Of Prince’s and more…

Many apologies for the long gap since my last blog but as you will see I have been in and out of hospital. But here is a tale that I hope will interest you all.

Susan and I were guests at a lodge in the lower Zambezi in Zambia for inclusion in one of our travel books, Inside Zambia. After a successful day game viewing, I was overcome by the most awful pain. So severe was it that no painkillers worked, and the management decided that this must surely be a heart attack. They telephoned my eldest son, Mick and asked him to please evacuate me to Harare. Of course, an aircraft could not land here at night, so I spent a very unpleasant wait for dawn.

Mick put things in motion, but he could not get the R50,000 through to the airlift company quickly enough. The owner of the lodge very kindly paid the money on Mick’s word so that the transfer would be there as soon as customs completed their documentation. The aircraft landed at midday and I was transported by stretcher on the back of a bakkie (colloquialism for small pick-up truck) over rugged terrain, for this was in a remote corner of the lower Zambezi Park. We passed Clarence, the very mangy lion that all the lionesses loved! Other game fled as we continued, the heat beating down. Loaded on the aircraft I was made more comfortable by professional personnel, but the aircraft had to proceed to Lusaka first to go through customs before landing at Harare.

Harare was in the throes of a general election and the streets were crowded. Poor Susan had to walk through thronged streets to the Avenue Clinic from her hotel as all transport was chock-a-block!

The Avenue Clinic in those days was quite famous and the surgeons that examined me were excellent but could only shake their heads and send me off to Cape Town. They had no idea where this pain was coming from as the ECG was clear!

An angiogram by a very bad-tempered surgeon at a private clinic in Cape Town provided no clue but I heard him mutter that he could not find the renal artery!

A few years went by and then it happened again, this time in Bloemfontein and I drove myself to Universitas hospital. Susan flew up just as I was being discharged by the famous short-tempered cardiologist. She put her foot down and demanded another angiogram the results of which bore out the extreme pain but no explanation of where it came from with again a clear ECG.

Putting the pain behind us Susan and I continued our travels through Southern Africa, driving alone along remote trails, without incidents until upon my return to Langebaan where I had another attack. The young cardiologist at Vredenburg Hospital refused to deal with it and sent me off to Panarama Hospital where, as luck would have it, Professor Paul Roux was on duty and set up an angiogram straight away. “Eureka!” he cried “Prinzmetal’s!” This is a type of angina but not many medical people had ever heard of it!

To this day I do not know why I must live with this Prince but there is no escaping his presence! Professor Roux prescribed Zildem that was the conventional treatment at the time and years went happily by with many an adventure in the wilds of Zambia and Botswana.

Until of course the Prince made his presence felt and I was off to Helen Joseph Hospital where the admittance doctors did not know what was wrong. However, to cut a long story short I landed up in the cardiologist ward and was correctly diagnosed. Time had caught up with the medical profession and they now knew about the syndrome and how to treat it.  I was given a letter that I must only hand in at Helen Joseph hospital if I have another attack and will be whisked straight off to the right place to be treated.

I have never met a prince although my husband and I had dinner one year at the famous Mount Nelson Hotel in Cape Town with the Queen’s elderly trainer at the time, Sir Cecil Boyd Rochford. Sir Cecil was champion flat trainer in the UK five times and was very well known.  I remember him telling me about his climb up Kilimanjaro.

My young grandsons met Prince William and Prince Harry in Maun, Botswana over the odd friendly pool game when they were all young and having a good time there; the Princes having the freedom that Maun could offer in those days. Maun is the jumping off point for the Okavango Delta and it is well known that the two princes loved going into the Delta. In fact, the British forces would conduct training sessions each year in the remote part of the delta. I don’t know if this is still the case.

When TJ went to the UK, he got odd jobs one of which was trucking horses and one day had to take Prince Charles’s polo ponies to a polo venue. They belonged to Prince Charles, but TJ never got to meet His Highness.

However, I have to say that I have had a few courtly gentlemen over the years as friends and certainly had the acquaintance of one middle European prince, a terror on the polo field! Just the other day a little bit of romance lit up my life when a fellow patron of The View pub that I frequent greeted me by kissing my hand!

Talking of the Mount Nelson Hotel. The Cape Hunt and Polo club annual ball used to be held there. Oh, how glamourous that was! Swirling skirts and pink jackets and many a hunting tale going down with Cape sparkling wine! The hunt was a drag hunt as there was no prey for the hounds but occasionally when we hunted on the Cape Flats the hounds would put up a buck and give tongue.

I well remember the Field Master at the time, a stern gentleman with his horse in a double bridle. I was riding Java Head who had won the July Handicap in record time, in fact his record still stands, in a snaffle. The snaffle is a gentle bit and the Field Master looked at it with disgust! It was all I could do to get Java to stay behind his pink coat. I could feel the horse’s indignation of being made to come second behind this. . .when he had won the premier race in South Africa!

Another glamourous venue for dancing was Kelvin Grove with its wonderful spring floor. My first gown was a strapless bodice with yards and yards of tulle skirt. Princess Margaret had made the strapless gown her particular fashion and my partner whirled me around that floor like any princess!

The other dance venue that we frequented was on the main road at Muizenberg, a night club with strobe lighting – very naughty! Even naughtier was the Navigator’s Den in the dock area of Cape Town. The blue lights turned the G & T’s blue too! The smell of the sea when you emerged in the early hours added to the atmosphere and a late-night snack at Uncle Tom’s caravan that stood on the Grand Parade was a must!

Years later when the new freeway had been built above the city, one part of it was never finished. After one romantic night my partner and I, in a pearl satin dress, danced on the unfinished section with the flood lit silhouette of Table Mountain behind us! Very Romantic! Alas this was a romance that could not last and one day in Botswana I was surprised by a phone call from this same partner! Why now I asked, and how did you find my number? “I remembered that your daughter was married to a breeder in Robertson and called all the studs until I found her. She gave me your number! I just had to hear your voice once more!” And that was the end of the conversation! I never saw or heard of him again!

When I gave up being an Air Hostess for British European Airways to return to South Africa, I booked a berth on a Union Castle Liner from Southampton. These lilac hulled ships with their red funnels plied the Cape Route down the West Coast of Africa and the East Coast through the Suez Canal to and from Southampton. Standing on the deck with the engines reverberating beneath my feet I watched as a telegraph official rushed up the gangway brandishing a red envelope. It was for me! I opened it to find just one sentence: Alas no more mollycoddling! Enough said!

The Union Castle Liners were famous. My children, Susan and Michael’s grandmother’s father were Chairman of the company situated in Beira. Greg Joyce swept Alice off her feet and they were married in that beautiful cathedral in Maputo that looks like a fairy castle!

The Union Castle liners leaving Cape Town for Southampton were always accompanied by a brass band playing ‘Now is the hour when we must say goodbye . . .” made popular by Gracie Fields. Streamers would join the passengers to their loved ones left behind and as the ship slowly moved from its berth they would break.

When I left Cape Town for England, my boyfriend motored his father’s yacht into the Duncan Docks to say goodbye. I cried and cried but two years later after flying for British Airways and returning home by air we found that time had moved on for both of us. However, I often remember him; alas, a buccaneer and me, an adventuress! The two could not mix!

The time with British Airways was an experience as I started off in Manchester at Ringway Airport with a drab grey uniform and red epaulets. Early one morning I was walking to my bus stop in a seedy area when I was accosted by a cinema usher in his maroon uniform who asked me for ‘Just one more!’ taking me for a prostitute!

A long time later when I had two children I learnt to ride and ultimately met and married Trevor Botten. We traveled to the UK and Europe and met famous people and horses.  We saw Star Appeal win the Arc de Triompf and visited Newmarket. Today I am so glad that his son’s children are riding, in fact the youngest, Neve is learning to trot! Greg, her brother, is jumping well.

While mainly interested in riding the racehorses I did take lessons in dressage from Siegrid de Jager whose sons remain friends. Siegrid lived in Constantia and the horse that I had at the time was very skittish. I often fell off so my husband to be ordered his top light weight jockey to ride the horse up to Tokai for me, a three-hour walk, wait for my lesson to finish and ride it back! I can’t imagine that happening today!

I also had the privilege of taking jumping lessons with Gonda Butters, who though older than I am is still giving lessons, now in Johannesburg! She was the most marvelous horsewoman I had ever come across and a very tough teacher! She has another surname, Beatrix, but I always think of the name she had when I first met her.

My grandchildren from my first marriage have moved away from horses but Michele is running a lodge in the Okovango delta, Shaun is somewhere in Australia erecting those tall wind turbines and Ryan is running an events company in Cape Town. Jacques and his lovely wife Danielle moved up to Johannesburg to start a branch of that company here and I am loving them being so near. They are expecting their first baby in July and I will be a great grandmother!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOVEMBER MEMORIES

WELL I remember Guy Fawkes day as a child. We would dress up a doll in a pram supposed to be an effigy of Guy Fawkes and go to neighbor’s houses asking for “A Penny for the Guy!” and singing “Remember, Remember, the 5^th of November, Gunpowder treason and plot, We see no reason should ever been forgot” Of course the pennies went on sweets generally black and white striped bull’s eyes!

Guy Fawkes’s father died and his mother remarried a Catholic. Guy was converted to Catholicism. He went off to Spain to fight against the Protestant low countries where he was known as Guido. Returning to Britain he subsequently met Thomas Winter who introduced him to Robert Catesby dedicated to restoring Catholic James 1^st to the throne. Catesby found an undercroft beneath the House of Lords and enlisted Guy Fawkes to take care of the gunpowder needed. An anonymous letter prompted the authorities to search Westminster Palace where Guy Fawkes was arrested for treason and sentenced to be hung drawn and quartered. He jumped off the platform beneath the scaffold, fell and broke his neck. Each year Guardsmen search the Houses of Parliament looking for explosives, a ceremonial remembrance.

Here in South Africa the memory of Guy Fawkes is fading into obscurity although families light fireworks on designated areas only. Animals are usually frightened by the bangs and run away so that the SPCA is busy rescuing frightened dogs and other pets. When I was a girl and lived in Fish Hoek everyone went down to the beach and lit their own fireworks. Of course this was dangerous and eventually stopped.

Guy Fawkes coincides as it does with Diwali. Diwali is the Hindu festival of light celebrated over five days during the Hindu Lunisolar month Kartika. The ceremony celebrates victory over darkness, good over evil and knowledge over ignorance. Our Indian communities light fireworks on designated areas.

November is a time when the fall of the Berlin wall is commemorated and of course Britain holds Remembrance Sunday to honour the fallen in both World Wars and other conflicts. Remembrance Sunday on the 11^th day of the 11^th month is always the second Sunday in November when armistice of the Second World War was signed in Potsdam in Occupied Germany by United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman, President of the United States and Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Soviet Union.

In March 2000 I was due to attend ITB, the largest tourist exhibition in the world in Berlin, Germany. I had worked out that the cheapest way to get to this city that I had never been to was to drive to Windhoek in Namibia and fly from there to Frankfurt where I would catch a train to Berlin. I was heavily loaded with the travel books that Susan and I produced, Discovering Botswana and Inside Zambia. I duly arrived at the airport in Windhoek only to be informed that Air Namibia’s solitary Boeing had flown to Beira in Mozambique where the Zambezi had burst its banks on the flood plain leading to its estuary to rescue stranded people and deliver food and medical requirements. I sat at the airport for over twelve hours so only departed the next day.

Arriving at Frankfurt airport I was unprepared for this huge airport with its myriad elevators to the various outlets and train stations. I struggled with my boxes of books balanced precariously on a trolley, onto an escalator and down to a station where a train to Berlin was expected an hour later. The train arrived, with the gap between it and the station an obstacle to be surmounted to load the boxes aboard. I looked around desperately for help. Spotting a group of Japanese tourists I gestured with my hands, pointing to the boxes and then pointing to the train. “AH, AH, SO!” The Japs replied and loaded my boxes on board with bows and exclamations. I thanked them sincerely and could only hope that they got the message!

I arrived in Berlin at midnight! It was minus 15 with snow everywhere. Fortunately I had kept the long ski jacket that I bought many years before for a ski trip to Austria and was warm enough. A porter came to help and got me a taxi who very kindly found me a reasonable B & B.

Next day I managed to catch the necessary train to take me to ITB, a huge building and another taxi to deliver me to the door. I walked and walked and walked until I found the Botswana exhibit, my new boots beginning to bite! By the time that week was over my feet were in agony but I was determined to spend the last two days when the show was over to see something of Berlin and together with some other exhibitors caught a tourist bus to Potsdam where the armistice was signed in 1945. I could not face my boots again so put on a pair of sandals with socks. We alighted into deep snow and the tour guide looked at me and enquired “Are these your African Shoes?” I said “Yes” The guide shook his head in disbelief! However after the tour I felt that I had visited a very historic site.

