack. Clambering over the piles of rocks I had, in my youth, always imagined some fabulous Rider Haggard vision of lost mines and lost worlds but the sad reality is that the people were probably desperately poor (in his book The Shona and Zimbabwe 900-1850, the academic D.N.Beach describes it as a “culture of losers”. That is as maybe but they certainly appear to have been very hard-working ones!), because the soils they had cultivated were, for the most part, thin and infertile – although they probably supplemented them with kraal manure.

Our farm was no exception. From beacon to beacon it, too, was covered in a jumbled mass of ruins. Exploring them, I was seized by a kind of incredulity. It was impossible not to marvel at the intensity of the endeavour that went in to their construction.

My sister, Nicky, among ruins on Muchena mountain, old farm. Picture courtesy of John Louch.

And where had all that passion and effort gone? That was the mystery for me.

One of the aspects of this now abandoned civilisation which especially intrigued me were the endless piles of gathered stones that lay scattered all over the veld. What was their purpose? Why all the effort for so seemingly pointless a task? Again I was flummoxed.

Endless piles of gathered stones. Picture courtesy of Paul Stidolph.

To me, the ruins seemed very old – none of the local tribes people we spoke to appeared to know much about who had constructed them – yet the consensus amongst the experts is that they were mostly built between the 16th and 19th Century by the Tonga people from Zambezi. Adding to the air of mystery, no one seems to be able to state with any degree of certainty why the whole complex was eventually abandoned.

Our own sojourn in this hot, dry, haunted valley came to an end during the Rhodesian Bush War. Remote, cut-off and situated close to the Mozambique border, our farm became an obvious target for the incoming liberation forces. Our only two neighbours were killed, the roads regularly mined, the few cattle we had which had survived drought and disease were rustled and we were eventually forced to move, our farm becoming part of, in the military parlance of the day, a “frozen” area.

Our old house.

It was twenty-years after the war ended before I got to go back to the farm again, only it was no longer a farm. In the interim it had become a black resettlement area.

There was not much left to remind me of the years we had spent there. Time – and the war – had taken its toll. Of our old house little remained. At the one end, where the lounge had been, the old fireplace still stood; elsewhere our former home, once so full of life, had been reduced to the cement squares and oblongs that marked our vanished rooms.

Here and there bits of the old wall survived but it no longer supported the roof which had completely vanished. Of my mother’s once extensive garden there was no trace other than one lone bougainvillea which still clung stubbornly to the hillside.

My sister, Nicky, and my mother, Monica, among the remains of our old home.

Everywhere else wild nature had come back and reclaimed its own.

As I wandered around looking at all the places that had once meant so much too me I could not help but reflect on the transitory nature of things. As a young boy I had been intrigued by the ancient ruins that lay scattered across the farm; now our old house had joined them.

I found myself thinking about those early Afrikaner settlers too. Like us, they had arrived here, full of innocent optimism and hope that they could create a future and yet few if any of the families had stayed beyond one generation. Now, all that remained of their hard work and industry were a few old bricks, stones and mortar and the occasional gum tree.

The same had happened to us.

What hadn’t altered were the mountains themselves. It is difficult to capture in words the feelings they engendered in me. Looking at them I realised it did not make any real difference what we did. They would live on without us, watching the next generation grow up in a place we had once called home. We had only been there for a few moments and all that mattered was that we had cherished the place and made the most of the time we had had there.

View of Nyanga range from north of farm, Nyangui mountain on left.

As I pulled over, onto the edge of the road, for one final look back, I realised it was not so much the fact that I had come back but rather that the farm had never left me.

FOOTNOTE:

For the sake of convenience the extensive Nyanga ruin system is often separated in to the Upland and Lowland Cultures. Because our farm lay in the Nyanga valley, the ruins on our farm obviously fell in the latter category.

Below are a selection of photographs showing examples of both types of ruin.

A special thanks to my brother, Paul Stidolph, for providing many of the old black and white pics. A semi-retired farmer still living in Zimbabwe, Paul has conducted an enormous amount of research of his own in to the early history of the country and unearthed a great deal of fascinating material on both its ruins and ancient mine-workings.

  • Stone fort on old farm. Picture courtesy of Paul Stidolph.
  • Terracing on old farm. Picture courtesy of Paul Stidolph.
  • Aerial view of hill-top fort with terracing on old farm. Picture courtesy of Paul Stidolph.
  • Altar? Near old farm. Picture courtesy of Paul Stidolph.
  • Pots on Mt Muozi, old farm. Picture courtesy of Paul Stidolph.
  • Engraved stone. Old farm. Picture courtesy of Paul Stidolph.
  • Nyahokwe Ruins.
  • Nyahokwe Ruins. Note stone circle in mid-ground with monolith.
  • Sister, Penny, with William Kadzima, curator of local museum, Ziwa. Note chipped off section on top left corner of monolith, a common feature of them. This pic was taken on a return visit to area.

  • Ziwa Ruins.
  • Ziwa Ruins.
  • Stone fort with entrance, Ziwa Ruins.
  • Young self entering pit structure. Nyanga uplands culture.
  • Nyangwe fort near Mare Dam (Nyanga uplands culture).

A Tale of Two Rivers. Part Two – The Limpopo

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The Limpopo at Mapungubwe.

My love affair with the Limpopo began relatively late in life.

Although it forms the southern boundary of the country I grew up in, until I moved to South Africa in 1984, my sole acquaintance with the river had been crossing over it at the Beit Bridge border post.

In the back of my mind, though, I always had this strange feeling that it was waiting for me, beckoning me, and that I was duty bound to answer its call.

And so I did.

All rivers have their own personalities and the Limpopo is no exception. In his “Just So” stories, Rudyard Kipling famously characterised it as the “great, grey-green, greasy Limpopo, all set about with fever trees”.

Fever trees at Pafuri, Limpopo.

It is an apt description. There is something rather wild and romantic about the Limpopo; it is both a purveyor of adventure and a river which seems to have its origins in the realms of legend and folk lore.

Even the name sounds made up.

Approximately 1600 kilometres long, it flows in a huge arc after leaving its headwaters in the Krokodil (Crocodile) River in the Witwatersrand. Skirting the edges of the Kalahari it passes through some of the driest, least populated areas in South Africa before making a dog leg in to Mozambique and then disgorging itself in to the ocean near the port town of Xai Xai.

In its own way, it is the embodiment of both the sheer size and the mystery of Africa. The sky above it is huge, the horizon stretches out forever. Travelling towards that horizon you are always conscious of the distance between it and you.

Despite being the second largest river in Africa – next to the Zambezi – that flows in to the Indian Ocean, for a substantial part of the year it contains very little actual water. In dry years its upper reaches flow for 40 days or less.

This can change very rapidly. The one time I visited, a heavy rain storm somewhere up near its source had seduced the river in to breaking loose. Standing on the bank the raging torrent whooshed past us, the colour of caramel, swirling around rocks and eddying over tree roots.

It was a brute demonstration that the Limpopo was not to be messed with when aroused. The next day it had dwindled back to almost nothing…

For my first foray up to the drier western section of the river, I arranged to stay at Ratho, a large agricultural estate, just upstream from the Pontdrift Border Post with Botswana, which has camping facilities on its banks.

To get there you travel north from Jo’burg on the N1, branching off at Polokwane and heading towards Vivo. Beyond this tiny settlement, the road runs through open, rather lonely country. About 100 kilometres further on you reach the oddly named Alldays, a straggling, dusty town only a few streets deep from front to back.

Here you veer left.

As the horribly pot-holed road drops down to the border post at Pontdrift, a change suddenly takes place: at this point of its long journey to the sea, the Limpopo opens in to an immense valley hemmed in by sandstone cliffs, mesas and buttes that glow as if they were red hot. In places they have been honeycombed by erosion and blackened by fires. Out of the sides of the cliffs and the rocky outcrops grow fig trees with long, trailing, ghost-white roots. These are Large-leaved Rock Figs or Ficus abutilifolia.

There is something both wonderful and tantalising about this strange, eroded scenery.

The road to Ratho.

There was no water flowing in the river when we arrived at Ratho although, on our walk the next day, we did find a long, rather greasy-looking pool further upstream, concealed in a grove of tall, thorn trees. There was something a little scarifying about this shadowy section of the river.

I found myself wondering what dangers lurked beneath its placid surface. It looked like the sort of place where an elephant could have easily got his trunk, courtesy of an enormous crocodile.

There was plenty of evidence of elephant being about as well, which also made me a bit nervous…

Back in camp, dangerously untroubled by doubts, my birding colleague decided to take advantage of this absence of a liquid barrier in front of us and sallied forth across the dry river bed, disappearing in to foreign territory. More circumspect by nature, I declined to join him.

In the end I was rather glad he didn’t get trampled on by an elephant or eaten by a lion or carted off in irons because if he hadn’t made it back safely he would not have been able to find me the elusive Pel’s Fishing Owl, that evening. We heard it before we saw it, a strange, pig-like grunt which was then followed by a deep, booming ‘hoo-huuuum‘. Grabbing his binoculars and powerful spotlight my birding colleague eventually located it sitting in a tall thorn tree.

It was a bird I had long wanted to tick off my “Lifer” list. What made it all the more exciting was that we hadn’t needed a guide to find it for us which is usually the case with this bird, which Roberts describes as: “Vulnerable… largely confined to to protected areas, threatened by disturbance…” We were also lucky to find it because we were on the western-most extreme of its range.

From Ratho, we returned to the main tar road and then struck eastwards towards one of South Africa’s most important Stone Age archaeological sites – Mapungubwe.

