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.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

OF MINING AND SUCH

I was in Zambia writing one of the early guide books that my daughter and I were publishing. My dear friend Diz Bostock was staying with her friends Tony and Ann and she invited me to join them. Their home was on the banks of the Kafue River, a wonderful old colonial style farmhouse with a wide verandah overlooking the river. My bedroom window looked out at the river with the view partially blocked by a very tall tree with a trunk unblemished by the emergence of branches until the very top, where they branched out when it looked as though the tree would reach heaven. Ann called it the Tree to Heaven.

I would sit with my laptop on the verandah writing about my travels and a Samanga monkey would swing from branch to branch on the opposite bank of the river to check t hat I had my nose to the grindstone! Sundays would see us having a leisurely full English breakfast attended by two Great Danes and a Rottweiler who were served exactly what we were eating! One morning Tony asked me if I would like a flight over the Copper belt and I immediately said yes. Only later did he tell me that he had built the little aircraft himself from a kit! However he was a good pilot and the little craft flew happily over the countryside and the town, giving me a birds eye view.

My last blog led me to think of the Copper belt as a natural follow up from that story. I was fortunate in that Orion Mining offered to sponsor a page in my Inside Zambia guide book about the early mining on the Copper Belt. Copper was the first metal used by man in any quantity and mining began over 6000 years ago in other parts of the world. Early Portuguese writing refers to mines in Zambia in the 14^th century. David Livingstone met a caravan with slaves carrying five tons of copper to the coast in 1868.

The first European prospectors found Africans still using old methods of mining and smelting copper. In Shaba an ancient working produced at least 100 000 tons of copper. Smelting was surrounded by secrecy and sorcery, the smelting process believed to be the spirits of the mountain showing their miraculous powers in allowing the rock to pour forth its riches. In 1920 R.R. Sharp and his colleague Raymond Brooks documented the ancient art stage by stage.

In 1962 Ndola Copper Refineries had a stand at the Ndola show where it featured demonstrations of this ancient art. Solidified copper in the shape of a capital ‘I’, a St. Andrews cross or a capital ‘H’ was used as currency throughout South and Central Africa. The early prospectors searched for these ancient mines and most of the modern copper mines originated from them. The copper flower also pointed to the presence of copper; a small blue flower classified as Becium homblei de Wild. Kew gardens found that this plant contains more than 1000 parts of copper per million and the roots up to 4000 parts. In a lot of mine sites the flower correctly indicated the presence of copper.

Tom Davey discovered the lead and zinc deposits at Broken Hill now called Kabwe. This mine had the most interesting minerals in all Zambia with the worldwide reputation of producing beautiful specimens of some 25 different minerals, including lead, zinc, vanadium and copper. When the railway came to Kabwe quarrying began in earnest and the ore was exported to Britain, but the mine was fraught with difficulties and was never a paying proposition. After the Great Depression deeper shafts were sunk and by 1960 Broken Hill had produced 315 000 tons of lead and 625 tons of zinc. The ore eventually ran out and nationalization brought the closure of the mine.

Fired by enthusiasm, Tom Davey asked William Collier and another prospector, J. J. O’Donoghue, to prospect the area around Ndola and Luanshya to look for signs of ancient workings. Collier was walking through the bush on his quest when an old man directed him to the area of the Luanshya stream. Here in a clearing a roan antelope was offering the classic shot. It fell on a patch of grey shale and Bill’s qualified eye spotted green malachite. Adjacent were the ancient workings he had been looking for. The seam he prospected was in a ‘U’ shape and he pegged 50 claims naming one arm of the ‘U’ Roan Antelope and the other Rietbok.

The mining was carried on until they eventually found Bwana Makubwa mine (another story). In 1925 an American engineer Russell J. Parker came to survey the mine and subsequent to his findings William Selkirk arrived in 1926 suggesting a daring program of drilling that revealed the rich vein that gave rise to the Copper Belt of today.

Now I must tell you of Susan, children and my experience buying precious ore. We were trundling over a tortuous pass between South Luangwa and the border into Zimbabwe when we noticed youngsters standing on the side of the road holding rocks from which triangles of amethyst grew. We stopped and haggled, eventually buying a couple that would look good in any display in one’s home. Another youngster was selling what looked like rough rubies in a small plastic container. He would not open the plastic so we took a chance and of course they were fake! The amethysts are still in Susan’s home today, in spite of having gone walkabout when certain guests were staying. However Shaun and Jacques nicked them back on a return visit to these particular guests!