The following year Susan came with me and did not really believe me when I told her just how cold it was. She wore her grandmother’s Burbury overcoat and shivered! We stayed in the old part of the city called Mitte formerly part of Communist Berlin behind the Berlin Wall and were walking along a side road when I glanced to the side to see coats hanging from rails in a small alcove. From the look of the women who were selling these coats and their accents I deduced that they were Russians down on their luck. I took the lead and bought Susan a hip length silver fox fur coat for 35 euros! She ummed and ahed. “This is real fur! I can’t wear this.!” “Look around you, all the Berlin people are wearing fur, besides people at the show will think you are wearing fake fur and this animal was killed a long time ago!”

She was as warm as toast after that and we enjoyed our stay. We had found accommodation in a private flat on top of an eighteen story building. Our beds were on the floor and there was one armchair and a small table. We bought slabs of chocolate filled with liqueur and chomped them in bed with our books in the evenings. Susan is a smoker and had to go downstairs to stand outside the entrance in the snow to have a cigarette! We managed to find our way on the trains and found a lovely warm pub in Mitte that served everything with heaps of potatoes!

We would walk to Potsdamer Platz where the first breach of the Berlin Wall was on 11th November 1989 and at the Brandenburg Gate a month later. From here it was no distance to the Brandenburg Gate and we ventured inside the famous Adlon Hotel on Unter den Linden. This hotel was one of the best in Europe in its heyday but was largely destroyed in World War 2. A small portion of it operated until 1997 when it was restored. We also enjoyed walking to Charlottenburg Palace that was built in the 17^th century and expanded in the 18^th with beautiful gardens.

The next time I went to Berlin I was alone but my friend Tiaan Theron, a tour guide in Botswana and his German wife Sabina were there to visit her parents. They invited me to a Turkish restaurant with their Berlin friends. I was chatting to another Botswana friend when Tiaan asked me to refrain from talking about my varied travels. He explained that their friends had never left Berlin. I could not believe it! However one of them told me to go to the Museum that was situated in a shopping centre. I did and there was the story of Berlin from the time it was a group of small huts on the river.

I was fascinated because it encompassed the growth of the city and the country and eventually the Nazi regime and the basis of Hitler’s creed if you like to call it that based on his book Mein Kampf that chronicled his belief in anti-semitism. I was gobsmacked because I realized that Robert Mugabe the President of Zimbabwe had based his regime on the same creed. Mugabe died recently after completely destroying his country by looting, becoming an absolute dictator and causing so many Zimbabweans to flee to Botswana and South Africa. Today in South Africa we have the EFF the third largest opposition party whose leader Julius Malema was a great fan of Mugabe and whose policies in my opinion mirror that of the Nazi’s of yesteryear.

Now to Remembrance Sunday. Susan and I had attended it in London on a couple of occasions but the one that sticks in my mind is the time we went just after the dreadful attack on the World Trade Centre in New York by terrorists on September 9^th 1963. I had been staying at my son Mick’s house in Hout Bay and arrived to find his maid ironing with one eye on the television. I saw these aircraft approaching a tall building and gasped.” Something dreadful is about to happen!”

Here we were in London in November staying with our friends Andrew and Leane who lived in London and were adamant that we should not attend as a terrorist attack was expected. Susan and I decided that terrorists or no terrorists we were going to attend. I had my trusty ski jacket on and as we came up the steps of the underground I was stopped as I walked under the metal detector frame. The policewoman searched me politely but thoroughly and eventually decided that I had some oil on my coat but harboured no firearm or bomb!

We stood behind a group of young men in Burbury coats who were drinking from hip flasks as they cheered the elderly service men and women, some of whom were in wheel chairs marching by, all having served their country in some conflict across the globe. The young men heard Susan and I chatting and turned round. “The Boers are here!”. We all laughed as they were referring to the Boer War in South Africa in 1888 to 1902 when Britain and South Africa were at war because the Boers had rebelled against the English. Local farmers were called Boers and the British at the time under Lord Kitchener destroyed their farms and put their women into concentration camps so cutting their line of supplies. The Boers were renowned marksmen and moved around the country on horseback. Some Afrikaners of today still hate the English!

Looking across the road we could see the snipers on the roofs watching for terrorists. The Queen arrived and walked entirely alone to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph in memory of those service men and women. A minute of silence ensued and not a pin could be heard dropping or a child coughing. Her Majesty was completely exposed to the danger of terrorists except for the thorough security of the intelligence and Police Force. Having laid the wreath as the minute of silence ended the crowd rang with the anthem “God Save Our Queen!”

The Union of  South Africa came into being on 31^st May 1910 eight years after signing the Treaty of Vereeniging that ended the 2^nd Boer War on the unification of the Cape Colony, the Natal Colony, the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony.  Subsequently the country was granted independence in 1931 by the Statute of Westminster.

I was born in 1939 and still remember going to the ‘bioscope’ in Plein Street in Cape Town. We had to stand to the playing of God save the King before the film. Entrance was sixpence and entitled you to a red or green cooldrink. I remember seeing Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald in Naughty Marietta and Bobby Breen with his incredible soprano singing Somewhere over the Rainbow! Years later when we moved to Fish Hoek I had a friend called Maureen who had a lovely voice. We would walk the dunes around Peers Cave that often had a vlei at the base. One day Maureen stood on one dune and I on the other while she sang the same song, her voice carrying across the vlei between us. (A vlei is a stretch of shallow water.) Magic!

I still have a picture of Her Majesty the Queen on my fridge. One year we were in Mozambique at Jangamo Bay when the Royal Wedding of William and Kate was on. I was watching it on the television in a local bar. Mick came up dripping wet from the waves and shook his head at me. “You and your Royals!” I smiled back at him. “You don’t realize that they were part of my growing up!”

Well I remember the day H.M.S Vanguard arrived with their Majesties, King George and Queen Elizabeth and the two princesses. My father had promised to take me to see the destroyer that had served in the war enter Duncan Docks. The day was very hot and his favourite prize pig fainted so I had to listen to the radio while we poured buckets of water over the sow! However my mother’s cousin’s husband was a chauffer for the Government Garage and drove the Royal Family and General Smuts around the city. He told how Princess Margaret was a great mimic and would ‘take off’ the various dignitaries including General Smuts.

Princess Margaret

When the Royal Family were to move upcountry they travelled in the White Train, its coaches pure white pulled by a great steam engine. I was coming home from school, about 7 years old and had to catch a train at Observatory, change at Salt River and catch another to Kuilsriver. My train stopped at Bellville, was shunted out of the way, the passengers all detrained at the station where we waited for the White train to come through. The wait was long and I got very hungry. The friendly stationmaster bought me a mincemeat pie with sticky filling that looked like dead flies but I ate it happily. The White Train duly appeared and I had a good view of the Royal Family through the windows.

I arrived at Kuilsriver station very late with my mother frantic with worry. I had to walk home, some three miles and was further delayed by a flock of sheep being driven to the nearby abattoirs. A Mrs. Brindle lived near our small farm and drove up the gravel road each day like some racing driver. I was slogging along slowly behind the flock when she came through, sheep scattering in all directions with the shepherd jumping to the side in fright while I cowered in the ditch at the side emerging with my uniform filthy! My mother was not amused!

When I lived in Maun for a couple of years my grandsons then grown up would play pool with the Princes who loved Botswana and the Delta where the British Special Forces did exercises with the Botswana Defence Force each year. The Princes were like most youngsters and they enjoyed partying as most young people can in Maun with their bodyguards well in the background. The tale goes that William went home in the early hours with a mate and slept on the sofa. In the morning the father kicked him off the sofa, saying “Who the hell do you think you are, sleeping on my sofa!” quite unaware of who the errant young man was, only the future King of England!

On that I will end this blog and take it to TJ on this very hot Sunday where his son Greg will be prevailed upon to give young Jack, my dachshund a bath as the old back does not like bending down any more!

WINGS OVER KLEINSEE

Jack, my dachshund and I were off on a trip to Kleinsee to visit my daughter Susan. My first overnight stop was at Kuruman where I was delayed by a defunct clutch plate. Luckily I was at my planned overnight stop at Kalahari Hide. What a find! Just outside the town in a rural setting, this spread must have been a farm at some time. It is owned by Janet West and her husband and their troop of Yorkshire terriers not forgetting the two great Danes.

Kuruman was the home of Robert Moffat who had a mission station there. He was self sufficient with his own printing press. His daughter Mary married David Livingstone and they lived there for a while before leaving for Ngamiland in what is now Botswana.

 I had booked a room with Janet but when the clutch went she moved me to a little cottage that was less expensive and her son in law who has a workshop on the property, fixed the clutch in two days while there Janet and I became friends. She brought me supper every evening as I had only snacks with me and sat and had a good chat.

 Janet kindly put the Great Danes, one of which does not like strange dogs, away for a few hours a day so that Jack, my dachshund could have the run of the place. While I was there her husband who writes poetry, won a prize for one of his poems. I could imagine how chuffed he was although I never spoke to him, knowing how difficult it is to get published. They are a musical family and everyone plays some sort of instrument. There are two cottages and a few rooms and I can really recommend this stop. I will put the details at the bottom of the blog.

Clutch fixed, Jack and I departed on our run to Pofadder, a long one this, with some 200 ks to get under our belts before reaching Upington. Some seven hours later we were there having gone through Upington’s verdant vineyards on stony arid ground along the roadside, desperate for a loo but no friendly garage stop could be found! Upington is the capital of this agricultural heartland situated all along the banks of the Gariep River, previously called the Orange River, the third largest in Africa. Racks of drying grapes abound as Upington produces raisins as well.

Finally the green grass at the Caltex fuel station at Kakamas appeared and Jack could not get out of the car fast enough. He learnt how to negotiate the turnstile to the toilets in the shop with some help from the counter staff as to juggle a stick, my handbag and Jack through the turnstile was challenging! This is a good stop with friendly staff and clean ablutions.

The Hottentot pastoralists called the place Kakamas meaning poor pasture. In 1895 the government in the Cape decided to settle poor people on land and the Reverent Schroder remembered his old mission there. At a meeting in Worcester he recommended that this would be the ideal place being as it was on the banks of the Orange River and suitable for irrigation. Reverend H.P. van der Merwe sent cuttings of sultana vines and this became the staple crop for the farmers of the Orange River area. As you drive along you can see the rows of drying racks. Kakamas is also famous for its peaches. This area produced the cultivar Kakamas Peach still used today for canning.

Off for the next leg to Pofadder now through arid land and heat that sits on the tar creating mirages. I had soaked a towel to put over Jack but he was comfortable behind my seat and took that leg well. We passed Onseepkans, where Susan managed to drive up a boulder with her new Opel, being unable to turn in the sand road. Onseepkans is on the Gariep River and has a border post to Nambia, then Pella with its wonderful cathedral also near the Gariep too far for me to make a detour. Nobody actually knows how Pofadder, such a small town set in a vast dry area, got its name. Some say it was named after the lazy fast striking very poisonous puffadders others that it was named after a Koranna bandit who operated along this section of the Gariep.

Pofadder is some way away from the river and dusty and dry. There is nothing to see there, a basic Save it store and a display of iron sculptures opposite the garage. I bought a little warthog there for Susan one year and when I arrived at her house there it was alongside the steps. Mazelda at the Caltex garage gave me the key to a spacious flat enclosed by a fence so that Jack could run around. She invited him to get on the bed and he was a happy chappy! I bought a couple of the pepper steak pies from the garage, a bit skeptical but they were delicious! On the way out the next day I bought two more for lunch, so large that Susan and I shared one!

We refueled in Springbok and I will do a separate blog on this historic town and the role it played in mining in the area. Then we climbed the Spektakel Pass and truly the vistas are a spectacle, tier upon tier of blue mountains finally disappearing into the distance. Descending, we arrived through a smaller pass at Kommagas where Susan was due to meet me. Kommagas is a small settlement of Nama volk, their houses climbing up the hill and a dusty street with little shops The tale goes that It was two men from this small town who found diamonds but Jack Carstens is generally believed to have done so. I tried to sms Susan to no avail so proceeded onto the gravel road and I must say Emily (the name my grandson gave my little Toyota Yaris) took it in her stride.

The gravel road joins a long tar road along the coast leading to Hondeklip Bay (Dog Rock Bay) a little Port further south with a rock that has the shape of a dog and Kleinsee to the north. All around are arid low sand hills leading down to the Prussian blue Atlantic on the left.