I have a tenuous family link with this area. Somewhere between Pontdrift and Mapugubwe a bunch of my ancestors forded the Limpopo on the 1892 Moodie Trek to Gazaland. In the diary she kept of the journey, my great-grandmother, Sarah Susannah Nesbitt, describes the river as being “very rough and stormy” and says they crossed at a point called “Selika’s Wegdraii” (this could possibly be the old crossing which is today known as “Rhodes’ Drift”).

Every night they heard lion, sometimes close by, sometimes further off across the river. The sound sent chills through my great-grandmother because she had her two infant daughters (who included my grandmother, Josephine) with her and was worried for their safety as they lay there in their wagon.

This was not their only concern. Having crossed the river the trek-party found themselves faced with another problem when they got delayed at Macloutsie, in Bechuanand (now Botswana), by an outbreak of foot and mouth disease with many of their animals becoming so weak they fell easy prey to hyena.

Travel was a lot more difficult in those days.

Mapungubwe is one of those places I find myself drawn to like a pin to a magnet. Once a thriving city and important trade centre with links as far afield as China, India and Egypt, it was abandoned in the 14th Century for reasons largely unknown.


There is still a rather eerie feel to it. This is a place of secrets and questions…

Mapungubwe. A strangely puckered landscape…

Driving through its strangely puckered landscape, I found myself wondering why its original inhabitants had chosen to settle here. It seemed to me this wasn’t a country to live in at all with the heat and the desolation but – who know? – maybe the climate was different back then?

It is good country for birds, however, including yet more varieties of owl. At night you can regularly hear Wood Owl, Pearl-spotted Owl and African Scops Owl. Pel’s occurs here too although I haven’t seen it.

On the one occasion, driving out from camp, just before dark, we hadn’t got very far when we spotted a Giant Eagle Owl squatting on the ground, next to an old termite mound. It was so close I felt I could lean out and touch it. Perhaps suspecting I might actually attempt something so impertinent the huge bird suddenly rose in the air and flapped off to a nearby tree.

Giant Eagle-Owl, Mapungubwe.

In the half light of the forest it sat and regarded us from this perch. Relaxed, enormous, extraordinary with formidable talons, curved black beak, deep, luminous, saucer- like eyes and finely barred grey overalls it seemed quite unconcerned by our presence.

Every now and again it would blink at us, like a camera shutter going off, and tilt its head sideways as if trying to get a better angle to observe us from. Or maybe it was just sizing up my birding colleague as a potential meal.

It was difficult to tell.

Watching it, I could not help but reflect on what a marvellously well adapted creature it was. Shaped by millions of years of evolution everything about it is tuned to hunt and kill at night. In the dark it can see with precision things which for you and I are just a generalised blur.

Perhaps because it is such harsh and difficult country, the park is always a scene of restless, unremitting activity devoted to the purpose of staying alive. There is always something to see.

The Maroutswa Pan in the Western section of the Park is usually well worth a visit as there are invariably herds of animals and flocks of birds coming down to drink, especially in the dry season.

One of my special memories of the pan, is returning at dusk as the sun was touching the leaves of the tall Lala palms in the rectangular-shaped clearing nearby and golden sheets of silken light came pouring down. It was an extraordinarily beautiful scene.

Lala Palms. Western section, Mapungubwe.

The Eastern section is more broken country but is also full of scurrying, browsing and fluttering life. From a raised walkway that leads through the canopy you can view the river in both directions. There are usually elephant here. It is also a good place to get Meyer’s Parrot and Broad-billed Roller too.

A kilometre or so downstream from here there is hill top view point which once served as an old SANDF army base during Apartheid day because of the immense view it gave over the surrounding bush.

It has become a place of pilgrimage for me. It is here, at the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo rivers, that the borders of the three countries – Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa – that have played such a pivotal role in shaping my life converge.

Confluence of Shashe and Limpopo rivers.

It is difficult to exaggerate the wild, romantic beauty of this spot with its great baobabs and fig trees growing out of a chaos of rocks. Standing on the edge of the cliff face I sometimes feel like I have been magicked into some parallel world. This is the ancient Africa of myth which the old writers and cartographers had heard about but weren’t too certain how to depict in their books and their maps.

Mapungubwe. Limpopo in mid-ground.

From Mapungubwe the Limpopo continues its long, leisurely loop along the border with Zimbabwe before crossing in to Mozambique at Pafuri. When I do this route I normally stop off at the town Musina to stock up with provisions.

The quickest way to get from Musina to Pafuri is probably to take the tar road that goes via the hot springs at Tschipise – but by using this route you miss out on seeing the Limpopo so we usually go on the old SANDF dirt road that runs alongside where the old minefield once was. In the past we have seen taxis parked here, picking up the Zimbabwean refugees fleeing across the river.

The Limpopo, east of Musina. View from old SANDF dirt road.

The road is in fairly good condition although, on the one trip, my birding colleague did manage to crack his car’s sump. Somehow we managed to get back to the tar and then limp all the to Tschipise without the engine seizing. At the local garage we gummed up the leak with soap and topped up the oil. That got us back to Musina where we were obliged to stay over while it got repaired.

Musina is an armpit of a place and not somewhere I would normally choose to stop for a night’s sleep on account of its perspiring proximity to the Limpopo river. It is definitely not the sort of town you want to get stuck in for any length of time especially in summer.

Apparently not everyone agrees with me. The copper mine which provided it with its reason for being might have closed but it is still a bustling, clamorous hub full of all the usual transients who ebb and flow around border towns – in this case mostly Zimbabweans come down to shop or escape that country’s collapsing economy and hoping to find employment in South Africa (the bush mechanic who fixed our car was one such refugee).

We checked in to a hotel on the main road. Towering cumulonimbus clouds were massing all around us and it looked like we were about to be inundated as fractious gusts of rain kept splattering against the windows of my room. The storm surge held back, however, as if it had had a sudden rethink, and then veered off to the West.

It had been a long day. Neither the sweltering heat, the music from the nearby bar nor the constant rumbling of trucks along the Great North Road, could disturb me. I fell instantly asleep.

Next morning, the car repaired, we resumed our journey along the Limpopo to Kruger.

Covering a huge swathe of the country Kruger is undoubtedly South Africa’s best known and most visited game park. Although most people are attracted by its animals – which includes the Big Five – it is also a Mecca for birders with over 500 recoded species.

One of the most popular of its birding spots, Pafuri, benefits from its proximity to the Mocambique coast and the Limpopo river that acts as a migration corridor to birds normally found further east and north. It was here, that I obtained my first sighting of the elusive Bohm’s Spinetail, a localised and uncommon species that favours riparian forest and is usually linked to baobab trees which this area has in abundance.

It is also where I saw my first Ayres Hawk Eagle, perched in a massive Jackalberry tree alongside the Luvuvhu River.

To get to Crooks Corner, another place I get a little sentimental about because it demarcates the meeting point of South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, you drive along the muddy Luvuvhu River, a tributary of the Limpopo. In the foreground the riverbank rises two to three metres and is capped by a flat plain whose edges are packed dense with tall Nyala, Jackalberry, Ana and Fever trees. Behind them, stretching away forever lies a sea of Mopani trees.

Luvuvhu river from bridge. Elephant below

I like to stop for lunch at the picnic site on the Luvuvhu where the sunlight is subdued and dappled by the trees, and the place is alive with birds.

Crook’s Corner – which is where the Luvuvhu (strangely enough I have never seen this river without water) and Limpopo meet – is another spot where it would be quite easy to slip across the border by just strolling over the often dry, river. In fact, this is how it actually got its odd moniker – because in the early days fugitives from the law used to do just that.

  • Crooks’ Corner, looking upstream. Dry season.
  • Crooks’ Corner, looking upstream. After rain.
  • Crooks’ Corner. Looking downstream. Normal flow.
  • Crooks’ Corner, looking downstream. After rain.

Here is another odd fact about it: in July 1950 a Zambezi Shark (Carcharinus lucas) was caught at the confluence of the Luvuvhu and Limpopo, hundreds of miles from the sea. Why it had decided to swim so far inland is a mystery.

Maybe, like me, it just responded to the river’s call…

A Tale of Two Rivers. Part One – the Zambezi

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My soul river at Mana Pools.

Every now and again in my life I have found myself in a place that for some mysterious reason exerts a deep, personal pull on me. Such places insinuate their way in to one’s being; my need for them seems to come from the deepest recesses of my unconscious mind. The Nyanga farm, where I grew up, was one. The Zambezi Valley is another…

The first time I went to “The River” was as a very small child, way back in the 1950s. I flew up with my father, an airline pilot, in an old Viking, at a time when the future Kariba Dam was still under construction.

I don’t remember much about that trip other than the fact that the unfinished wall looked like a rash of scabby cement skyscrapers of uneven height sprouting out of the river bed. I also vaguely recall that we travelled downstream to the junction of the Kafue and Zambezi rivers but how we got there I have forgotten.

  • The building of the Kariba Dam wall…two very blurry photos from a blurry period of my life.
  • Pictures taken from the air by my father, Reg Stidolph, an airline pilot. Note coffer dam.

My next visit was with my brother, Peter, his best friend, Douglas Anderson and Doug’s then girlfriend whose name now escapes me. It was towards the end of the sixties when I was still at university and Pete had just started working as a CONEX officer in Karoi.

My memory of that trip is similarly hazy. I do remember we consumed quite a few beers along the way which might explain that.

I recall driving past the remains of the abandoned sugar mills near Chirundu but am not sure where we actually ended up. I also remember there was only the one shelter which Doug and his girlfriend slept in. Because we considered ourselves rugged, outdoor types, Pete and I just dossed down on a sandbank alongside the river.

Apart from the mosquitoes – tiny, winged, devils in paradise – we slept well enough although we were a little taken alarmed to discover, when we woke up the next morning, that a hippo had walked between our two prostrate forms.

I still have an old black and white photograph of the two of us, taken back then. It is a picture I treasure because it reminds me of more carefree times and captures better than any other our contrasting personalities: Pete – practical, solid, no nonsense, his feet firmly planted in the soil. Me, the future cartoonist, slightly aloof and cynical, a bit of a poser with my sunglasses and ridiculous sideburns.

Pete and I at the Zambezi, circa 1969.

Standing on that sandbank with my brother, I do remember feeling that there was something that made this place special. I also knew I would return, one day, although, when I finally did so, it was not under the conditions or in the circumstances I desired.

I had left university at the end of 1971 and knew what lay ahead of me – 12 months of National Service. For a whole year I had been possessed by a growing sense of dread and the misery of anticipating the unavoidable.

My fears duly were duly realised. On the 3rd of January, 1973, I found myself conscripted in to the army as a member of Intake 129, “C” Company, the Rhodesia Regiment, based at Kariba.

It was now that I really began to get to know the river.

Our barracks, which had once provided a home for the Italian workers involved in the construction of the dam wall, were situated on top of a high hill – commonly referred to as the ‘Kariba Heights’ – with a panoramic view over the town, harbour and lake below. From here each platoon took it in turns patrolling the gomos ( army slang – from the Shona word for ‘mountains’), the flatlands and the town itself where our duties included guarding the dam wall which linked Rhodesia to Zambia

The gomos are what we called the rugged, inhospitable stretch of country that lie directly below the dam wall where the valley sides close in tightly, squeezing the river into a series of narrow, fast flowing rapids. At the end of the gorge the Zambezi slows down and widens as the land opens up with surprising abruptness into an enormous flood plain (hence army slang: flatlands) while the mountains re-arrange themselves along the horizon, growing further and further apart until finally petering out into nothingness.

For the most part we operated in small, six-man sticks, patrolling up and down the river as far as Chirundu by day and then returning to our base camps – old hunting camps – at night. It was a place of huge heat, a vast sky above and the sound and shimmer of the river below as it snaked its way along the county’s northern border.

Zambezi Master Chef class. Me on left, taking no part but writing a letter home like a good son did in those days…

At this early stage of the war this section of the Zambezi was still relatively quiet; most of the guerilla incursions were occurring further to the east, across the Mozambique rather than Zambian side of the border. If anything we had more to fear from the abundant wildlife.

At night we could often see and hear hyena lurking around and rooting amongst the rubbish left behind by countless intakes of soldiers before us. Under the cover of darkness hippo would emerge from the river to graze
on the grass that grew along the banks of the river.

Elephant, too, were frequent visitors although usually you could hear their stomachs rumbling long before they got anywhere near you. At other times I used to marvel at what silent creatures they could be and how an entire herd could materialise out of nowhere, as if by magic.

Black Rhino – surely the most cranky, foul–tempered, creatures on this planet (aside from man that is)? – were still relatively common. The sadistic South African helicopter pilots who flew us around used to take cruel delight in making us jump out near them. Because they held rank we couldn’t argue…

As a result, I spent more time retreating from their frontal assaults than I did dodging the other sides’ bullets (although that did change as the war intensified and I got despatched to the “Sharp End”).

Patrolling at night also had its own peculiar risks. There was always the chance of stumbling into herds of silent-standing buffalo concealed in the shadows, their presence usually given away by a sudden swish of a tail or an angry snort. Several large prides of lion also hunted in the area.

Elephant drinking in the Zambezi

Then there were the less visible dangers – tsetse fly, carriers of sleeping-sickness whose bite left a large welt on your skin, ticks, malaria-bearing mosquito and crocodile that lurked below the deceptively placid surface of the river.

At night we each took it in turn to do a stint on guard while the others slept. Strangely enough I learnt to savour such moments. I have never been much good at being one of the crowd, nor did I ever slot comfortably into the highly structured military hierarchy. Guard duty provided me with a brief, merciful respite; the time and silence to be alone with my thoughts, without being interrupted or pestered or ordered about.

Although I was always an extremely reluctant soldier, the army was not all bad. Indeed there were moments of unalloyed magic when it was possible, if only for a while, to forget we were fighting a war.

I loved sitting in the pink afterglow of the sunset, having my final brew-up of the day and watching the river change colour as darkness descended. As the sun sank still further the river and sky became one, the tree line and distant escarpment hanging in suspension between them. It was difficult not to be bewitched by the landscape, the massive, flat valley, the rim of mountains and hills. Often we would be joined, on either side of our position, by large troops of baboon or herds of impala or elephant coming down for their final drink.

Sunset over the Zambezi.

Apart from a short period in my youth when I tried to re-imagine myself as a St Francis of Assisi-figure I have never been a particularly religious person but I felt a strong spiritual connection with the place.

Even now, living in a different place, space and time I am still haunted by the grandeur of the Valley.

Since then I have been back to the Valley many times, alternating between Lake Kariba, Mana Pools and Mongwe Fishing Camp, below Chirundu.

At the end of the Rhodesian Bush War, I took my English cousin, Rebecca, then just out of school and waiting to go to Oxford, on an epic road trip around Southern Africa. This included crossing Kariba by ferry and then driving through a mine field to get to Victoria Falls. I don’t think her parents would have so readily consented to the trip had they known about all the skull and crossbones signs and rusty barbed-wire demarcating where the mines were supposed to be.

We couldn’t have picked a better time to see the Falls. Not only was the river flowing at full strength – which meant they were at their magnificent best – but because it was so close to the end of the Rhodesian Bush War the tourist hordes had not yet started returning in their thousands. Prices were cheap, accommodation easy to find (we stayed in the National Park chalets above the Falls) and there were none of the regulations and restrictions controlling movement in and around the main view points that you have now.

Seeing the Falls after a gap of several years, I was once again overwhelmed by their sheer size and scale. No matter how many pictures you see of them or documentaries you watch, nothing can quite prepare you for the sheer magnitude of this spectacle. It takes your breath away every time.

The one glorious evening Rebecca and I wandered down through the rain forest right up to the edge of the dizzying abyss. Standing there in the drenching spray, watching the never-ending torrent of water hurling down in to the cauldron below – while a orange- yellow full moon rose in to the night sky above it, gilding the water in a luminous glow as it did so – I felt like some would-be mystic. There was something incredibly transcendental about the scene.

What brought the whole experience even closer to the Romantic Age notion of the Sublime (beauty and terror combined) was that we had one of the world’s most awe-inspiring natural spectacles all to ourselves. We were the only ones there.

I doubt if you could do that now.

  • Kariba Dam wall. Where I once kept the Red Menace at bay…
  • Lake Kariba.
  • Victoria Falls – the classic view.
  • My cousin, Rebecca, on the edge of the abyss, braving the spray from Victoria Falls.
  • Muso o Tunya -“The smoke that thunders”. I took this pic on the aptly named Flight of the Angels
  • Victoria Falls – view from near David Livingstone’s statue.

Another trip which sticks out in my mind is when my youngest sister, Nicky, got married. After the wedding, the reception for which was held in Cecil John Rhodes’ old house in Nyanga (now a hotel), we spent an idyllic few days on a houseboat on Kariba before driving on to Mongwe fishing camp. After all the other family members had headed back to Karoi, my companion, Mary-Ann, I and my nephew, James, elected to stay on for a few more days.

The Zambezi is a river which inspires all those who know it well with an infectious passion. James, who farms in Karoi and comes down regularly on fishing trips, is no exception…

James fishing in Zambezi.

As we sped up and down the river in his boat, past sandbars and reed covered islands on which groups of munching buffalo stood, he was full of lurid descriptions of its hazards as well as its attractions. Numerous types of fish swim in it of which the mighty tiger fish is undoubtedly the most famous (James has caught his fair share).

The bird life on the Zambezi is prolific. Its specials including African Skimmer, Lilian’s Lovebird, Livingstone’s Flycatcher, Western Banded Snake-Eagle, Dickinson’s Kestrel, Long-toed Lapwing, Grey-headed Parrot, Thick-billed Cuckoo, Racket-tailed Roller, Collared Palm-Thrush and many more besides.

In the middle of the river James found a shallow shelf where he cut the engine and we all leapt out in to the crystal-clear, cooling, water. Wanting to show I am capable of the odd romantic gesture I re-enacted the whole “Out of Africa” scene, washing Mary-Ann’s dust-coated hair while James, chuckling to himself, kept an eye-out for crocodiles.

The Zambezi from Mongwe Hill.

My last trip back to the Valley – which was also to attend a wedding (my nephew Alexander Stidolph) – was undoubtedly the most poignant and moving of them all because it happened at a particularly tumultuous and traumatic time in Zimbabwe’s history.

Driving up from Harare Airport the results of President Robert Mugabe’s recent chaotic and often violent land grab had been plain to see. For every surviving homestead, I passed at least a dozen whose occupants had been forced to up stakes and flee. Tobacco barns stood derelict, irrigation equipment and farm machinery lay strewn across the countryside. Uncontrolled bush fires blazed everywhere.

An entire industry, a whole way of life, appeared to be dissolving before my eyes.

Only the Zambezi Valley was as I remembered it.