The town has not changed since I last visited. In fact one section about half the size of a rugby field at the end of the tar road before the town entrance supported eight thousand illegal diamond diggers a short time ago. When I arrived there was a bit of blue wood lying there, all that remained of Jack Carstens’s hut. Springbok Police moved them on but the remaining illegal diggers sit below a sign on one of the municipal buildings drinking cheap wine or brandy. Some wear sacks, some have dreadlocks, all are cheerful. They call out “Hallo Gogo!” Gogo means grandmother.

Kleinsee (meaning small sea) lies just south of Grootmis on the mouth of the Buffels River 72 km east of Port Nolloth and 105 km west of Springbok. The small sea refers to a lagoon at the mouth of the Buffels River that is dry most of the time. Legend has it that a teacher named De Villager and his friend Alberts from a local farm school needed some lime for limewash for the new school they were building. They were looking for lime deposits when they kicked up a diamond. This was the first alluvial diamond found here and the two men found in total diamonds worth six hundred pounds. This resulted in a crater being dug along the lines of the Big Hole in Kimberley.

Jack Carstens was appointed as the pit manager. He tells of nights when crooks arrived with the intention of stealing diamond gravel from under his nose. Jack’s Nama guards carried electric torches, their magic devices. The guards believed they could immobilize a crook if you shone your torch on them. Jack relates a conversation he once had with a guard called Jan, in the book ‘A Fortune through my Fingers.’ Jan tells Jack about some crooks in the Mine area. “I torched them and they didn’t fall over so I went quite close to them and they ran away but I couldn’t catch them.”

 Garnets are found in diamond bearing gravel and the tale is told of a farmer’s children finding a pretty stone in their back yard. They used the stones for skimming across the river. However the boy looked twice at a particular stone and put it in his pocket in the spring of 1867, He carried it home and dropped it on the farmhouse floor. His father took no notice as the children were forever playing with this pretty stones. A flash of light caught the children’s mother’s eye who told her neighbour, Mr. Van Niekerk about the curious stone. The children that turfed it into the dusty yard but upon searching the stone was retrieved. Mr. Van Niekerk offered to buy it but the lady could not understand why anyone would pay money for a people. She told him to keep it.

He thought it might be valuable and asked a travelling smous or salesman, John O’Reilly, what it was. John did not know but undertook to find out. Nobody thought it worth anything until it came under the eye of the acting Civil Commissioner at Colesberg, Mr. Lorenzo Boyes. He found that the stone could cut glass and pronounced that he believed it was a diamond. Nobody believed him and the stone was sent by ordinary post to Dr. W. Guybon Atherstone a mineralogist in Grahamstown. He found the stone to be a diamond of twenty-one and a quarter carats and worth five hundred pounds.

Last evening I watched the movie Blood Diamonds, truly a violent description of diamond mining in West Africa. I remember chatting to a diamond diver in Port Nolloth who told me to watch the movie as it was very near the truth. He knew as he had worked up there. Whether it still is like that, I couldn’t tell you. It seemed to me to be the right thing to watch as Kleinsee sits on the edge of the diamond fields that belong to De Beers mining. Years ago I visited Kleinsee when De Beers owned the area and had to have a permit and be escorted to see the seal colony along the coast. The whole area was considered Sperrgebiet, forbidden territory. De Beers no longer mines around Kleinsee although still owns the diamond fields north of the town.

 Here I would be remiss if I did not tell you some of the history of De Beers. The company was first formed by two Dutch brothers Diederik and Arnoldus De Beer in the eighteen hundreds. They had a farm called Vooruitzig that ultimately became the hole in Kleinsee. In 1871 the British Government forced them to sell their farm to merchant Alfred J. Ebden.

Cecil John Rhodes started off renting water pumps when the Star of Africa 83.5 carat diamond was found in Hopetown that started a diamond rush. Rhodes purchased small claims and he and Barney Barnato merged their small companies expanding them into De Beers Consolidated Mining Company in 1888. Alfred Beit and London based Rothchild & Sons bank financed the new company. They agreed to the London based Diamond Syndicate’s suggestion of control and stabilization of the diamond industry  giving them control of all mining in South Africa.

Alfred Beit was suspected of price fixing, trust fund misuse and of not releasing any industrial diamonds to the United States during World War two. In 1925 Ernest Oppenheimer a British and then South African immigrant founded Anglo American consolidating a global monopoly.

Before leaving, De Beers buried their landrovers with earth moving equipment, closed and did the same to the swimming pool, only the bowling club remains in disrepair. There are a good few tales about the days when they were here. All personnel had to go through a strict security procedure when leaving the Sperregebiet and their cars were left outside too. There is a lovely tale of a scheme to liberate some diamonds. Springbok had a pigeon racing club so some miners asked De Beers if they could start one. Diamonds were loaded on the pigeons that flew the smuggled stones out to the Pigeon Club in Springbok. Unfortunately the smugglers overloaded one and he battled to fly so alighted in front of the Post Office in the Sperregebiet. The post mistress investigated and discovered the diamonds. That was the end of that scheme.

I pass the small shopping centre that has a little grocery shop and a liquor store and Max’s shop. He is a Bangladeshi and carries anything from a needle to an anchor. The car park never has more than 4 or five cars at any one time. The road goes down towards the golf club and I take the right turn, another right and am at Susan’s house, one of the many mine houses that abound, some empty. The larger ones were for the mine managers.

Susan rents one of these houses, plain but roomy with three bedrooms all with  high ceilings for the heat, lounge dining room, kitchen, scullery, large grounds with a fig tree, a pomegranate tree and guava tree in the back yard. Plenty of space for her and her housemate, Ricky’s dogs. Ricky is the son of my great friend Joy Bianchi who now lives in the UK. Joy was born in the Isle of Wight and came out to Zambia when she was seventeen. She met the charming Con Bianchi who worked on the mines whose twinkling eyes captivated her. They lived in the bush there and this young woman had four children in next to know time. Later they moved to Botswana which was where I met her.

Fifi, Susan’s dog is a mixed greyhound with lovely markings. Fifi came up to Susan one day when she was at the shopping centre and would not leave her. There was something wrong with her legs and the vet in Springbok told Susan that the dog had been kept in a cage too small for her. She has grown into a lovely animal and there is nothing wrong with her legs now. Ricky has rather plump Jack Russel type bitches. They were only too happy to welcome handsome Jack. I was amazed that Jack knew exactly where we were when I pulled up at the gate. I was 4 years since we had last been there. He jumped out and greeted Susan with a wriggling body and a wagging tail before doing the same to Ricky and ‘the girls’.

I had arrived at ‘wine time’ so I quaffed dry white while Susan had a gin and tonic. We chatted up a storm about family and her four children. Jaques, her eldest is married now to a delightful lass, Danielle. They have opened a new branch of the events company they worked for in Cape Town so I am seeing quite a bit of them. Shaun the second eldest is in Australia working on wind turbines and is off to Chile shortly. Michele is in Botswana running a lodge in the Okavango delta and Ryan is in Cape Town working for the same outfit as Jacques and Danielle. Hard to accept that they are all so grown up when I remember how I dragged them through Southern Africa as children but they enjoy telling the tales.

After a couple of glasses and our pepper steak pies from Pofadder I had a lie down. The bed in my bedroom looks straight out at the passage. I propped up my pillows intending to read but looked up to see a figure of a woman in dark clothes walk down the passage, disappear and walk down once more. This was no surprise to me as having had one grandmother who was born in Cornwall and the other Irish I have been ‘fey’ from a young age. Susan says there are many ghosts in Kleinsee.

Susan works as the barmaid at the Golf Club and Ricky runs the bar at the Angling Club on the coast. They have a friendly rivalry going as to who has the most customers! So Jack could run on the beach in front of the Angling Club each day and have another run on the golf greens. I enjoyed taking Jack to the Angling Club, having a midday glass of wine or two with Ricky interspersed with walks on the beach that is covered with broken black mussels with their insides a lovely blue. We collected some small round stones for my friend Heather to put around her pots in her small garden.

I watched rugby at the Golf Club one Saturday when the Springboks were playing and a group of Nama youngsters were on holiday from boarding school in Springbok. They were quaffing beers and cheering the ‘Boks’ on. In the end Rudi, the owner of the pub reprimanded them sternly and they obediently quietened down. The local Nama people are a peaceful bunch and very friendly. Both pubs are patronized by the locals but different groups, each has its characters. One of these is Q who launches his boat from the slipway at the Angling Club. A good looking guy with a naughty eye, he breeds oysters and then puts them into the ocean to develop.

Abalone is also bred but within the diamond fields and unfortunately I could not visit the site due to security. Q very kindly brought three dozen oysters for Susan and I. They were large, fresh and juicy but I could only manage six. I never discovered his full name.

Ricky was friends with a couple of private pilots who had a Piago Albatross at the airfield left behind by De Beers. This is a twin engined long range aircraft with a range of 2,130 km designed and built by Piago Aero in Italy. South Africa ordered 20 of these planes and they were used to patrol the coast of the country. Several were based at Langebaan Airforce Base and in fact my daughter-in-law Maud’s father who served in the Airforce flew them.

The plane takes four passengers and Ricky, Susan and I were joined by Gino, a fellow Kleinsee resident. We flew over the coast, the pilot dipping his wing to reveal this forbidding coastline with sharp rocks, inland an arid expanse of semi desert with dunes of grys. These dunes are the remains of clean dunes that have been worked for diamonds. They have huge holes among them that Susan says the diamond workers dread having to work in with the huge dunes above threatening them and the insufferable heat.

Truly a forbidding coast that is the graveyard of many a ship one, not long ago where all hands were saved by De Beers helicopters. We then passed the seal colony, the animals quite spread out along the beach before turning inland again over the diamond fields and finally landing back at the airstrip. A trip that was the highlight of my stay.

One day at the Golf Club I met Susan’s friend Ush, an illicit diamond digger. He was sporting a broken arm from running away from the police. Ush is an Ovambo and he told me something about himself. Ovamboland is in Northwest Namibia and Ush’s real name is Inenkela that means trust. Ush trained as a driver and was employed by transport firms one of which was owned by a Diamond mining company. Ush learnt a lot about diamonds and ultimately decided to dig for himself. He has a house in Port Nolloth where his daughter stays with him. He told me that the best gems are to be found in the estuaries.

Well these parts have always thrown up characters of note. Susan has a friend who shall not be named and was very shy of having his photo taken. He pulled a jacket over his head! He it was on greeting me remarked “Wow! you have clothes on!” I must admit the last time I was there I had my birthday celebrations at the Angling Club and was dared to strip! I compromised by taking off my top and baring my boobs to the Atlantic! These days my boobs have moved south after long stays in hospital! No more escapades like that!

Three weeks flew by and Jack and I were headed back home retracing our steps with lots to write about and many a tale to tell.

NAMAQUALAND SOUTH

Namaqualand south begins at Van Rhynsdorp and continues to the border with Namibia but I am going to start with the flowers of the West Coast National Park. The Park has Langebaan lagoon on one side and the ocean on the other. The colours are gentle mauves and yellows and white. I had a picnic there with friends just after my first hip transplant. While lying on my bed in hospital I had dreamt of baking a pork pie. I am a reasonably good home cook but had never attempted one. I got a few friends together and we picnicked beneath one of the typical round boulders in the park surrounded by flowers with the crash of breakers on the beach as music.

The West Coast National Park

The pork pie was a disaster! Anyway we all had a good laugh, drank some wine and I told them of Jenny’s walk along that beach. She discarded her clothes and strode along. A droning in the sky developed into two aircraft trainers with pupil pilots from the nearby Air Force base nearly falling out of their cockpits at the sight of this gorgeous naked redhead. They waggled their wings and Jen happily waved back!

We were seated near the site of Eve’s footprints. In 1995 David Roberts from the Museum in Cape Town was searching for fossils when he came across the prints on a sand dune made during a turbulent rainstorm. They were of a female during the time of emergence of homo sapiens and the use of stone tools. She was 1,5 m tall and her feet were the same size of modern women.

Eve, given the name by the media, lived about 5 million years ago. At the time the climate was warmer with higher rainfall and tropical vegetation. Eve must have been very wary for the animals that lived at the same time were Agriotherium Afrricanum, a huge bear and the only one found south of the Sahara, a sabre toothed tiger, a three toed horse and gomphothere Anacus, a type of elephant that later became extinct.

 The country varies, but is barren and desolate as you leave Clanwilliam with its huge dam and the Cedarberg mountains beyond, the road stretching ever upwards towards Namibia.