Dropping down the other side of the escarpment I braked and pulled in to a familiar lay-bye – a favourite pit stop of mine. The air was thick with heat so I cracked open a cold beer and sat there while a pair of Bataleur – still relatively common in these parts – wheeled overhead; dwarfed by the immensity of it all.

For the first time since I started the journey I could feel my jangled city nerves starting to thaw. Sitting under an invincibly sunny sky, listening to the baboon arguing in the rock-faces above and the sound of the long-haulage trucks groaning up the steep incline, I felt I had found my spot in the universe. I was back in my true spiritual home.

I could have lingered there all day, lost in that hypnotic trance, but I had a wedding to get to and ahead of me stretched the long, dusty, rutted track to Mana Pools.

Crossing the Rukomeche on the road to Mana Pools. The Zambezi escarpment in far distance.

There was something comfortably familiar about the scene that greeted me at the river. Pick-up trucks were backed up in a line alongside the road and under a cluster of trees a makeshift wedding reception area had been cordoned off.

Beyond all the activity, on the river below, a small herd of elephant sloshed through the shallows completely unmoved by all the comings and goings around them.

Elephant – completely unmoved by wedding preparations.

The next morning I sat out under a huge Natal Mahogany tree and watched the passing parade as the sun rose up over the mighty river. Looking at the scenery and the animals and the myriad of bird-life, I felt I had been let loose among a prodigality of marvels, a feeling made even stronger by the illusion that I had it all to myself.

The wedding ceremony itself was held further upstream, under a large, spreading tree whose branches had conveniently arranged themselves in to the form of a natural altar, through which one could take in the broad sweep of the river and the mountains beyond.

The setting could hardly have been more perfect. Threading his way carefully through pods of dozing hippo, the bridegroom came paddling down the river in a canoe while the bride arrived in a cloud of dust in an old Model T Ford, especially trucked in for the occasion.

The bride arrives in a cloud of dust…
The bridal couple depart. Note raptor in tree. Picture courtesy of Craig Scott

Considering how severely depleted the ranks of the local farming community had become there was a surprisingly large turnout although among the guests were many who had lost their farms and livelihoods or joined the great diaspora. Try as I might I found it very difficult to escape the palpable air of sadness, the feeling I was witnessing a last hurrah.

This feeling of loss was made even more acute by the fact I had also come to pay my last respects to my adored brother, Pete, who had died of a brain tumour just days before his farm was seized (my brother, Paul, who farmed nearby also lost his) and whose ashes his wife, Tawny, had placed in an old sausage tree growing on the bank of his favourite section of the river.

My brother Pete’s final resting place (sausage tree on right). My sister, Nicky, in foreground.

As I and the other members of my family gathered around the tree, it occurred to me I was bidding farewell not only to my brother but also the country of my birth.

The memories churned up by this unspeakably beautiful river will, however, continue to flow through my soul until the day I die…

And Then The Lights Went Out – Cartoons for March and April, 2019

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SUMMARY OF EVENTS:

Other than the fact he fainted while delivering it, there was nothing especially memorable about KZN premier Willies Mchunu’s State of the Province Address so instead of going with that as my cartoon topic I decided to kick off March, 2019, by tackling a subject that has really got the long suffering residents of Pietermaritzburg blowing their fuses – the city’s chaotic electricity billing system.

They had good reason for concern. Shortly after the latest fiasco the Auditor General issued a damning report warning that the city was on the brink of collapse.

As if this was not bad enough the situation was then made worse when workers in the crucial Finance Department, who administer the billing system, suddenly downed tools and embarked on a strike. According to sources within the ANC itself the pro-Zuma faction – who else? – had encouraged these labour ructions as part of a grand plan to make the city’s management look incompetent.

Meanwhile, at the national level, a bombshell report recommended that the self-same Jacob Zuma and others be prosecuted or disciplined after finding that he oversaw the creation of parallel structures within the intelligence services to serve his personal and factional ANC interests.

If there is one thing the former Number One has proved singularly adept at doing it is avoiding going to jail so don’t be surprised if he does so again…

South Africans then found themselves back in the dark with Eskom power supply becoming increasingly erratic, and blackouts often inexplicable. The sudden wave of Stage Four outages brutally brought home the true severity of the mess South Africa has been dumped in by the kleptocrats.

The gloom continued with President Cyril Ramaphosa’s anti-corruption campaign getting tainted by the revelation that his son, Andile, was paid R2Million by Bosasa/African Global Operations. Andile’s exploitation of his connections drew immediate comparisons with the dodgy dealings of Zuma and his family during the previous presidency.

We were not the only ones sinking deeper in to the mire. With her Brexit deal having been rejected three times by the House of Commons, embattled British PM, Theresa May, decided to reach out to the Leader of the Labour opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, in an effort to resolve the impasse. It was hard not to take the cynical view that she had only done so because she realised she had run out of road.

Having insisted, through her spokesperson, that she had no plans to place the Msunduzi Municipality under administration because of the awful mess it had got itself in to the MEC for Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Nomusa Dube-Ncube, then went ahead and did just that. Whether this belated “intervention”, as Dube-Ncube called it, will save the sinking ship is open to debate but the fact the beleaguered municipality has been placed under administration before – in 2010 – is not exactly an encouraging omen…

A tough task got made even more difficult for Sibusiso Sithole, the newly appointed administrator, when a group of ANC rebels then threatened to close down Msunduzi and other municipalities if their demands are not met before the election of May 8.

Since this occurred in the same week as Durban and the KZN coastline experienced some of the worst flooding in decades, I made the inevitable connection between the two events…

  • More billing woes
  • Heading for the cliff.
  • More revelations about Zuma.
  • More load-shedding.
  • More state capture revelations.
  • Going nowhere slowly…
  • Musunduzi finally placed under administration.
  • More ANC infighting.

“Walkies” With Whisky and Minki – a Homage

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Minki was the first of us to come and live on the farm.

William, the owner, was busy supervising the construction of the new house so she joined him because she didn’t want him to be lonely all up there on his own. Sharing a solitary, bunker-like, room known, appropriately, as “The Bunker”, they became good chums.

Once the house was completed, though, it was decided Minki really ought to have a companion of her own kind and so her cousin, Whisky, was imported from the same Free State farm where Minki had been born.

At first, Minki was a little put out about this new arrangement but – being Minki – she didn’t kick up too much of a fuss. Whisky, for her part, was absolutely thrilled with not only her new home but her new auntie as well.

  • Whisky in window. Minki looking on anxiously.
  • New best friend. Whisky, in foreground, with Minki.

I turned up shortly after that and right away we all seemed to hit it off. They liked me even better when I started using the “walkies” word.

For me they became the most companionable of companions – easy-going, sweet-natured and loyal. We formed our own little pack, a democracy of three, although I pulled rank and declared myself the leader, deciding in which direction we would walk and when we would turn back

Being uncritical and accommodating by nature, they seemed happy to go along with that…

Over the following years the three of us built up an empathy and a camaraderie and a trust. All I had to do was turn up the doorstep with my binoculars and bird book and say the magic word and they would immediately start writhing and leaping in frenzies of delight.

  • My favourite picture of Minki (on left) and Whisky.

Whisky and Minki were mostly well-behaved on our outings in to the countryside. They quickly learnt that they were not allowed to chase the buck – as tempting as it always was – or bother the family of dassie that had one day decided to take up residence in the pile of rocks alongside Rubble Row.

Being retrievers, they were both keen sniffers, their noses constantly close to the ground as they searched for clues and vital signs and tell-tale scents. Their attention span could be short however – a leaping grasshopper or a meandering butterfly would be enough distract them from the serious task at hand.

On the trail…

Of the two, Minki was the more energetic and adventurous, covering an enormous amount of ground as she dashed hither and thither. The only problen with this was that I never got to see many birds up close but that didn’t really matter. She was happy and that made me happy.

While this was going on, Whisky, was content just to trot along behind. She saw her role more as the observer, the eyes to Minki’s nose.

Minki in motion…

She loved nothing more than to just park off.

Nowhere was this more obvious than relaxing at our favourite resting spot – Lizard Rock. While Minki would scuttle over the exposed sheet of dolerite doing her best to catch the blue and orange little skinks as they darted between the rocks (to my knowledge she has never succeeded), Whisky preferred to just sit and take in the view.

  • Minki, looking for lizzies.
  • Minki still looking for lizzies
  • Whisky parking off on top of a hill.
  • Whisky parking off amongst the spring flowers.
  • Whisky parking off at Lizard Rock.

Conversely, Whisky was the more likely to bark at something. Our neighbour’s cows were a particular favourite. I noticed, however, that she always made sure there was a fence or some other form of barrier between her and them before launching in to her tirades of abuse.

A very ferocious Whisky showing the neighbour’s cow who is boss. The cow kept on grazing…

She could be easily fooled – often mistaking, for example, a plastic bag fluttering in the wind for some sort of looming threat. And barking at it.

She was not a very brave dog as I have already intimated. The following sequence of photographs, which show her coming face to face with a man on a bicycle, provide a good demonstration of that:

They were good days – in fact, some of the happiest of my life – the three of us ranging across the countryside with never a bad word or heated exchange between us.

Our favourite walk was the one down to the river although it was always exhausting climbing back. Minki, in particular, loved flowing water and would immediately plunge in to the river once we got there, often emerging with a half-sunken log clamped triumphantly between her teeth.

  • Minki grabs the Log-ness Monster.
  • Minki triumphant.

That, would be quickly be forgotten once I sat down and pulled my Thermos of hot coffee and packet of rusks out my backpack because, like all Labrador dogs, they have a highly evolved food gene. They also had a way of reminding me, without actually saying anything but by simply giving me “the look”, that we were a team. I always ended up sharing my food with them.

Sometimes we crossed the river and followed the road that ran along its forested margin. I named this road Porcupine Ridge because I have never been on it without finding quills scattered along its course.

At the point where our farm ends, the road – still following the line of the river – takes a sharp curve up a steep hill. About halfway up this we discovered a waterfall although we had to hack our way through a fair amount of skin-shredding bramble to get there.

It was well worth the effort, we all agreed. For Minki there was a deep pool to swim in at the top of the falls (even better there were logs in it) while Whisky thought the cliff edge spot provided another brilliant parking- off spot where she could simply sit and muse about life.

  • View from the top of the waterfall.
  • Whisky musing at top of the waterfall.
  • Minki captures another Log-ness Monster in pool above waterfall.
  • Whisky decides to join in the fun by trying to wrestle Log-ness Monster away from Minki.

Above the falls the country opens up in to a grass-filled glade, mercifully free of those prickly brambles, while the river slides its way over a series of smooth rock fissures, with more pools in between. Along their margins tree ferns grow while the water itself is wonderfully clear.

Selecting a comfortable position on some rounded rocks, I would sit dangling my toes in the cool water while the girls lay spread-eagled in the grass, tongues lolling. It was all very peaceful, almost domestic, with the view down the valley providing a lovely, quieting effect.

As a rule, this series of pool was my turning point although there is a beautiful dam just a little bit further up I would loved to have carried on to but I was worried the owner might not want dogs trespassing on his property, even ones as friendly and as well brought up as Whisky and Minki.

So we returned home, the way we had come, crossing the Kusane River and climbing the steep hillside back to the house. I always got back from these excursions feeling tired but well satisfied and at peace with the world.

The road down to the river. The whole Kusane Gang including Mara and Harriet (not in picture), the two sheep. Plus Evan from Cape Town (in white hat), an honorary member of the pack..

Sadly, those days of exploration with Whisky and Minki have now become a thing of the past. Old age has caught up with them both. Minki has become so arthritic she battles to make it from one side of the room to the other. She is still unfailingly cheerful and although she doesn’t always get up to greet me when I come to visit she still manages to convey her pleasure at seeing me with a prolonged thumping of the tail on the floor.

For her part, Whisky has grown more matronly and home-comfort loving. When the guests arrive, she is still the model host doing the rounds of the cottages to make sure they have all settled in nicely (while, at the same time, casting a surreptitious glance in to what goodies they have inside their cool box).

She also still wanders down to visit me in The Barn, especially when her owner is away because she knows the end of my balcony provides a good look-out over the farm gate through which Karen – she who Whisky adores above all others – will come driving.

Two devoted girls, waiting for Mum to return home, at the end of my balcony. Whisky, as usual, using auntie as a pillow.

Where it counts they are still the same two dogs that I have watched grow up from puppies. They are not aggressive types but rather humble; they don’t demand affection but are grateful for it. Both still have warm, affectionate natures. Although they will obviously do their duty and bark at the sight of an unknown car coming up the driveway, I do not remember them ever showing ill-temper towards a human being.

Guarding the guineafowl.

For me, life goes on. While I still try to walk on a regular basis, I have found that without the two girls to egg me on my enthusiasm levels aren’t what they once were and I don’t cover quite the same distance I used to. I hardly ever go down to the river any more although I suppose I ought to.

I still wander up to Lizard Rock but I miss having Whisky plonk herself down next to me and then lean up against my side, all friendly-like. I also miss watching Minki’s huge excitement when some lizard, with a death wish, decides to break cover.

It was a very special relationship. Through fair weather and foul, they proved the very best and most loyal of friends. I will always value and cherish and remember those times we had together, exploring Kusane Farm and the world just beyond…

  • Going “walkies” among the flowers.
  • Waiting to be let in.
  • Still waiting to be let in.
  • Swimming in the LeVoy’s dam. Minki, the braver of the two, is the one far out.
  • Whisky plays King of the Castle.
  • Queen Minki surveys her domain. Kusane River below, Karkloof Hills in background.
  • Whisky gives a Rastafarian, known as Craig, a few tips on how to “chill-out” and “park-off”.
  • Whisky’s food gene kicks in…

Tiny Owls, Big Crocodile – a Short Trip to Shimuwini

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The Letaba river at Shimuwini, Kruger

For me, there is always something spiritually cleansing about heading off in to the bush. You leave behind the worries, the strains, the irritations of day to day life, to embrace a sense of wonder and a buried instinct that reminds you that you are still one with nature.

That was certainly very much how I felt when I recently found myself, once again, driving through the gates at Punda Maria in northern Kruger.

I have come back to this spot numerous times and the enchantment never wanes, not only because of its beautiful bushveld setting but because of the promise it holds. There is always something new to discover.

Normally when I go to the bush I am focused on one main thing. It is all about looking for lifers and ticking as many birds off my list as possible.

This time it was slightly different. I was travelling with my sisters, Sally, an artist, and Penny, a social anthropologist, and we had a broader goal. We were hoping to not only to recharge our spiritual batteries but also find inspiration – in my case for a series of paintings I had planned.

Travelling companions, my sisters Sally and Penny’

Any birds I saw would be an added bonus.

Our journey also differed from my normal ones in that we were doing it in much more style and luxury than I am accustomed to. Instead of having to sleep on the hard ground in my tiny tent, Penny had, as a special birthday treat for me, booked us in to hutted accommodation.

We spent our first two nights at Punda Maria with a day trip to Pafuri in between. I have described this area in a previous blog post so won’t repeat myself here.

Leaving Punda Maria, early on the second morning, we headed south towards Shingwedzi. As we drove the clouds came rolling ponderously towards us in never ending procession across an inimitable sky, although the sun never seemed to stop shining through them

About fifteen kilometres into our journey we came across a pride of lion, lying in a gully alongside the road. Languid and completely unconcerned by our presence, they exuded an air of arrogant authority.

Lion, between Punda Maria and Shingwedzi, Kruger. Picture courtesy of Sally Scott.

Looking at them, dozing in the shade, made me glad I am, not a buck or a zebra. With predators like them around there is no way you can ever exactly nod off. When a lion roars you can imagine shadowy herds freezing in the darkness.

Leaving the snoozing lions to their day-dreams we continued on our way.

Reaching a crossroads, we branched off the tar and on to the Phongolo Loop. It turned out to be a good move because the loop is, to my mind, one of the most rewarding drives in the whole of Kruger.

There was game – and birds – a plenty.

The tree-lined river, which the road follows, was mostly dry but every now and again there would be an isolated, mud-brown, pool.

Buffalo, Phongolo Loop

We stopped directly above one such pool. It had a steep-sided red-coloured cliff behind it. Down at the water’s edge lay a huge crocodile. With its hard, ugly, carbuncular skin and protruding eyes, it really did look like something from the early stages of creation.

Time and science may have removed much of our fear of the natural world but I still experience a slight tremor in my gut whenever I see these evil-looking reptiles…

As we sat, in the safety of our car, watching this one, a small group of waterbuck came loping down the steep side of the gully. They drew up short when the lead male spotted the crocodile lying in the shallows. Strangely, the waterbuck seemed more curious than afraid, tentatively moving down to the water’s edge to examine the beast.

I kept waiting for the inevitable but it never happened. The crocodile continued to lie motionless and eventually the waterbuck lost interest and moved off.

Waterbuck meet crocodile, Phongolo Loop.

I was told afterwards – I have no idea how true this is – that waterbuck have a special gland, the odour from which repels crocodiles.

Back on the road we saw more elephant and several big herds of buffalo. We also came across a pair of Kori Bustard resting in the shade. The undoubted highlight was, however, a young leopard, walking down the dry, sandy river bed, swishing its tail as it went.

Getting to our nights accommodation at Bataleur Bushveld Camp proved to be no easy task. As we trekked up the dirt road bunches of elephant kept trundling across it, on the way to their watering holes. Often we had to brake and wait for them to pass.

It is a strange thing when you think you are doing the looking, to find yourself being observed. Especially when the one doing the observing towers above you and doesn’t look exactly pleased to have you around. We had a few gulp moments…

Getting up close and personal

Petra, a friend of Penny and Sally, who was due to join us later, had even worse luck and was forced to turn around because of the elephant and take a much longer route eventually arriving at Bataleur just as they were shutting the entrance gates.

Bataleur is situated in thick, dry, riverine bush that stood waiting, expectantly, to be transformed by the arrival of the rains, still probably some months off.

Bataleur Bush Camp

It, too, was alive with birds. There were some very tame hornbills (Red-billed, Yellow-billed and Grey), Crested Francolin, Go-Away Birds, Arrow-marked Babblers and African Mourning Doves. Also a very noisy party of screeching, acrobatic, Brown-headed Parrots feeding in a nearby wild-fruit tree

As the sun dipped behind the trees we were paid separate visits by South Africa’s two tiniest owls – first the Pearl-spotted Owlet and then the African Scops-Owl. Landing in a tree outside our chalet, the Scops immediately started signalling to all the other owls in the area with its soft, frog-like, “Prrrupp”.

Pearl-spotted Owlet. Picture courtesy of Sally Scott.

It was much hotter the following morning as we set off for our final destination, the Shimuwini Bush camp. Ahead of us lay miles and miles of more stunted mopani scrub, all bony trunks and sparse, spindly branches.

We stopped near a water point, where several elephant were siphoning water out of the top of a reservoir. There was also a solitary hyena, skulking around, like he was carrying some sort of guilty secret. When a nearby herd of zebra spotted it, they immediately charged, kicking up great clouds of dust behind them.