On to proper Namaqualand beginning at Vredendal and the town of Van Rhynsdorp that sits on the edge of the Knersvlakte (gnashing plain) that reflects the sound the early wagons made as they crossed the flats on quartz stones. Van Rhyn’s pass rears up at the edge of the flats some 549 metres onto the Bokkeveld Range (Goat or antelope field) to Niewoudtville with its lovely sandstone buildings. Vast meadows of Yellow bulbinella flowers thrive here on the lonely farms.

A farmer told me that one year he put his weaned lambs into a camp and was devastated when they all died. A friend told him to leave an old ewe with them the next year. He did so and the old lady taught them which plants they could eat and which were poison!

MacGregor is the family name of a few of the farmers here. My friend who shall be nameless met one and invited him to visit her in Cape Town. MacGregor arrived with a huge leg of mutton under his arm, unaware that she was married. She told him to come to me and hastily shut her door. Now I had a gentleman friend who was visiting, a conservative fellow who was aghast when MacGregor arrived with the leg. “You can’t possibly have this stranger in your home for the night!” “Of course, he comes from my friend!” He left, Macgregor stayed, left the next day with the large leg in my freezer.

We would often go down to Langebaan lagoon for weekends staying in little thatched cottages at Churchaven belonging to the Barsby family. The families of Curchaven and Stofbergsfontein arrived in the 1800-1900’s. They were independent folk with a code of modesty, self reliance and care for the environment. They built their homes themselves from local materials, a one roomed school house and a church. The farms were owned collectively.

One weekend Tony Millard and some other friends came too and we put the leg into a large black pot and simmered it on the fire for hours and hours. It was superb! Tony decided he wanted a bath and as there was no bathroom, just a long drop toilet, he climbed into an aluminum tub with someone offering to scrub his back. I have lost the pic but Tony is now a very successful racehorse trainer in Hong Kong.

Van Rhynsdorp is named after Petrus van Rhyn the first member for Namaqualand in the old Cape Legislative Council and a leading public figure in the district. There is a delightful little museum that has a sepia portrait of Manie Maritz, the Boer commando, a really good looking guy. As my grandmother would say, he could have put his boots under my bed! Also in van Rhynsdorp is a succulent nursery here that has a story behind it. The owner of the land was a bodyguard to General Jan Smuts who was Prime Minister of South Africa and lived in Pretoria.

The tale goes that a certain gentleman who was body guard to General Jan smuts when he was Prime Minister of South Africa used to accompany the ‘Ou Baas (Old Boss) as he was affectionately called, learnt much of botany from this remarkable man. Retiring back to Van Rhynsdorp he wondered how he was going to earn a living in this harsh environment. He hit on the idea of starting a succulent nursery. It was a success and is still there today.

At the top of the pass, one of the 10 most impressive in the Northern Cape, built by Thomas Bain, is the Oorlogskloof (War Valley) Nature Reserve and here one can see the Gymnogene raptor soaring above the escarpment. This bird is a species on its own, grey with a yellow bill and easily seen here. The Nature reserve is home to many small mammals and rare species of flora.

Gymnogene

 

Back to the Knersvlakte, the name meaning gnashing plains because as the old wagons crossed it they made a crunching noise trundling over the harsh quartz stones. The Knersvlakte is home to succulents of all kinds and during the flower season it is festooned with bright orange and red and purple.

Northwards to Bitterfontein (Bitter fountain) one passes an odd sign Douse the Glim, a farm. The name is attributed to a tired surveyor who irritably told his servant to douse the glim, meaning turn off the light.

Here I came across another story about Jan Smuts. I found a farm that offered accommodation near Bitterfontein and noticed that there were ruins of an old farmhouse. I asked my host about it and he told me the story. His forefather was building a homestead. He had only the roof to complete and the corrugated iron sheets lay waiting.

During the first world war Smuts served with distinction in German East Africa. The British government asked him to invade German South West Africa and it was when his column was en route to German South West Africa that he came across this farm. Smuts arrived with his column of men, horses and cattle on his way to German South West Africa now Namibia. He commandeered the roofing to make mangers for the animals and the poor farmer had to save up again for another roof!

Manie Maritz was commandant of the north column and together the two executed a successful annexation of German South West Africa, claiming the capital Windhoek. South Africa was given occupation of the territory.

In 1933 Smuts was deputy Prime Minister and served with Churchill during the second world war. He was instrumental in forming the League of Nations that became the United Nations. I remember him well and how he used to walk up Skeleton Gorge on Table Mountain every morning before breakfast. In 1947 the Royal Family arrived in the battleship, Vanguard and stayed in Cape Town. The Vanguard was used as the Royal Yacht. She had an illustrious name after her sister that had fought in the battle of Armade and Jutland.  Princess Margaret was a good mimic and I had it on good authority from my mother’s cousin’s husband who was their chauffeur that she often mimicked General Smuts and other dignitaries.

Onwards on our journey to Kamieskroon and the Skilpad reserve where fields of flowers emerge each spring when the winter rains are good. The name comes from the Kamiesberg range one mountain of which dominates Kamieskroon with a large boulder perched at its peak aptly named the crown. This reserve is magic and one year it was covered in scarlet bulbinella. I felt like sitting down in the middle of it with a bottle of champagne!

Jan van Riebeek arrived at the Cape in 1652 to start a garden to service the Dutch East India company ships on their way to the East. He dispatched Simon van der Stel to the northwest searching for the legendary city of Monomatapa. Van der Stel’s wagons were attacked by a rhino at Piketberg! He made frequent sorties and finally arrived in what was to become Springbok. He was told of copper by the locals and eventually found the metal in 1682 at Copper Mountain or Carolsberg today part of the Goegap Nature Reserve in Springbok.

The yield at Carolsberg was poor and more  deposits were found by Hendrik Hop in 1761 near the Orange River. Extraction was a problem and it was only in 1836 that James Alexander found rich deposits on the banks of the river. The first Copper Mining Company started working the copper in 1846. A German called von Schlicht found a huge deposit but could not get investors. Von Schlicht had a housemate, Mr. Jencken who found a company called Phillips & King that purchased the land in 1850 together with the mineral rights. They called the farm Springbokfontein and started the commercial exploitation of the copper.

The farm became a village, the village a town and was finally registered as Springbok. Springbok grew under copper mania until a new treasure was found.  Fred Cornell was the first to suspect the presence of diamonds but his efforts were unsuccessful. Jack Carstens was the first person to prove the existence of these gems in 1925 and opened a little diamond industry at Kleinsee.

Merensky searched north of Port Nolloth and found diamonds south of Alexander Bay. Today we know that the diamonds were carried from Antartica northwards by the Benguela current that originates there. In 1908 there was a diamond rush and the area was proclaimed a Sperregebiet, prohibited area. It still exists although De Beers Diamond Mining has left Kleinsee now. My daughter Susan lives there and since De Beers left Nama people have claimed the land and are digging for diamonds! I can’t wait to get there to be able to tell you the story.

In my next instalment when I return I will tell you of the journey from Springbok to Kleinsee over a pass that is not called the Spectakel

NAMAQUALAND

I am leaving on the 8^th of September destination Kleinsee on the north west coast of South Africa to visit my daughter Susan. Kleinsee is just south of Port Nolloth and Alexander Bay with Namibia just north of these towns. Jack and I will stay at Kuruman on the first night and Pofadder on the next heading towards Springbok deep in Namaqualand. We had good rains this winter in this area so the flowers should be wonderful. Each year they appear, softer colours down south nearer Cape Town and more vibrant colours as one heads north. The floral kingdom of South Africa attracts tourists from all over the world.

My route takes me from Johannesburg via Vryburg, Olifanshoek (elephant corner), Upington to Kuruman. Kuruman is interesting in that it was here that Robert Moffat the missionary translated the Bible into Tswana, a local language and printed it on his own printing press. His daughter Mary married David Livingstone and they left Kuruman to find Ngamiland in Botswana.

They settled at Kolobeng, synonymous with the names of two men, David and Kgosi Sechele. One was a zealous missionary come there to convert the heathen in the name of Christianity and the other the chief of the Bakwena tribe. Their paths were fated to diverge, Livingstone’s to lead him across the face of Darkest Africa and immortality in the annals of history, Sechele’s to l embrace a strange religion and begin to lead his people into the changing world which the coming of the white man brought to Africa.

The homestead at Kolobeng

Livingstone and his wife Mary and their children arrived in 1847. He built a house there erroneously believing that the Kolobeng River would be a constant source of water. He erected the first school and irrigation system as well as a rudimentary church which was the first Christian church to stand in Botswana.

He began to convert Sechele who finally succumbed to the faith but on pain of forgoing such ancient ceremonies as the rainmaking ritual and forsaking all of his wives except one. For this he narrowly escaped being murdered by his own people.

Here it was that Livingstone lost his daughter Elizabeth and his hope of ever bringing lost souls to the church. He sent Mary and their other children back to England and headed north for Africa and his dream of abolishing the slave trade. Elizabeth is buried at the foot of a tree on the banks of the river together with the artist Thomas Dolman but the house and the church were almost destroyed by a Boer commando although the Bakwena have to take the blame for this. When I was last there the remains of the buildings could still be seen and the lowing of the cattle and the tinkle of goat bells tell nothing of the drama that unfolded in this small corner of Africa.

Next we will pass through Upington that was started in 1873 as a mission station by the Rev. Schroder and named after Sir Thomas Upington, then Secretary General and later Prime Minister of the Cape. A Hottentot chieftain lived here in 1870 who wanted his people to learn to read and write. He petitioned the government in the Cape to send a missionary to teach them. The Rev. Schroder arrived destined to leave his stamp on the town and the area.

 The town sits on the banks of the Orange River now called the Gariep, a San name. The river rises in Lesotho where it is called the Senqu and travels 193 ks to its mouth between the towns of Oranjemund in Namibia and Alexander Bay on the West Coast of South Africa, forming the border between the two countries.

The Camel Statue in Upington

Rev. Schroder realized the potential of the river for irrigation and together with Japie Lutz laid building foundations and hand dug irrigation channels some of which are still to be seen today. Later A.D. Lewis was the brains behind the canal system that supports the agriculture of the region where grapes for wine and raisins are grown among other crops.

Susan and I brought the kids here and we visited the Tier mountain lookout. The early settlers thought leopards were tigers, hence the name Tiger Mountain. The view gives a panoramic picture of the river and its islands.

In the early days the police were mounted on camels to patrol this very dry area and in Upington there is a statue to commemorate their efforts. Another statue is a tribute to the donkeys that used to turn the water wheels and example of which can be found at Keimos just a little further on.

After Keimos you will find Kakamas and here you can turn off to the Augrabies Falls. Mr. G.  Thompson trekked across this barren land in 1827. His party was near starving having had no food for four days, tightening their famine girdles and considering shooting one of the horses. The Hottentot guides were against this fearing death I this thirstland if they were to do so. The brackish water from a gourd that a little girl offered them made them ill. A hunting party of Hottentots set out and came back with a dead zebra. Within an hour the Hottentots had devoured 8 lbs of meat each! There was singing and dancing while the meat roasted on the fire.

That night Mr. Thompson’s party slept on a high bank of the river as they had been warned that the evening before they had slept in the lions path. They were disturbed all night by howling hyenas. Carrying on they could hear the roar of the falls becoming louder and louder.

The San people named the falls Ankoerebis meaning place of great noise. The falls are 183 ft or 56 metres high and in the floods of 1988 7800 cubic metres per second poured over the lip.  These days the Augrabies National Park surrounds the falls.

Susan and I continued towards Pofadder, taking a side trip to Pella. Pella is a mission station started by two French missionaries, J.M. Simon and Leo Wolf, who built the most beautiful Catholic Cathedral here. They knew nothing of building and consulted their encyclopedie des Arts et Metiers that contained details of how to construct a building.

Within two years they finished it. It took more than 200 loads of sand, 400 wagon loads of stones, 200 000 bricks that they made themselves 350 bags of slaked lime and hundreds of wagonloads of willow wood. Today this Cathedral still stands as a tribute to the men of the order of St. Francis de la Sales. A local mining house has taken on the responsibility of maintaining the Cathedral.

The Cathedral in Pella

The nuns greeted us and gave us a tour of the remarkable building, taking us to the graves of the two men. We finally left with a packet of the juicy grapes that they sell. Date palms surround the mission.

On impulse we decided to go to Onseepkans. This little settlement on the Orange River serves as a border post between Namibia and South Africa with traffic moving between Keetmanshoop in Namibia and Pofadder in South Africa.