Hyena – about to be chased by zebra.

Caught unaware, the hyena did not need any prompting – it turned tail and fled with the zebra in hot haste behind.

Once they had sent the shame-faced animal scuttling off in to the surrounding bush the zebra halted, fanning out in to a half crescent-shaped phalanx, like a Zulu impi, to prevent it from returning. The hyena took the hint and did not return.

The hyena is seen off…

Shimuwini, when we got there, was a revelation. Situated on the banks of the Letaba, it seemed miles from anywhere. Across the river rolled plains seemingly endless, shimmering with heat, barren of landmarks save for the occasional baobab and small rocky outcrops. There seemed to be a presence here, a spirit, an atmosphere that had nothing to do with man. We were mere transitory callers, passing through.

Klipspringer and baobab – near Shimuwini.

At this time of the year the Letaba provides one of the few sources of water in an arid land so you didn’t really have to go anywhere to look for game – you just need to sit out on a chair under the spreading trees, drink in hand, and wait for it to come to you. Immediately in front of us, in a large pool, a pod of hippo kept rising up, snorting out columns of bubbles and steam and then disappearing again, leaving behind a mass of ever-widening ripples on the waters surface.

Several crocodiles lay silently in shallow inlets, only their nostrils showing. On the opposite bank a steady stream of animals kept coming down to drink.

There were lots of water birds, including Fish Eagle, Saddle-billed Stork, Openbill Stork, Yellow-billed Stork, Egyptian Geese, White-faced Fulvous Whistling Duck, African Jacana, Water Dikkop and Black Crake.

As we sat watching them, the dusk seemed to creep up from the ground like a stalking animal. The whole sight before us was one of almost religious beauty, stirring to both the spirit and the eye.

Sunset over the Letaba river.

I like to think that it is to some such place my soul might return at the end of life.

As bewitching as it all was I eventually had to pull myself away to fulfil my allotted role as braai-master. After a delicious fillet steak and several glasses of red wine, which we consumed sitting on the verandah under a star-spattered sky, we retired to bed.

And then it was dawn; the sky turned red and apricot and orange and smoke-grey beyond the river. Light came flooding back in to the world.

Penny surprised us all by being the first one up, followed by Sally who wandered down to the water’s edge, cup of tea in hand, to watch the sun rise. Once it had lifted itself above the horizon, she decided to make the most of the time we had left and set off on a walk around the perimeter fence of the camp, taking lots of photographs as she went. Near its outer edges she heard lion grunting in the distance.

Driving in, on the previous day, we had seen an eddy of vultures, black specks circling high in the sky over what was presumably a fresh kill, which gave us some idea of what they had been up to.

I was reluctant to leave Shimuwini but we had only booked in for one night and were due to exit the park that day. As if picking up on my mood a small family of Dwarf Mongoose came scampering on to the lawn in front of us, stopping every now and again to sit upright on their haunches as if to say farewell. A pair of Red-headed Weavers landed in a nearby mopani tree and immediately started chasing each other all over it.

Dwarf Mongoose, Shimuwini.

After breakfast we set off once more over the flat and now familiar country. Having driven what seemed like a fair distance we came around a corner and there was the Letaba again, flowing sedately east between low banks and a flutter of reeds.

Stopping in the middle of the low-level bridge we were rewarded with a scene as unexpected as it was arresting – a magnificent Martial Eagle, one of the largest of all the African eagles (there numbers now, sadly, dwindling) standing, on one leg, in the middle of the river. It seemed quite happy to pose for photos and it was still there, still standing on one leg, when we finally drove off.

Martial Eagle. Picture courtesy Sally Scott.

This was still perfect elephant country and we kept passing little groups of them especially where there was water. As we drove on, small maelstroms of dust and grass and dead leaves kept twirling up in to the hot sky around us. It was dust devil season.

Elephant and Kori Bustard. Picture courtesy Sally Scott.

Some faraway hills broke the flatness. We had been told there was an ancient smelting site at one of them so we decided to follow a short-cut 4X4 track that led directly towards it.

We had only travelled a short way down the rough road when another large elephant stepped out from behind some trees and started ambling down the road behind us, like it had been especially tasked to make sure we quit the park.

Getting escorted out of the park by an elephant.

We took the hint. After a quick stop off at the Masorini Archaeological Site, which dates back to the Iron Age, we headed out the gate, through the ugly sprawl of Phalaborwa, with its smoke stacks, enormous dumps and tacky tourist shops.

The air felt oppressively hot. It was hard to believe that in a few days time I would be back in the green, cold, mist and drizzle of Curry’s Post.

FOOTNOTE: Besides seeing lots of birds and animals the expedition suceeded in its other major objective which was to provide me with artistic inspiration. I have now completed four more baobab paintings with a couple more lined up.

Here, also, are just a few of the birds we saw on the trip:

  • Red-crested Korhaan
  • Kori Bustard.
  • Brown-headed Parrots
  • White-faced Duck.
  • African Openbill and Great Egret
  • Great Egret, Nile Crocodile.
  • Crested Guineafowl
  • Greater Blue-eared Starling
  • Yellow-billed Hornbill.
  • Go-away-bird.
  • Red-billed Hornbill.
  • African Mourning Dove
  • Crested Francolin.
  • Yellow-billed Hornbill.
  • Crested Barbet.
  • Red-headed Weaver

Between a Rock and a Badplaas

/ stidyatkusane / 5 Comments

A quest to find the birthplace of my paternal grandmother, Josephine (Josie) Nesbitt, found me rattling along the road between Badplaas and Barberton. I had been told there was a house, now included in the local Barberton Heritage Walk, that had belonged to someone who shared her maiden name.

Belhaven House, Barberton

As it turned out it could not have been her home because she had been born on the 8th of August, 1888 and left shortly afterwards in an ox wagon bound for Gazaland whereas the beautiful old building I found myself admiring had only been erected in 1902.

Belhaven was, nevertheless, a very fine house furnished, according to a brochure I picked up in its rooms, in the style of the late Victorian and early Edwardian periods and depicted “the lifestyle of a wealthy middle class family”. No longer inhabited it has been curated and turned into a museum; become a tourist attractive ‘objet’, a slice of authentic gold mining town Africana.

Built of corrugated iron with a wrap around verandah and elaborately ornamented rooms it hearkened back to an era when family life was much more rigidly formalised than it is today. There was a smoking room where only men were allowed to gather and another room reserved exclusively for the use of the womenfolk. Children, presumably, were not allowed to enter either.

In terms of social status and breeding it’s original occupants were clearly a cut above a lot of the riff raff who had come pouring into the Barberton area hoping to strike it rich it what was to become South Africa’s first major gold rush. Their legacy can still be seen today in the numerous old diggings, abandoned shafts, prospecting trenches and slime dumps that litter the surrounding countryside

Starting off as a forlorn grid of dirt streets, grubby tents and mouldering shacks, Barberton quickly evolved, in classic Wild West style, into a bustling frontier town full of hotels and bars frequented by thirsty miners and prostitutes, the most notorious of whom was undoubtedly “Cockney Liz”. At the height of its boom years it even boasted its own Stock Exchange.

Although long gone the departed fortune seekers still continue to haunt the landscape in one important way, mapping it with names, evoking both hope and despair, such as Revolver Creek, Joe’s Luck, Honeybird, Fever Creek and Eureka.

Still rummaging around in the detritus of other people’s lives I stumbled upon yet another family link. The first major gold strike had, in fact, been found on a farm in the De Kaap Valley that had been granted to another very distant ancestor of mine, George Pigot-Moodie, by the Boer Republic Government as a reward for his abortive efforts to promote the construction of a railway line between Pretoria and Lourenco Marques.

At the time he had made himself highly unpopular by first offering a reward and generous terms to anyone who discovered gold on his farm and then attempting to forcibly eject the hordes of prospectors who had gathered on his property when they did just that.

Any lingering ill feelings his somewhat high-handed actions may have generated do not appear to have permanently harmed his reputation. He continued to prosper and double-barreled his parents’ name when he became Member for the West in the Cape Town Legislative Council and purchased Westbrooke in Rondebosch – destined to be the future Cape Town residence of the Governor-Generals of the Union of South Africa.

The fact that the area filled in a few missing entries in my own family history is not, of course, its sole claim to fame. In geological terms it is, literally and figuratively, a veritable gold mine, so much so that it has now been declared a World Heritage Site.

The Barberton-Makhonjwa Geotrail. Barberton in background.

Not only does it contain some of the world’s oldest known rocks but because the world’s oldest fossils have also been found there, the area has become a Mecca for scientists interested in how the young earth worked 3 500 000 millennia ago, and in searching for clues to the origins of life. Just in case you thought this was not enough to justify its elevated status the area also contains the earliest evidence of meteorite impact on earth, as well as the world’s earliest known gold deposits.

Cashing in on this impressive CV the local tourist authority have created the Barberton-Makhonjwa Geotrail which runs up into the mountains behind the town and eventually ends in Pigg’s Peak in Swaziland.

I took a drive up this road skirting buttock-like clefts and exposed rock faces striped with alternating shades of colour like a layered birthday cake. There are eleven marked stopping points along the way where you can get out and survey the folded masses of rock in front of you, each one telling a different geological story.

In places abandoned mine workings pock the hillsides like rodents burrows; long tongues of grey debris descending from their small black mouths. There had obviously been rain for the whole mountainside was a study in greens while the sky itself became an even more brilliant blue the higher up we got.