We were travelling in a low slung sedan and the gravel road was rough. Taking a side track to see if we could get near the river we ended up in a cul de sac, the sand too thick to reverse. Ahead lay a huge boulder and there was nothing for it but to drive onto this boulder in order to turn around! Full marks to the Opel although the undercarriage took some hammering but Susan’s driving skills got us on the way again. Of course the kids thought it all great fun and we stopped for a gin and tonic for the driver while I imbibed a vodka for my nerves!

So on to Pofadder and my proposed journey. I will stay overnight at Pofadder on my way to see Susan. This is the start of Namaqualand proper that is divided into three sub regions, the Namib desert, the Nama Karoo and the Succulent Karoo. Pofadder was named after either Klaas Pofadder, a raider of cattle and horses who was head of a band of desperados or the adder that lives in these hot dry places. Australopithecus was the first human to live here as long as three million years ago. They eventually had the ability to manufacture tools and that improved their diet from plant life to protein by killing rhino, hippo, giant wildebeest as well as smaller prey.

Jan van Riebeek arrived in the Cape in 1652 and was tantalized by tales of the legendary city Monomatapa. He sent several forays north along the coast searching for it. None were successful but Simon van der Stel found the copper mountain or Carolusberg and later successfully extracted copper ore. He explored Hondeklip Bay as a possible port to take the ore to the Cape and built the Wildeperdehoek Pass to get there with convicts. The bay is named after thee large stone that resembles a dog, hence the name Dog Stone Bay.

One year I had heard of an artist who had learnt to paint in goal. On his release he took up residence in Hondeklip Bay where he sold his art. I then drove an Isuzu KB28 4 x 4 and set off over the Wildeperdehoek (Wild horse) pass. It was Camel trophy stuff and I never saw another vehicle or sign of human activity except for the ruins of the building that housed van der Stel’s convicts.

I arrived in Hondeklip Bay to find the artist whose name I have forgotten was standing on the side of a road selling his paintings when I pulled up. He asked me which way I had come and I told him.  He looked at my arthritic hands. “Mam, nobody has been through that pass for yonks and you can’t change a tyre with those hands! “Oh, I am fine! I always carry water, food and of course Tassies!” (A rough red student wine). He shook his head. “Mam, you’ve got balls!”

The Nama people arrived here about 2000 years ago from what is now Botswana. They introduced a new means of power being domestic goats and cattle. The local people still move their livestock in seasonal patterns just as their forerunners did. The Namaqualanders have their feet in the earth and their humour is earthly. There was once a very bad drought and one of the old women of the congregation in a church stood and prayed : “Lord, this story of yours of millimetres and millmetres of rain must stop here. If you send us rain again send us metres and metres!” Her old husband plucked her onto her seat and said “By God, my old wife, who told you that our donkeys could swim? How will we get home?”

Namaqualanders are fond of nicknames and one Pocket Nagel who had never been further than Springbok was invited to spend a holiday in Hermanus on the East Coast near Cape Town about 800ks away. When he arrived at the first traffic light in Worcester he stopped, turned his car around and drove back to Kleinsee. He could not take the traffic!

On to Pofadder, named after either the snake or Klaas Pofadder a rebel who commanded armed bandits and stole horses and cattle. From thereon we should begin to see the flowers. The area is very dry and the road goes on and on. At a filling station you turn into the town itself, very neat and very small. Conservationists and biologists come here to study the tiny xerophytes and animal life. Pofadder is near the Ritchie Falls, the second largest after Augrabies but only accessible after either a two day hike or rafting downriver on the Gariep from Onseepkans.

I will leave you here and tell you more when I return. Of treasure and prospectors and early miners, of shipwrecks and many a tale told by the old ones.

SMARTIES AND THOUGHTS AT MIDNIGHT

Smarties Wot-A-Lot-I-Got

You can buy me expensive chocolates and I will enjoy them but my favourites are Smarties! For those who are not South African these little chocolate pebbles are covered by different coloured crisp sugar that you can suck until the chocolate oozes out or bite sharply into them.  A packet of them goes down well in the middle of the night. I had bought them to make Smartie biscuits but somehow they found themselves on my bedside table!

So I chewed and pondered on many things. Especially childhood memories of Fish Hoek. Along the beach there is a catwalk set into the rocks. The rock pools were a delight of bright sea urchins, pebbles and small klippie fish that darted in and out of little caves. One larger pool was called Skellie, I don’t know why, and we would dive off the rocks into the deep pool.

P.W. Botha became Prime Minister of South Africa and Apartheid had the effect of making South Africa a pariah in the international community of nations. P.W, as he was called, needed money and allowed the Chinese long liners into False Bay. They were after great white sharks for shark fin soup. Suddenly the whole eco system of the bay was affected and the rock pools were emptied of their occupants.

This got me thinking of the diminishing lion populations of Africa. If these great predators are endangered the whole ecosystem of the great parks will be in danger. Susan and I were in Etosha pan, worrying about being late for the gate of Namutoni when we saw this pale lioness in attacking position, her tail stretched straight and her gaze fixed upon a hidden prey.  We held our breath as she stood immobile, the fading light giving a luminescence to her coat. Time stood still until we unfortunately had to depart but the picture has remained clear in my mind and whenever I am in great pain the picture comes into focus yet again, comforting me.

As a girl I loved the train journey to and from Fish Hoek to Cape Town. The rail runs along the sea from Simonstown to Muizenberg with a great view of False Bay. Along this section the train stops at St. James, Kalk Bay and Clovelly. We would go to the bioscope at Muizenberg on Saturday and on the journey back would alight at Clovelly and walk to Fish Hoek along the beach.

These days the road winds between the little towns with the crags of Table Mountain chain rearing on the right hand, the breakers bashing themselves on the rocks on the other side. When my first grandsons were small I took them fishing with little nets for klippies at St. James and we caught two each, watching them swim around the bucket. The time came to return them to their pools and the two boys burst into tears, wailing at the loss of their fishy friends.

When we moved to Fish Hoek my father built our house himself. The lounge/diningroom was on a wonderful sprung floor and the local Old Time Dance club came every Friday evening. One of the members brought his young son, Donald, five years older than me but the two of us learnt to dance these gracious dances. I was around 16 I think, Donald would take me walking on the Fish Hoek mountains singing The Road to the Isles in his lovely baritone. He finally left Fish Hoek to take up a career in banking in Rhodesia as it then was, now Zimbabwe. That was the last time I saw him, but we have corresponded ever since. He now lives in Sydney, Australia with his wife Jan. Donald is also a writer, mostly of poems and over the years has sent me many an amusing naughty poem!

I learnt to waltz at those dances and loved to dance with my father who took long steps when we danced to The Blue Danube! None of my boyfriends could match that! However, one of them could jive and when we took to the floor at Royal Cape Yacht Club, the other dances would retire while we performed!

The Lighthouse on Kalkbay pier

These days the road from Muizenberg to Fish Hoek has become very trendy. Kalk Bay has a restaurant called The Brass Bell on the station where the waves crash against a huge picture window. Further along is the little harbour with a breakwater that keeps the huge waves at bay. My father used to fish off this pier and I was always terrified that a wave would sweep him into the sea. There are trendy restaurants in the harbour now and you can buy fresh snoek straight off the boats. The snoek is a relative of the barracuda, long and silvery with pointed teeth. This fish is delicious on the braai or barbecue, brushed with apricot jam.

Simonstown Harbour yacht basin

The railway ends at Simonstown which was a British Naval Base when I was a girl. A Great Dane called Nuisance used to catch the train to Cape Town where he would round up all the sailors who were a little worse for wear, see them onto the train and escort them back to base at Simonstown. There is a statue to him in the town and also a good book about his exploits.

Just Nusiance

The South African Navy runs the base now and when a boyfriend and I were stranded on his yacht moored in the little harbour, the dinghy having broken loose in the brisk southeaster wind, I radioed the Navy for help. They very kindly sent a boat to take us ashore.

I was awarded my Queen’s Guide badge by Lady Joy Packer at Admiralty house in Simonstown. Lady Packer wrote a book called Grey Mistress about her husband’s destroyer that she followed to ports around the world where her husband Sir Herbert was based. She loved South Africa and wrote a novel called Valley of the Vines a love story set in Constantia in Cape Town.

Lady Olave Baden-Powell came to Cape Town and a pageant was performed in her honour. Fish Hoek Guides were dressed in ancient Greek robes to represent the Dhodhekanisos Islands in Greece in the pageant wearing ancient Greek robes that were in reality sheets! Our venue was a stone amphitheatre just below Table Mountain and the perfect site. I was thrilled to be included and Lady Olave shook all our hands.

Lady Olave’s husband was of course Lord Robert Baden-Powell of Gilwell and the man in charge of the siege of Mafeking. Mafeking as it used to be called is a town on the north west border of South Africa with Botswana. During the Boer war the British wanted to divert Boer troops from the conflict in Natal and a small garrison was to be set up at Mafikeng under the command of Colonel Robert Baden-Powell.

Lord Robert Baden-Powell

The Boer General Cronje was sent to attempt to occupy the town and defeat the garrison. The Boers underestimated Baden-Powell’s resourcefulness. He manufactured structures that looked like railways and guns and then proceeded to make a canon out of scrap that was called The Wolf. This canon was used to fire bits of scrap at the Boers. He also found an old muzzle loader holding up a gate post that they used to fire at the Boers, naming it Lord Nelson. He made grenades from dynamite and eventually even constructed a small railway across the town. All in all he managed to convince the Boers that the garrison was a greater force than they had thought. Here it was that Baden Powell conceived the idea of a Boy Scout movement using children to carry messages and assist in hospitals.

When he and Lady Olave married she started the Girl Guide movement. I was a patrol leader in the Fish Hoek Guides and used to take my patrol hiking up the mountains that surrounded the village. We often camped overnight. I think that time in my life led to my love of adventure and curiosity to experience the bush.

 

 

 

 

LIFE’S TWISTS AND TURNS

Reading this blog over a good few times, it is a bit too much about me but it does illustrate just how chance and other influences can change the direction of one’s life and introduce new perspectives and experiences and make new friends.

I was sixteen when I joined Carinus Nursing College and lived in the nurses’s quarters for a while. One day I was persuaded to go on a blind date. The young man belonged to a sailing family and I was immediately hooked. I remember us sailing to Saldanha Bay on the West coast of South Africa and coming back in thick fog. The Suez crises was on with the canal closed and Table Bay was full of ships having to take the Cape Route. Foghorns blared all around us in the ghostly fog as we weaved our way through the huge ships.

I left nursing, as I was not suited to it. My mother was keen to get me away from my young man so sent me to the UK to join my  father who was tasked with changing the  South African railways from steam to diesel and was inspecting the diesel engines being built in the UK. I sailed on a Union Castle Liner docking at Southampton. From there I travelled with my father to Scotland then down to Manchester and began to look for a job. Seeing an advertisement for crew on a yacht heading for South America I had a choice to either take up the offer or join British European Airways.

I hitched a lift on the back of a Harley Davidson and we rode from Manchester to Chichester where I was to meet the skipper of the yacht. It was the 1^st of May and England had her best dress on, with fields of blue bells and daffodils. I took an instant dislike to the skipper of the yacht so returned to become part of the second intake of air hostesses for British European Airways.

I fell in love with travel and learnt a lot about independence during that time. Returning to South Africa after two years I found a job, dated my young man again but that alas, did not last and I met my future husband who was also a yachtsman.

Two babies later, Susan and then Michael, my marriage was in trouble and I took up riding at a nearby stable. Here came the biggest twist of my life. Jill Perks owned the riding school. She was an interesting person. She was convinced that there were diamonds in the Cape Flats and every riding pupil had to first help to dig the potential diamond mine before mounting their horse! Needless to say we never found diamonds!

Jill rode an enormous thoroughbred called Fra Diavolo. Fra Diovolo (Brother Devil) otherwise known as Michele Pezza was a guerrilla leader who resisted the French occupation of Naples in 1771. He featured in a lot of folk lore and Alexander Dumas included him in a few of his books. Fra Diovolo sauce is a fiery tomato based sauce.

Jill was a tiny woman and looked like a pimple on the huge horse who had a wonderful temperament and was not in the least bit like his namesake. I really took to riding and Jill bought me a little thoroughbred mare who had everything wrong with her!

One day Jill was trying to teach me to jump when two men arrived and stood watching as I fell off again and again. Jill introduced Trevor Botten and his friend Alan Higgins and we all had tea. Trevor asked me if I really wanted to learn to ride. My answer was yes. “Be at Muizenberg beach tomorrow morning at six and I will teach you to really ride!”

Jill had a dream of becoming a playwright. She wrote a play and roped me and my friend Bobby in as the leading lady and man. Bobby was over 6 ft tall and I only 5ft 4. She produced the play at the Masque Theatre main road Muizenberg and it ran for a week. That was my one and only attempt at treading the boards!