The picnic site, Makhonjwa Geotrail.

We stopped for lunch at the picnic site on the crest of a ridge. The view was superb – a lush and verdant, rolling green landscape stretching away as far as the eye could see. Puffs of white, cotton wool- like cloud floated overhead, in places blocking out the sun, so that some valleys were all alight and some sunk in dark shadow.

Even the name Makhonjwa has a magical ring. As with many mountains in Africa, local belief has it that you must never point your finger at them.

It was here I found one last link to my past – an entire layer of geological strata named after the same relative on whose farm gold had first been found in payable quantities.

Info on the Moodies Group.

As I headed homewards, well pleased with all my discoveries, I wondered how many other people could say they had had a pile of very old rocks named after one of their kinsfolk?

FOOTNOTE: Possibly attracted by the discovery of gold on “Moodies Concession” my great-grandfather, John Warren “Jack” Nesbitt, moved up to the Barberton district in 1888. It was here his young wife , Sarah, who was distantly related to George Pigot-Moodie, gave birth to my grandmother, “Josie”.

After a bit more research I discovered that she had spent the first few years of her life on a farm called White Hills, just off the main Barberton to Badplaas road, at the foot of the Nelsberg Pass. The farm – now part of a much larger timber plantation – gets its name from the prominent quartz outcrop in the area (funnily enough, the farm we settled on in the then Rhodesia was called Witte Koppies for the same reason).

We took a drive out there to see what we could find. Although we had a good look around we could not find any trace of the old homestead or anything else to remind us of their brief soujourn there.

My sister, Penny, on the prominent quartz outcrop that gave a farm its name – White Hills.

Weathering the Seasons at Kusane – Part Two

/ stidyatkusane / 16 Comments

As regular readers of this Blog should now be well aware, I decided, several years ago, to act on my extended mid-to-late-life-crisis by turning my back on the city and moving out in to the country. In a life riddled with bad judgement calls it turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made.

My new home was spacious, filled with light; outside the windows and from the balcony I had stunning views over the Karkloof valley and hills and its surrounds. Here is the odd thing though. For some perverse reason I kept believing that I didn’t really deserve to live in such a beautiful place.

The Barn – my home at Kusane. I live in the upstairs portion. Note Zimbabwean sculptures.

I felt – and still feel – incredibly lucky.

Maybe it was due to the fact that I have never had much money and therefore didn’t expect the sort of things some rich folk (and their offspring) take as their God-ordained due. Or maybe it was because I had spent the previous twenty-five years of my life living behind razor wire in a cottage a little bigger than a dog kennel – and about as well kept – in the middle of Maritzburg’s CBD, and had come to assume this was my lot forever.

With a bit of self-therapy (in a probably misplaced attempt to attain a state of higher consciousness I took up oil painting. To try and unlock those repressed memories I began this blog) and lots of long, bracing, walks, I have slowly started to overcome this irrational and, it would seem, deeply ingrained hang-up

The views have helped. What I love most about living up here is that I feel so close to the sky. It has given me some idea of what it must be like to be a soaring eagle or a migrating stork.

The other thing is the weather. With the possible exception of the Nyanga farm, where I grew up, I don’t think I have ever been made to feel quite so aware of it.

Every morning, I can’t wait to get out of bed to see what it is up to. It has become my raison d’etre (it must be my Scottish/Irish/English ancestry). In the Karkloof you get an awful lot of it too: no two days are ever the same. Twenty-four hours can spin itself in to a lifetime of weather, a kaleidoscope of scene changes.

It can start off sunny and end up in pouring rain. On some mornings there is no dew, but mist wreathes the clefts and ravines of the hills across the way. A cold front can arrive in the time it takes me to stroll down to the river and get back home.

Mist in the Karkloof hills.

I love it all. I become deeply involved in the drizzly solitudes, I am bedazzled by the constantly changing cloud formations, I never tire of the bonfire sunsets.

Indeed, if there is one thing I have learnt from this endless cycle of weather is that I am its creature and to submit to it – be it hot, cold, dry, wet, windy or misty.

Here, then, are a selection of pictures I have taken showing the changing seasons on and around Kusane Farm.

  • Storm over Karkloof
  • Winter scenes.
  • Hay-collecting time.
  • Cloud formations.
  • Spring flowers
  • Sunrise over the Karkloof.
  • Michael burning fire-breaks.
  • Mist in the Karkloof.
  • Misty mornings.
  • More cloud formations.
  • Whisky tries to avoid an approaching storm.
  • Rainbow over Karkloof valley.
  • Sunrise over the Karkloof.
  • Approaching cold front.
  • Sunset over Drakensberg
  • Developing storm

More Paintings of Baobabs

/ stidyatkusane / 14 Comments

In case you haven’t noticed I have a thing about baobabs.

Here are a few reasons why: I am awed by their size and the way they dominate the surrounding countryside and tower above all the other trees. I love the drama – all those tentacle-like branches spreading out laterally, as if they want to pluck passing birds from the sky.

I admire their tenacity, the fact that they thrive in the most harsh and arid of conditions. I am impressed by the huge age they can reach.

There is something very ancient and wise and holy about them. They seem to speak of the Old Way. They stir the spirit and the eye.

Baobabs are also very much part of my inheritance. Although some people might be surprised to hear this– the ones who associate Nyanga with mountains and bracing cool weather and therefore no baobabs – our old family farm, Nyangui, in Nyanga North, was littered with them.

Baobab with Nyangui mountain in backgound. Picture courtesy of Patrick Stidolph.

You passed by a whole grove when you drove through the farm gate. There were baobabs on the top of koppies and among the ancient ruins and there were baobabs growing in the middle of the old lands. My brother, Paul, sited his house next to one.

There was a baobab, across the river, which my brother, Pete, and I carved our initials in to when we were still schoolboys – hoping that, in centuries to come, some explorer would stumble upon them and wonder who we were? It was a wasted stab at immortality. When I went back to the old farm, many years later, the baobab had collapsed and died.

Since then, baobabs have continued to act as signposts in my life. One of my favourite stopping places in Zimbabwe is the lay-by you come to as you descend the Zambezi escarpment from Makuti to Chirundu (and Mana Pools). It has become a little ritual of mine – alas, not one I have done for years – to always pull over here and have a beer.

View over Zambezi Valley

From this perfect vantage point you have a magnificent view over the valley floor, stretching in to the blueness of distance with the hills of Zambia simmering in the heat haze on the horizon. In the mid-ground you can glimpse the glittering blue waters of the great river, snaking its way eastwards towards the Indian Ocean.

And no matter in which direction you gaze you will see baobabs poking up above the sunken contours of the far-reaching landscape.

As you continue driving down the escarpment, the heat comes up to meet you. You can smell it as well as feel it: a dry, punching, smell of dust and jessie bush and mopani leaves and elephant dung. And baobabs.

Makuti to Chirundu road with Zambezi escarpment in background.

Even now, thousands of kilometres away, sitting on top of my hill in the Karkloof, I still get misty-eyed when I recall that view.

Moving to South Africa I was able to renew my love affair with baobabs when I started going on my birding trips to the Limpopo valley.

North Kruger was where I first rekindled the romance. As you drive down from Punda Maria towards Pafuri, the terrain begins to break up in to a series of steep sided ridges which a have a tumbled, frenzied look, as if somebody had stirred them up in a giant pot and then left the contents to dry out under the baking sun. And dotted all over them are baobabs.

Undoubtedly, the most famous of these is the one that sits on top of Baobab Hill. This iconic tree served as a landmark on the early trade routes going through the area. Pioneer hunters used it as part of the famous “Ivory Trail” (some of them leaving their names carved on the tree). Between 1919 and 1927 it became the first overnight stopover for black workers recruited from Mozambique to work on the gold mines of the Witwatersrand.

Baobab Hill, Kruger National Park.

Mapungubwe, another preferred haunt of mine, has its fair share of baobabs too. Like old, petrified giants, they seems to anchor an immense sea of plain and bush and broken red koppies that falls away to the Limpopo river.

It is almost like a homecoming to be driving among them.

Mapungubwe.

My paintings, then, are my way of attempting to pay tribute to and glorify these most monumental of trees. I want them to be a celebration of the baobabs heroic scale.

Obviously I take certain artistic liberties. I often tweak them a bit, highlighting and simplifying features. Sometimes I move the baobabs position in the landscape, bringing them closer to, say, a hill I fancy to create a better sense of balance. I lob off odd branches so my canvas doesn’t look too cluttered or become mired in detail. I play around with light and colour in the hope of capturing a particular moment or mood.

I try and encapsulate the loneliness, the wildness and the spirit of the primeval world in which they have existed since time began, a world in which man is still very much the intruder.

In doing this, I know I can never pay full justice to these magnificent trees although I hope I do manage to convey something of my admiration and my awe.

Disdainful in their own majesty, serene in the mellow certainty that comes to the very old they are the very symbol and essence of a remote, half-mythical strangeness.

  • Mana Pools Road, Zimbabwe.
  • Baobabs, Mapungubwe.
  • Baobabs, Pafuri.
  • Baobab, Pafuri.
  • Baobabs, Pafuri.
  • Baobab, Pafuri.
  • Road to Crook’s Corner.
  • Baobab, Shimuwini.

Losing My Blues in the Blouberg

/ stidyatkusane / 10 Comments

Driving up to Zimbabwe, to visit my family, many years ago, I accidentally took a wrong turning at Pietersberg (now Polokwane) and found myself heading towards the Botswana border instead of my intended destination – Beit Bridge. Fortunately, it was a mistake I was able to easily rectify by turning right at the crossroads, at Vivo, and following the Soutspanberg to Louis Trichardt where I rejoined the NI Freeway.

While I was on this wrong road, though, I found my attention becoming distracted by the vista to my left where a big mountain had suddenly appeared in the far distance. There was something particularly dramatic about this compelling landmark, heaving itself up in a succession of steps out of the surrounding plain. As I watched it growing bigger and bigger, a determination to explore it began to take root. Then and there I decided I would come back one day.

It took me a long time to act on this impulse but act on it I eventually did. My good friend, Ken, had been planning a birding trip to the Limpopo and when he asked me if there was any particular spot I wanted included in our itinerary I suddenly remembered my mystery blue mountain. “Yes!” I said “The Blouberg!” (I had done my homework).

Getting out of Johannesburg was not as easy as I had hoped. First, Ken’s car broke down when we were barely out of his front gate and took two days to repair. Then, just as we had started to pack the vehicle, there was an almighty cloud-burst which appeared to be centred directly upon his house and which sent us scurrying back inside until it was all over.

With Ken our trips are seldom incident-free so I found myself wondering what he had done to provoke the furies this time.

Eventually the rain cleared up and, leaving the sprawling metropolis behind us, we headed up the Great North Road that leads through to Zimbabwe, Zambia and into the hot African interior. Because we had been a bit slow in getting away we decided to take the freeway rather than the more interesting alternate route.

It still felt great. Before us the road stretched out, flat and featureless, to the horizon. Made up mostly of thornveld savannah, this area marks the eastern most extension of the Kalahari and is a good place for finding your typical dry-land species.

We did not have time to stop and look for any of them. While we were driving, clouds had been arranging themselves in a disturbing array, flocculent and still at first, then fidgety with summer lightning. The electricity dancing about amongst these heaps of vapour turned them dark purple and mauve and deep grey. Thick splatters of rain kept spiralling down the windscreen although, amazingly, we managed to dodge the main storm.

On the Great North Road… rain ahead.

At Polokwane we branched off The Great North Road and headed up the R521 towards Alldays, leaving the rain-scoured landscape and the flocks of clouds that had been following us for most of the way in our wake. The traffic was noticeably lighter on this route although we still found ourselves being slowed down by the occasional long haul truck and overloaded bakkie.

The Blouberg lies due west of the Soutspanberg and although separate from it appears, for all intents and purposes, to be an extension of that range. It starts off as a smudge on the horizon and then slowly metamorphoses until it most closely resembles some ancient beast crouching in isolation in the middle of nowhere.

The closer you get to it, the more impressive it becomes.

Rising some 1200 metres above the surrounding veld, it has a certain weighty majesty, a leonine grandeur. The precipitously sheer wall of rock on its southern side is home to the world’s largest colony of Cape Vultures with more than 1000 breeding pairs. A lone Ruppell’s Vulture, a species otherwise little recorded in South Africa, has also bred here in the past.

At the entrance gate to the Blouberg Nature Reserve, the first bird we both saw was the White-browed Sparrow Weaver. Extrovert, sociable and noisy they are difficult to miss.

White-browed Sparrow Weaver.

The check-in formalities completed we headed for the nearby camp site. Situated under some shade trees it is fairly basic but has a tidy, cared-for look. It has no electricity but there are ablutions with toilets and two showers which get their hot water from a donkey boiler. There is also a washing up area around the front.

Although, for the sake of form, I bitch about it, I love the whole process of setting up camp. For me it is an integral part of the process of assimilating yourself back into the ways of the bush.

I have never really seen the point of travel where everything is organised for you and all you have to do is turn up. I need space, solitude and silence which is not something you are likely to get in some five star bush resort.

I want to go and look for my own birds and animals and not have them found for me, otherwise it is not travel, it is tourism; it is not exploration, it is sight-seeing.

With exploration very much in our minds, we set out early the next morning along the bumpy road that takes you along the northern flank of the mountain. As we jolted over the rough rocks we found ourselves objects of liveliest interest to a small family of giraffe. From their high vantage point they gazed down upon us, through long eye-lashes, with a mixture of idle curiosity and slight bemusement.

Giraffe.

At the bottom of a saddle the road splits left and right. We elected to turn left and follow the 4X4 track that takes you clear over the massif. If the road before had been bad, this one was infinitely worse and had us bouncing from rock to rock, dodging boulders and piles of scree as we went. As the track swerved over the edge of the ridge we had sensational views in both directions.

Safely emerging on the other side, we veered right along a dusty, red, road that ran along the fence line, towards the higher section of the mountain. We eventually stopped beneath some steep rocky cliffs and gullied slopes, stained with white droppings. It is here, on the dizzy-ling steep flanks of the mountain side that the vultures have made their home.

Blouberg – view from southern side.

Swirling around in the sky above the buttress we could make out what seemed like hundreds of these magnificent birds, their flight feathers fanning out and lifting at the tips. Watching them, floating in aloof companionship, brought a long moment of exaltation. Entranced, we sat on a fallen over log, admiring their languid circling.

Cape Vulture colony – Blouberg.

Back in camp that evening we plotted our next move. There were several options.

The reserve covers a wide variety of habitats and includes a small Sycamore forest – a remnant survivor, I assume, of some much larger aboriginal forest that may, at one time, have existed here – some patches of Tamboti woodland, baobabs and the Brak river floodplain. Veld types range from Kalahari sandveld in the north to sweet bushveld in the east and west.

Baobab and Thornveld, Blouberg Nature Reserve.

There is also a small wetland that has a resident flock of Crested Guineafowl. The latter came as a surprise to us as we would never normally have expected to encounter this forest-frequenting bird so far west and in such otherwise dry terrain.

Thanks to this varied topography the Blouberg has probably the largest selection of trees for any similar size reserve and with this selection of trees comes a prolific bird life with over 232 species recorded (we were convinced there must be more just waiting to be discovered).

Mixed woodland. Blouberg.

In the end we decided to head for the fig forest because getting to it would take us through an interesting mix of vegetation types ranging from broad-leafed woodland, to acacia savannah and dry scrub-land.

As we drove a pair of very purposeful Honey Badgers scuttled across the road and disappeared in to the bush on the other side. A bit further on we passed a family of warthog, the male in front, with his bushy side whiskers and ferocious looking tusks, followed by by the slightly smaller female and then by a string of piglets, their tails erect like they were hoping to pick up a wi-fi signal.

Various birds popped up and allowed themselves to be identified – Bearded Woodpecker, Southern White-crowned Shrike, Jacobin Cuckoo, Red-billed Helmet-Shrike, Marico Flycatcher, Martial Eagle.

Since it happened to be nearby, we did a quick detour to the vulture restaurant but the kitchen was closed and the birds had all gone home.

On the far side of the park, we came to a small open space, surrounded by a mass of twisted thorn trees, in which some derelict old buildings stood. Abandoned and neglected, they presumably dated back to the days when this was still farm-land rather than a nature reserve.

It proved to be a good spot to do some birding and we picked up several dry-country ‘specials,’ including Black-faced Waxbill and Scaly-feathered Finch.

The fig forest lay close to the base of the mountain and provided a completely different type of landscape to that we had been travelling through. A combination of fertile alluvial soil and the threads of water that come cascading down the slopes after rain had coaxed the trees higher and higher, creating a lush, green valley. Inside it, there was a soft, damp, swampy smell of wet grass and earth.

There is a certain captivating enchantment to penetrating a secret corner of the world and getting in to the Fig Forest, felt just like that. Its cool, shady interior made it feel like an oasis in the otherwise dry landscape. With their massive trunk and root systems buttressing the trunk above ground like a series of girders.

Sycamore figs, Blouberg.

A circular path runs through the forest. Although only a short walk, we managed to see quite a few forest species here, including Yellow-bellied Greenbul, White-throated Robin, Collared Sunbird, Lesser Honeyguide and Eastern-bearded Robin-Chat. Through a gap in the canopy we also had a wonderful sighting of an African Hawk-Eagle turning lazily above us against a deep blue sky.

We spent at least three hours in this leafy byre. Since we had bought the skottle with us we decided to use the shade provided by the forest as an excuse to cook breakfast.

During this time not another vehicle drove by. When we finally did encounter another visitor, as we were driving homewards later in the day, it seemed like an hallucination, a trick of the fading light. Indeed, this is one of the reasons I came to like Blouberg so much – because of how empty and uncrowded it is.

The problem here, of course, is that by telling people where wild places, such as this, are you risk encouraging visitation which, in turn, undermines what makes them attractive destinations in the first place. You are making them less wild.

On the other hand, I am sure the park would benefit from the cash these extra visitors bring.

It is a dilemma.

Despite – or perhaps because of – the scarcity of Homo sapiens the bush was alive with wild life and bird song. We stopped to admire the brilliant blue, black and chestnut of a Grey-headed Kingfisher, an elusive little individual who had led me on a merry dance over the years but who I had finally tracked down at Marakele Nature Reserve..

A bit further on, silhouetted against the sky, an immature Bateleur sat scanning the country side from his perch on top of a protruding dead branch. Closer to camp we got the bright feathered Crimson-breasted Bush-Shrike, to my mind one of the most striking and beautiful birds of this part of the world. It was a good way to end the days birding.

Immature Bataleur.

Since this visit I have returned to Blouberg several times and on each occasion I seem to fall deeper under its spell. Like some big and bold sort of castle, its walls gleaming, ghost-like in the sun, it has a slightly magical enchantment about it. It is a mountain to be looked at, contemplated and revered.

Blouberg. View from northern side of mountain.