Jill finally met Rosalie van der Gught, a lecturer at the University of Cape Town. Rosalie was a brilliant teacher and taught Jill who left her husband and took up with a puppeteer. From there she wrote plays and when she died the Cape Times newspaper devoted a half page to her obituary about her success as a playwright.

But I digress. The morning that I arrived at Muizenber was brisk with the Indian Ocean waves pounding upon the hard sand. Racehorses circled waiting for their riders and I was shown how to get a leg up while a beautiful liver chestnut gelding called Quatre Bra stood obediently. For the next two weeks I walked him around the ring being taught how to pull up my irons (stirrups), crouch like a jockey until my thighs ached, and hold the reins as they should be held.

Finally the day came when I was allowed to trot down the sand track next to a well known jockey in that jockey position while he slapped my back with his stick and told me to get down lower! Then I was allowed to canter and from there on I progressed to riding very good horses and becoming part of the famous Beverley Stables crew. I rode gallops on the turf at Kenilworth and one stands out in my memory.

Trevor had three top class sprinters in his stable and one morning he decided that they would gallop together over six furlongs at Kenilworth racecourse. The horses were Rumba Rage by Drum Beat, a stallion that had been the fastest horse in the world, Eastertide sired by a prolific sprinting stallion, Royal Pardon and Benzol whose sire Silver Tor was not in the Jockey Club stud books but very fast. He put two top jockeys, Stanley Amos and Johnny Cawcutt up on Benzol and Rumba Rage, me on Eastertide. These horses were so fast I hardly took a breath. Trevor very cunningly had me as the lightest weight win the gallop! What a thrill!

My life as I grew ever more passionate about thoroughbreds and I attended the yearling sales, learnt how to judge a good horse and finally married Trevor and had TJ, my youngest son. I often joke with TJ that he exists because I fell off a horse!

Trevor introduced me to Jenny, who was destined to be a friend until the day she died some time ago. Jenny was a vibrant redhead and she and her husband were looking for a house to rent. They had three children. Her husband, Stew as we called him had been a Flight lieutenant in the Royal Air Force. I found them a house at Zeekoe (hippopotamus) Vlei (shallow lake) where I lived and Stew taught me how to cook duck le orange.  Jenny and I joined the Cape Hunt and Polo Club and rode to hounds together.

One day Jenny asked me to come and exercise the Cape Hunt and Polo Club hounds up on Sir Lowry’s pass. I fell off and was obviously badly injured. Jenny rode back to the stables returning with a little yellow Volkswagen and a bottle of whisky. She made me gulp  some and split it over me. Jenny told me to keep sipping until we reached Groote Schuur hospital. The young intern who saw us there shook his head and pinched his nose at the smell of whisky, obviously taking me to be a drunk. “How did this happen?” he asked Jenny. “Well you see, we were chasing men in the mountains and Molly got so excited that she fell off!” The intern burst out laughing and sent me off for x-rays. He took one look at the film and told me to go home, lie flat on my back for three months and my broken pelvis would eventually heal!

By chance I met Peter who was editor of the YOU magazine. Peter had a dream of living in the Greek islands and drinking red wine. However he found time to read my first manuscript of July Fever that I typed on an old Imperial typewriter. He remarked. “You have a story here. Go and write it again.” Later he asked me if I had ever had sex. “Of Course, I have children!” “Well write it like it IS!”  He made me rewrite the book five times until he was satisfied! The novel was a great success and made book of the month for a Durban newspaper at the July of 1980.

Eventually I gave up the horses and began to sell houses. I decided that I really wanted to learn to sail deep sea yachts and joined Rod’s sailing academy in Simonstown. Rod had crewed on one of the round the world yachts and was a great seaman. We got on well and he asked me to partner him in the purchase of a Miura, a 30 odd foot yacht built by Van der Stadt especially for Cape waters.

Michael turned eighteen and came into his inheritance. He was keen on hitching as crew on yachts around the Caribbean eventually ending up at Antigua for the famous racing week there. He asked me to come with him so I suggested we sail arou nd the British Virgin Islands after which he could find a berth, hopping from island to island until he got to Antigua and I would fly home. We found an outfit that rented bare boats but this required me to get my Skipper’s ticket. I had a practical test by the harbour master in Simonstown on a blustery day while still in crutches and passed thanks to Rod’s coaching. Mick and I had a great time sailing around the Islands and when I thought we had run out of luck we met a French couple on their old Norwegian trawler bound for Bermuda. We were invited for a drink and I still remember the taste of the wonderful rose wine they offered. They happily took Mick with them and he worked his way to Antigua.

I did very well at selling houses and moved back to Zeekoe Vlei. One day a family bought the house opposite. Ever gregarious, I went over to meet them and that changed my friend Annie’s life. Amazingly we are still friends today!

Annie was a housewife with four children. She could not drive and was housebound when her husband was out to work. Annie had the most infectious laugh and I decided to teach her to drive. The independence this brought her changed her life.  I was instrumental at encouraging her to become an Estate Agent and Annie was off on a journey of her own.

Annie’s boys sailed dinghy’s at Zeekoe Vlei yacht club and eventually David became my tactician when I raced the Miura on Wednesday afternoons at Royal Cape Yacht Club. Annie turned out to be a natural business woman, TJ and her youngest, Lucy were great friends. Rod got together a scratch crew to hire a class yacht at Cowes with the aim of sailing there during Cowes week. I excitedly put my name down. Rod then suggested that he and I and his girlfriend have as sailing holiday around the Greek islands afterwards. I asked Annie if Lucy could come and I would take Lucy and TJ with us. She agreed and TJ still says that was the best holiday of his life!

Rod had hired a 32 foot class yacht. The owner was on board with us and Deca navigation had just come out enabling us to tack very close to the shore. A highlight was seeing the Queen Mary make her way through all these pesky little yachts on her way to the Atlantic. We had a shakedown cruise across to France then returned to Cowes and won the first race in our class!

Then we went off on our flotilla holiday. As Rod was so experienced, we were allowed to do our own thing. We sailed from island to island, the two children loving every  minute of it after which they went home and I flew to Ireland to visit the stud farms there and to see Goffs the auctioneering house.

Another chance meeting led to a friendship that was to last until this day just as Annie’s has. I decided to take TJ, then seven, to ski in Austria. The tour leader was Joy, together with her husband Colin. Colin got frostbite on his finger and was banned from going onto the slopes again. I came back early one day and knocked on Joy’s door to hear Colin’s voice inviting me in. I entered to find him lying in a hot bath with a beer to hand. He hastily covered up the necessary parts and bade me join him with a glass of wine.

I sat on the loo and we had a jolly chat with a few good laughs. Enter Joy to find her husband with one of her tour group! We have chuckled about it ever since and are still the best of friends. Tragedy also struck her after the birth of her two sons when eventually Colin succumbed to the blood disorder that he had.

Of course Susan, Mick (Michael) and years later, TJ all rode. Mick joined the equine division when he had to do his army stint, Susan married a thoroughbred stud master and TJ played polocrosse.

Hard times came and I moved to Philadelphia, very near Atlantis, the town erected by the government for the coloured community, part of their separate development policy. We stayed on a small holding in a little wooden cottage that TJ and I built. He was now at school at Sacs and I was battling to find work. I had some remaining copies of July Fever and took one to a woman I had heard of preparing yearlings for the racing stables. I desperately needed fuel for my little car to take him to school the next day.

A large woman was lunging a yearling. The yearling could not understand what was required of him and kept stopping or bucking or turning to her with a puzzled look. Diz, as I learnt was her name, would break into swearing that would make a sailor blush. She would then lift her head to the sky and apologize to the Lord. “I promise I won’t do it again Lord.” Within minutes the swearing would commence again.

She finished with the yearling and invited me in. I asked her if she would like to buy the book. Diz told me later that she was just as broke as I was and had a bit of cash to buy cigarettes but thought I needed the money more than she did! We became friends and one day she found an advertisement for coal fired Dover Stoves. She bought one for each of us and many a good time was had around my stove with a pot of soup and a jug of wine. Our friendship grew and we had great times together, the stories are too long to tell here but will appear in other blogs from time to time.

Another friend at that time was June Washington. We cooked many a family meal together and when I decided to answer an advertisement for a trip to Mozambique she accompanied me. That is a story on its own but it led to meeting my friend Nic Tass of Turtle Cove in Tofo who has turned out to be a friend for life together with his wife Nelia. More of that in another blog too.

Michael returned from a stint in London after attaining his Accountant’s degree. He decided to buy me a house and we picked Langebaan also on the West Coast but nearer to Cape Town. Here I met Denis Lees and began to take painting lessons with him.

Denis and his wife Laura had a wonderful house with the studio on top at Jakopsbaai (Jacobs Bay). Laura and I cooked many a good meal in their roomy kitchen with glasses of wine to hand. When I moved to Joburg they moved to Taiwan where they stayed for five years teaching English. Denis recently popped up on facebook looking for me. I learnt he was living in Reitz and I travelled down there, only a two and a half hour journey for three days of tuition. He is a wonderful teacher. He has moved on to Balito Bay so I will go and see him there in the new year.

Molly, Dennis, and Eleanor

Susan and I started a little magazine for the West Coast called Out and About on the West Coast. This led to me travelling in South Africa to begin with and we began to take her four children on adventures. When I ventured into Botswana, Namibia and Zambia we produced guidebooks for the three countries. Susan taught herself graphic art and did all the advertisements that I sold. I did most of the travelling and selling but she joined me at times and we had exceptional times together. We marketed the books at the World Travel Fair in London, ITB in Berlin and at the convention centre in Durban.

Diz was instrumental in introducing me to Joy Bianchi. Joy was born on the Isle of Wight and arrived in Africa when she was seventeen. Her brother was working on the copper mines in Ndola in then Northern Rhodesia now Zambia. She married charming Con Bianchi, he with twinkling bedroom eyes and a great dancer. In next to no time she was living in the bush with four children! She had met Diz there when she too was on the copper belt with two children, Sue and Dori. There was a thriving horse community there.

Diz somewhere on the Delta

I met Dori when she joined Diz in Philadelphia with her little daughter Jordan. Sue met her husband, a vet, there and the two immigrated to Australia where they have a chain of veterinary surgeries and two now grown up daughters.

Joy lived in a large old farmhouse in Gaborone. Her daughter Eileen had married an air force technician who had a terrible accident while on duty in Walvis Bay in Namibia. He became a paraplegic and Joy and Con dedicated their lives to helping the family and the two boys Glen and Ryan. Con built a riding stable for Eileen to teach riding and have an income. The boys became friends with Susan’s children especially when Susan moved to Maun in Botswana. Tragically Glen was electrocuted while working in a fuel from plants factory during his grandfather’s final days.

Joy and I enjoying a glass of wine on the West Coast

Tj had been working in London and let me know that he was returning overland. Could I meet him at Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe? I did and he greeted me. “My Mother I presume?” Tj was keen to go into the Okavango Delta and so was I. Accordingly we travelled to Maun where I met Tiaan Theron, one of the best guides in Botswana. Tiaan took us to the mokoro station in Moremi where we met our poler who took us into the delta.

The first night it rained cats and dogs. Lions roared! Elephants screamed. We shivered in our little tent but the next day the heat was back. Our poler turned out to be an excellent guide and one morning very early we crept up to within twenty feet of a feeding elephant. The poler kept testing the wind with his licked finger and after a few minutes we retreated. We were captivated by this wilderness and when Tiaan picked us up and joined us for a beer I asked him if he would take my grandchildren into the delta. “Provided they know I am boss and they listen to me!” Many adventures and years later we are still friends.

One year Tiaan phoned me and said he had a safari company for sale. Mick and I persuaded Susan who was then living with me in Langebaan during a difficult divorce to take up the offer. Mick put up the money and Susan and her kids lived in Maun for many a year.

Over the years whenever I went to Botswana I stayed with Joy and we had a very deep friendship. Joy was a top dressage judge in Gaborone so we had horses in common. However finances caught up with Joy during her retirement and she finally relocated to the UK. Her dog Thebe, a harlequin Great Dane, spent the rest of her life with Joy’s one son Ricky who lives in Kleinsee with Susan. Thebe has just recently died. Very sad, as she saved my life twice when under attack at Joy’s house outside Gaborone.

Michelle, Ryan and Jacques fishing in the Limpopo

I cannot talk of Botswana without mentioning Norma Watson and her husband who owned Le Roo La Tau at the time. The name means the footsteps of the lion. We were always welcome there and Steve, their guide, took us on some very memorable safaris. Norma was a patron of the lovely Khama Reserve that is a sanctuary for breeding rhinos.

Eventually Susan and I were doing books for Namibia and Zambia as well. We first went into Zambia when a man in rags with an AK47 under a tree was the road block. How things have changed. Our books became so popular that we were ultimately hosted by top safari outfits such as Robin Pope Safaris and Shenton Safaris as well as Norman Carr Safaris.

Jenny came with me on a walking safari with Robin Pope safaris at Mupamadzi river in the remote north west of the park. One morning we came back very hot and Jenny told our guide that we were going to take a skinny dip in the shallow river. He obligingly cleared thee camp of staff and Jen and I wallowed with bums to the sky cooling off! Jo Pope told us that the other guests had so enjoyed our company that we were welcome any time. Susan I stayed at Nsefu on several occasions.

Robin Pope Safaris

I stayed with Derek Shenton at Mwambo and Kaingo camp often. One night he took me on a night drive and we heard a peculiar mewing sound coming from a lioness. Sometime after I was in Kutze Reserve in Botswana, where there were very curious lions and I heard the same noise. We got into our vehicles immediately and sure enough the pride came walking through.

Time moved on and the road was a long one from Langebaan to Mozambique and Botswana. Mick had married Mandy and lived in Johannesburg as did TJ, married to Maud. Mick had one daughter with his first wife Marie, Meg currently working in London. Mandy had two girls who readily adopted me as a granny. Kate is an accountant and living here while her sister Sarah is living with her father in New Zealand. TJ and Maud were also living in Johannesburg and both Mick and I thought it would be better to move up here. Mick sold the Langebaan house and bought the cottage that I now have in a retirement village.

Joy and her one son live here as does her cousin Gail who has also been a friend for all the years I have known Joy. The other son lives in Cape Town and has a young son. She has recently met a life partner and they travel into Kruger National Park frequently also spending weekends away  at the little known places around the country.

I have made new friends here, belong to Four Seasons Art studio under Sue Prior who has proved to be another friend. The other artists come from all walks of life and were very supportive during my time in hospital for the new hip replacement bringing me a marvelous hamper that also contained goodies for Jack my little dachshund.

I am travelling again. Just come back from Nelspruit and Kruger Park and will be off to see Susan in September where she lives at Kleinsee on the West coast then off to Mozambique for the Christmas holidays. Who knows where next? Probably Balito Bay near Durban for more art lessons from Denis. See him on the internet under Denis Lees and please check in to Four Seasons Studio as well. My adventures in these countries are often featured in the novels I write and the blogs I get out  every two weeks or so.

A VISIT TO THE LOWVELD

I had accumulated a fair amount of ‘katunda’ (Zambian name for things) that I wanted to get to Tofo in Mozambique to the Casa that my daughter Susan and I share. The thing was that it is not long since my hip replacement and my little car is not suited to the long drive from Komatipoort in South Africa to Tofo some 800ks north in Mozambique.

In the early hours a possible solution occurred to me. Mark Spence runs a transport service between Tofo and Nelspruit. Why not ask him if I bring the ‘katunda’ to Nelspruit what he would charge me for transporting it to Tofo. Mark came up with a plan as he had a problem of getting two specialist batteries from Johannesburg where I live to Tofo. Could I bring them and he would transport my things up to Tofo at no charge. I jumped at the deal.

In the early days in Mozambique we would be amused and amazed at how derelict bakkies would crab along the main road loaded to the hilt with goods and people.  A bakkie is a van with no cover over the back.  Well my little Toyoto Yaris named Emily by my youngest grandson, Greg, looked much like those vehicles, packed to the roof with various items. However she drove a straight line to Nelspruit early one Sunday morning due east with the rising sun difficult to drive into as I had a bout of Blepharitis, a nasty infection of the eyes that according to the eye specialist is hard to cure and recurs every now and then.

The N4 takes one right down from the highveld where Johannesburg is to the Lowveld. Highveld is a plateau inland with an altitude of about 1500m to not below 2100m.  Veld is the Afrikaans word for field but in reality means area. The lowveld is described as an elevation of between 150 and 600m above sea level. The highveld in the winter is very cold during the night and early morning with generally sunny days. The lowveld has a more tropical climate and is much warmer at this time of year. It sits in tropical vegetation with large plantations of citrus and avocado and macadams and litchis. My journey was delayed by road construction but I ultimately reached the capital of the lowveld, Nelspruit.

Nelspruit is a large town with shops and factories and an international airport servicing visitors to the Kruger National Park. President Paul Kruger was concerned about preserving the animals of the lowveld and set aside an area between the Sabie and Crocodile Rivers for restricted hunting in 1884. In 1898 the Sabie Game reserve was established, later named the Kruger National Park. The Park is home to the big five and attracts not only South Africans but visitors from all over the world.

I was directed to a destination just off the airport road and successfully delivered my load before enjoying a coffee at the Mug and Bean and a long chat with my dear friend Chris Williams. I was in the bar in Turtle Cove in Tofo one day when I heard my neighbour Mark chatting to this unknown man about finding a clay brick factory on the way to Maxixe, the commercial town opposite to Inhambane on the estuary. I asked if I could come too and accordingly we set off the next day. We found the brick factory, everything done by hand with the end results beautiful terra cotta bricks. Chris and I chatted away during the trip and remained great friends ever after.

Chris and his wife Kirsten live on one of the hilly estates that surround Nelspruit with a bunch of pointer dogs. He showed me the pictures of his new fence as the dogs are prey for the bush pigs that live there not to mention a leopard. Chris and Kirsten are passionate about their wild garden but equally passionate about their pointers!

Chris’s mother, Sasquia is an artist who embroiders the most wonderful tapestries. We spent some time together at Tofo one year and Jose the local man that looks after our Casa had to carry chairs, a table, a picnic basket and wine for us to spend a lunch hour at the monument at Tofino. There we sat like two Edwardian ladies sipping wine and nibbling on goodies when the ocean below us was erupted and a pod of Southern Right whales breached in the deep water that hugs the promontory. What a sight! The monument is a stark cement cone with a raised fist at the top that the Russians built when they were in Mozambique.

My first overnight was at Machadodorp as I was concerned that my shoulder would not last the whole way to Nelspruit. This small town was named after Joachim Machado, the Portuguese surveyor and governor of Mozambique who located the route of the railway from Lourenco Marques as it was then, now Maputo, to Pretoria. The town started as a railway station. I drove through as I was early for my B & B, Pat’s Place and wandered through the town, looking for a pub to have a glass of wine. Several watering holes were to be seen but none open and I was later told that you have to have your tipple just after church comes out and then everything shuts down for the rest of the Sunday.

Then I saw a large sign for a Hydro resort with Pieter’s number on it. I took the dirt road and eventually drove over a little causeway but could find nobody at the resort that looked forsaken. I parked beneath the trees and had my picnic with a glass of wine when Pieter turned up. We chatted and I promised to stay on my return journey. Then I departed for Pat’s Place, a hop and a skip away and spent the night there.

I took the Schoonmaker’s drift route to Nelspruit and was delayed by road works. However I phoned the contact in White River where I was to drop off my load and he gave me detailed directions to his home near the International airport that services the visitors to Kruger National Park. I duly dropped off the katunda and could almost hear Emily sigh with relief!

Back to my trip. After doings some shopping at the Crossings shopping centre I stayed in a B & B that evening and the following day drove down to Komatipoort where I turned through the town to the Crocodile Gate bridge entrance to the Kruger National Park. I spent the morning cruising around coming upon elephant and giraffe and plains game but found it impossible to take decent photos with my new camera being hampered by my right arm were a break in the humerus had not healed properly and two pins are half out impending my movement. However it was wonderful being in the bush again; just the smell and the dust and the space filled me with joy. Not to mention the help and greetings from the staff, all rather intrigued by this gogo travelling on her own. They took to calling me Gogo Joyce. Gogo means grandmother.

That afternoon I went in search of Marloth Park which is a wildlife sanctuary situated on the Southern border of Kruger Park along the Crocodile River. I had never been there and was amazed at just how big it was. I got lost but found the little shopping centre where a kind lady telephoned Doringpoort where I was to stay and they came to fetch me. I had a dear little cottage for two called Lemoentjie (little lemon) with Jane to clean for me, a huge double bed and an incomprehensible modern plate stove that I had to tap softly! I can tell you that I gave it all the wrong commands but managed to feed myself for three days!

My chalet in Dooringpoort

Once of my visitors at Marloth Park

Each morning I would drive the 14ks to Kruger and one morning I saw a very nervous jackal in an open space. It kept looking towards a fallen log beneath which was long grass. I was sure I could see movement there but had no binoculars so moved on after a while and returned a little later. There, not far from the log lay a cheetah. She was crouched with her gaze focused on some prey that I could not see beyond some vegetation. Suddenly she sprang into full speed and that long stride just ate up the ground as she sprinted off to attack probably an impala.

That was the highlight of my time in the park as I had seen this only on wildlife films; that does not compare to being witness to the real thing. I got home that afternoon to a herd of Zebra in my garden. The next day someone came to warn me not to go walking as a herd of buffalo were just down the road. The day I was packing to leave a lion roared very close by. A really lovely stay and Doringpoort comes with my recommendation to anyone who cares to contact them.

Ellies having a joyous time in a mud pool

My next stop was a place called Kaapsehoop. I had been told by a patron of The View pub here that it was a must. The road from Nelspruit winds up and up with steep drops, pine and eucalyptus plantations on the crests of the mountains, very little traffic and a good road. Finally I come across road signs telling me to beware of the wild horses. This was unexpected as they had not been mentioned. I saw several of them, Boerperd types (farmer horses) shaggy animals, not very big but with a reputation for hardiness.

The wild horses at Kaapse Hoop

These horses are feral, not wild, as they came from domesticated stock probably escaped from gold miners or the police. The altitude here is 1486 metres and the climate alternates with extreme cold and extreme heat that keeps the parasites down. The horses are sometimes seen alone or in small bachelor herds but the breeding herds can be up to 20 animals. There are approximately 200 of these elusive horses with plenty of grazing and water available. The new road built in 1980 takes its toll in spite of the large signs and of broken limbs from falls into the   open cast mines from the gold mining time.

The village itself clings to a hillside with the main street very short. I was struck by the grey oddly shaped boulders on the slopes approaching the village. One cluster is so peculiar that it is called Duiwelskantoor (Devil’s office). Gold was discovered in the streams on 3 June 1882

by French Bob (Auguste Robert) who called it the Pioneer Reef, starting a gold rush that included Barberton before it was found in Johannesburg.

I passed one restaurant and stopped at Salvador Pub where the friendly Malawian barman told me that the workers of the village had to leave each day when their duties were over. He however said he enjoyed the quiet and safety of the place. Just before coming upon the village I could see the peasant cottages along an incline. A line of little shops is adjacent to the pub selling clothing and glass works.

I took my glass of wine and sat in the sun in the garden chatting to three bikers who often take a tour of this area from Nelspruit. Eventually I had to leave and my little car started the long road downhill to Waterval Boven (above the waterfall) passing through a tunnel and on to Machadodorp.

I stopped at the gaily painted pub that had attracted me on my way down from the Highveld. It was called The Hog and that Sunday was closed. I was captivated immediately by the warm welcome and the stuffed warthog on the wall as well as memorabilia of the Beatles, Churchill and much more. I asked for a glass of dry white wine and was presented with a tumbler full! Just as well I had not far to go to the Hydro and my bed for the night!

The company was good; the young barmaid a gregarious personality and two local gentlemen. One left shortly and a newcomer arrived with the build of a rugby forward. I thought he must have be a farmer but I was wrong. He told me he was in construction but he was an easy conversationalist and we got on famously. who proved to be a good conversationalist? Julius  loved to travel to the little lesser known destinations just as I do so we exchanged tales of our travels.

Eventually Julius told me how he and his wife had lost a son in a motor accident. Julius decided that year that he wanted to spend Christmas on his own far away from the madding crowd. They found themselves in the Northern Cape and got lost. Eventually they came upon the little village of Vanzylsrus on the border with Botswana. In this very small village but a man and his wife made their home. They had two sons who when they grew up left for Johannesburg, the city offering more to the young people than the isolation of this village where there was nothing for young people to do.

Julius said that this man and his wife emerged from their house and invited them in “We were expecting you. The table is set and the food is ready.” Julius was dumbfounded and asked how come they were expected. He was told that the two always expected visitors on Christmas day rather than missing their boys. People often got lost looking for the border or had car trouble and they invited them into the Christmas table. Julius heard from someone else a few years later that the sons had eventually returned to visit their parents with their wives and children.

The Hog Pub in Machadadorp

A welcome glass of wine in The Hog Pub

A fitting tale for my last stop where I was settled into a little stone rondavel at the Hydro and listened to Pieter as he described the very clear water of the spa and how the resort used to be very popular. It reminded me of holidays when my children were small and cheap lodging, lots of space for the kids to run and either baths or swimming pools or in fact like one holiday on the keurbooms River near Plettenberg bay, a river to cruise down. That particular holiday saw my sister and her husband, their children and myself and my two children decided on Keurbooms River for our holiday. We hired a caravan but as we had never holidayed in one before we battled to get the thing level. Eventually our neighbours stopped laughing at us and showed us how! We all had a wonderful holiday.

The next day the miles flew as I grew nearer to being with Jack, my dachshund again. Jack had been having his holiday being spoilt to pieces by my friend Heather. Heather told me he was reluctant to come into my house while I was away and when she brought him to my house he pulled back until he heard my voice. Then the long little body wriggled and ran in circles and finally jumped up on my lap with those liquid brown eyes welcoming me!

 

DURBAN JULY FEVER

This South African coastal city is gripped by July Fever when everyone has the name of a horse on his or her lips. The race is run on the first Saturday in July and is a social event that draws the rich and the famous and the ordinary punters who love the game. This year the talk is of the exceptional three year old colt trained by Mike de Kock, Hawaam, but then there is racing and anything could happen.

I remember the great Syd Laird trained Sea Cottage, who was top of the betting when it opened that year. The bookmakers stood to lose a fortune if the horse won and one of them attempted to stop the horse by shooting him. Fortunately Sea Cottage was not killed but could not run because of the bullet lodged in his quarter.

Sea Cottage posing with trainer Syd Laird

The following year, 1966 Sea Cottage did run but came third to his stable companion Java head. I knew Java head’s jockey Johnny Cawcutt and he told me that after galloping Java Head over four furlongs on the Thursday morning he was convinced that nothing could beat his mount. This proved to be the case and here is a picture of the two after the race. Java Head carried 127lb, the top weight of the day, and broke the course record.

The great Java Head and Johnny Cawcutt

I have a particular interest in him as he was retired into my care. I hunted him with the Cape Hunt and Polo Club and never rode a stronger horse. He had a lovely temperament and was a great favourite at the riding school I ran then with the pupils. He had a liking for polony sandwiches and the children’s mothers had to pack them when they came for riding lessons especially for Java Head!

This however did not diminish Sea Cottage’s record. He was a great horse and his performance in the Queen’s Plate at Kenilworth is stamped on my mind forever. The horse was tailed off last as the field came around the bend when jockey Sivewright tapped him on the shoulder and Sea Cottage took off to win going away. The win was described as a terrifying stretch run!

Sea cottage won the July in 1967 beating Jollify. Robert Sivewright said “He was a horse the like of which was rarely seen anywhere in the world.”

I am so looking forward to this year’s race. I believe 40 000 visitors are expected in Durban and the race is going to be a great affair with beauty and fashions and of course the racehorses.

Some years ago I wrote a novel called July Fever,based in part on some of my experiences in the racing industry, of course bearing little relation to any actual events (wink, wink). The book was launched in 1980 at the July and received rave notices from the press with one newspaper labelling it the “Book of the Month!”

Here is the unexpected comment I received from a reader whom I do not know and have never met. I hope it tempts you to buy this racy, sexy novel from Amazon.

“Hi, I recently picked up a copy of your book at a second hand book store near where the old New Market race course used to be. As an avid racing fan it caught my attention straight away.

I would like to congratulate you on an excellent book which I found difficult to put down when reading it. I dabbled in part ownership of a race horse a few years ago but I’m afraid it was no Free Reign and didn’t win a race. I attend races at Turfontein occasionally and really enjoy it. I do follow the horses every weekend and love the excitement of the races.”

 

 

 

OF LOST THINGS AND THINGS . . .

These days I am always losing my car keys and wander around like a lost soul until the redoubtable Thomas appears and finds them, firmly placing them were I can see them. Thomas is one of the gardeners here but has a heavy load on his shoulders. His brother was killed and it is Thomas’s responsibility to care for that family as well as his own so he does odd jobs after hours.

As a young student nurse I lost my glasses. I was nursing at Groote Schuur, the famous hospital in Cape Town where Chris Barnard pioneered the first heart transplant. In my ward was a veteran of the second world war his body still riddled with shrapnel that had to be removed piece by piece. He was an ardent Catholic and told me he would ask Saint Anthony to find the glasses and that I should pray to the saint too. Sure enough when I went down to Clifton beach in my off time the next day a kindly beach attendant produced them like a rabbit out of his pocket! Saint Anthony had heard my prayers!

I am always losing my way especially in Pretoria! Susan and children and I were on our way back from pastures far when we got lost there but were cheered up by little Ryan spotting a whole wall of advertising for Tassies, a red student wine that is a favourite of mine and can be found in the remotest corners of Southern Africa! It still amazes me how that and Coca Cola are delivered into the most out of the way places over the most appalling roads!

My family still laugh about the time when I had them driving round and round on our way to Mozambique looking for a guest house that I always stayed in but had forgotten that was on the way to Botswana!

One thing I do have though is a penchant for finding lost souls especially at Christmas time. One year at Mozambique I met Graham and his lady Cheryl at the bar in Turtle Cove. They were camping, family in far off places, knowing nobody. I invited them to join us for Christmas lunch. On Christmas morning Graham was the first on the beach to see the local fishermen take to the sea in their tiny rowing boats. They fish for marlin and sailfish and swordfish. For marlin they have another boat following them in case of capsizing. None of them can swim. This morning the catch was swordfish and Graham bought a kilo and surprised the rest of us with fresh shichimi for starters! I must say it took a lot of 2M beer to do the thing but it was divine! Graham and Cheryl are still friends albeit that they stay in the UK now.

Another Christmas also in Mozambique we asked a young woman who was teaching yoga at Nic and Nelia’s lovely yoga centre at Turtle Cove. Agni travelled the world teaching yoga and the marvelous dances she did with a hulahoop. She made me a small dream catcher that still hangs on my patio. Lets hope it is catching and holding a couple of dreams I still have!

It is not surprising then that when I came across the tale of the Lost City of  the Kalahari while delving into the archives of the South African library in Cape Town that I was instantly captured by the story that begins in 1885 when G.A. Forini, a wealthy American, set up an expedition into the Kalahari as it was then called. Now its name is the Kgaligadi.

Farini took as his tracker an old man, Gert Louw, of Bushman extraction whose tales of ‘a hunter’s paradise’ lured Farini and amongst whose things Farini found diamonds.

Farini was not lured by the prospect of wealth; the spirit of adventure burned brightly within him. He also took his son ‘Lulu’ with him. Lulu was a portrait painter and photographer, a young man of courage. This was a time when photographers from all over the world were descending on the City of Gold, Johannesburg and Kimberly and the big hole.

After arriving in Cape Town they set off on the mail express bound for Kimberley. I think that must have been a Cape Cart.  On the fifth day of their journey they were near Rietfontein accompanied by the Little People who knew the area well.

Farini was interested in sand and stone and all living things. He was not the type of person to falsify reports of things that he had seen. Their next camp was Tunobis on a plateau around 3,460 feet above sea level and nearly 10 feet higher that when Galtona was there so that Farini deduced that Lake Ngami was getting gradually shallower.

Another three days and they were at the Ki Ki mountains and then pushed on to the K’gung forest where they camped under large trees. They shot a giraffe and the next morning lions were feeding on the kill when Lulu arrived in the wagon.

Lulu left the wagon and ran through the grass with his camera on his back to take a shot of the lions feeding. He calmly focused the camera and took the shot then Farini and Lulu and his companion opened fire on the lions.

The lions charged in the direction the bullets were coming from and Lulu dropped his gun, got back under the black cloth of his camera and focused on the charging lions! He took one picture and, when a big male charged the camera he charged the lion with his tripod. This proved too much for the lion and the animal retreated!

Their supplies were dwindling and Farini resolved to go to Upington to replenish them. Travelling south they camped near Ki Ki mountain beside a long line of stone that looked like the wall of China after an earthquake but which proved to be the ruins of quite an extensive structure, in some places buried beneath the sand, but in others in full view.

They traced the remains for nearly a mile. The general outline was in the form of an arc, inside of which lay at intervals of about forty feet apart, a series of heaps of masonry in the shape of an oval or an obtuse ellipse, about a foot and a half deep, with a flat bottom, but hollowed out at the sides for about one foot from the edge.

Farini got his men to excavate with shovels and the joints of the stones were perfect. He thought this must have been a city or a place of worship. The following day they continued with the excavations and came upon a pavement about twenty feet long intersected with another to make a Maltese cross in the centre of which must have stood an altar.

When he returned Farini wrote the book ‘Lost City of the Kalahari’ that contained a map of his journey but the many others that followed could find no trace of the lost city and he was discredited.

As late as 1959 a Dr. Haldeman regularly took his family on an expedition during the July school holidays having read Farini’s accounts, looking for the lost city. “We went to places nobody had been before, shooting game for the pot. My son Scott, 16 shot his first buck, Lynne 14, helped her mother with the camp cooking, May and Kaye 11 years had to do the washing up while Lee, 4 was the camp mascot.

On one trip they wanted to reach Khakami, and Mapare, the chief of all the Mkalaharis recognized his father’s picture in Farini’s book. He agreed to go with them. They eventually came to Bohelo Batu meaning ‘the people who died’. Those that had reached the pan to find it dry had died.

On their journey they passed Manung pan and later Lekubu a few miles from Khakami pan. This country fitted Farini’s description of the location of the Lost City but they did not find it.

At Khanzi they showed the picture of the Lost City and asked if anyone had seen it but the answer was no. That night there were two leopard in their camp and they heard that a leopard had come into a hut in Kang and killed two children and that a boy, sleeping by the fire had been killed by a lion.

They planned their next expedition with Martinus Drotsky who discovered the Drostky Caves along the Western delta of Botswana to be their companion. Charlie Swart had reported seeing a fabulous ruin of white stones in 1905. A half mile long wall with pillar posts at a single entrance, enclosed a half moon circle of buildings and graves. He rode out from a border beacon for about sixteen miles to see it but the beacons were now non-existent.

There were many stories about this and Martinus Drotsky had heard that there were seven Bushmen tribes with seven ancient villages in the form of a star with a big secret and sacred place in the middle of them, which could be the Lost City.

Martinus was 73 at the time and in his youth he could run down a steenbok (small agile antelope) within thirty miles and kill it by hand. He could crawl down a porcupine hole and kill it just as the bushmen did. He would crawl in naked with a four foot pointed stick, then make a mound of sand between him and the porcupine to prevent the porcupine making a pincushion out of him. He would then kill the porcupine with the stick and pull it out and have food for a week!

He is rumoured to have once ran 125 miles through the sand and brush in twenty five hours without taking food or water!

In the area of this search they were visited every night by friendly Bushmen who told them that all the Bushmen knew where the ruins were but were too afraid to tell them. One said “The stones were cemented together with better cement than we have today.” One man took them to his father, who had seen the ruins, but the old man also refused to tell. Their search took them on through the Aha mountains past Kai Kai to the Drotsky caves.

The Haldemans returned again and again as did others too, to no avail. Lawrence Green in To the River’s Edge quotes a letter he received in 1936 from Mr. Paver saying “When you see the country you realize that one can spend months searching the sand dunes without covering a fraction of the area in which the Lost City may be situated.”

Lawrence met Dr. Borcherds in Upington who told him that he had recently met farmers who had been poaching game in Botswana and found the Lost City and their description tallied exactly with Farini’s in his book.

Dr. Borcherds told them that a policeman patrolling on a camel had come across an ancient stone quarry in the desert. Deep in the sand the sergeant discovered the remains of what looked like a boat some fourteen foot in length. This did not surprise Dr. Borcherds as it was believed that the rivers once came south from Lake Ngami to join the Orange River.

No doubt the dunes will one day give up their secret to a modern day adventurer. My friend Tiaan Theron rang me one day very excited that Lake Ngami was flowing south and we set off for a picnic immediately. Hundreds of water birds were wading in the shallows as the water came pouring onto the pan. It is a long while ago and I don’t know if since the waters have once more retreated. I do know that the Savuti Channel that was dry for many years suddenly had water one year with no explanation, this is possibly due to the plate deep beneath the Botswana earth that shifts every now and then altering the landscape above.

The area in question runs along the border of Namibia northwards to the Western Delta and the  distances involved are vast so who knows, one day the red desert sands may shift again to reveal the mystery that has captured our imaginations for so long.