I was in Lusaka when I was shown around a semi-precious gem workshop and bought my one granddaughter Meg a sapphire, a deep red stone that my daughter in law, Maud has today and another purple that Maud is keeping for another granddaughter, Michele. Since then young Neve has appeared so I will have to make a plan for her although at 5 years she firmly believes that the shining ear ring studs in her little ears are diamonds! I think her father will have to rectify that for her 21^st birthday!

Writing about the copper belt brings to mind the Chichele Mofu tree that stands in the middle of the dual carriageway between the mining towns of Kitwe and Ndola. The local people believe it to be a house of spirits where the spirit of an ancient chief resides. The tree has been declared an historical monument. At its base is this poem.

Ye who would pass by and raise your hand against me, harken ere you harm me.

I am the heat of your hearth on cold winter nights, the friendly shade screening you from the summer sun and my fruits are refreshing draughts quenching your thirst as you journey on.

I am the beam that holds your house, the board of your table, the bed on which you lie and the timber that builds your boat.

I am the handle of your hoe and the door of your homestead, the wood of your cradle and the shell of your coffin.

I am the gift of God and the friend of man.

Ye who passes by, listen to my prayer . . .

HARM ME NOT.

A TOWN CALLED ZUMBO

My daughter and I own a place in Tofo, Mozambique and during the recent bad weather the thatch blew off the roof. Now our roof could be likened that of an early wooden cathedral, it is so high and to replace the thatch is no easy matter. So my thoughts have been in Mozambique which led to remembering a trip I had to the confluence of the Zambezi and the Luangwa rivers. Here it is that Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique meet. This little corner of our continent has a fascinating history to.

I stayed at Bridge Camp situated just off the Great East Road in Zambia. This was a good few years ago so I don’t know if the camp is still there. I had read a bit about this area so drove down to the town of Luangwa that in fact was originally called Fiera.

There is mention of a settlement called Zumbo in the Fiera district in 1546 that was abandoned in 1600. This was a Jesuit station about two and a half miles up the Zambezi from Fiera on the south bank. On modern maps Zumbo and Tete are about 220 miles apart. The Portuguese arrived here in 1546 and traded in gold ivory and copper as did a small party of Portuguese from Goa, India in 1720 that established a settlement on the small island of Chitakatira in the Zambezi. Francisco Pererir was the leader and earned his sobriquet of “The Terror” but kept the small community together. Eventually they outgrew the island and moved to Zumbo on the left bank of the Luangwa River.

Two different settlements existed at Zumbo and Fiera. In 1726 Father Pedro do Santissima Tridade, a Dominican priest, was installed as the vicar of Zumbo. During the thirty years that he stayed there he acquired the status of a cultural hero among the local population. According to legend he came from Sofala, itself the stuff of legends one being that it was called the city of gold and the Arabs used it as a port from which they travelled to the interior to buy gold, ivory and slaves. Sofala lies South of Beira but has a large sandbank in the entrance so that Beira was built to the north using much of the stone of the old Sofala buildings for its streets.

Father Pedro became famous for his piety and his medicines were still remembered over a hundred years later when David Livingstone passed this way on his trans-Africa journey. Livingstone’s diary of 29^th March 1856 reads “Oil of Father Pedros. Received the recipe for curing wounds from Mr. Candido and he calls it Oleo of Frei Pedros.”

From 1730 the main route for ivory trade, slaves, gold, copper and malachite from the north between the Kafue basin in Zambia and the Lunda and Biso country in Mozambique must have been down the Luangwa River to Zumbo and Feira. Glass beads that have been found on the Iron Age sites are likely to have been imports at this time. In the following years Chiefs by the name of Mburuma succeeded one another and one of the chiefs enlisted the aid of Chief Mpuka during an attack. As a reward he granted land along the west bank to Chief Mpuka who had been married to a Portuguese woman, who was killed in the fighting. The people of Chief Mpuka live there to this day.

One can still see the remains of the slave pits where slaves were kept in readiness for transportation onwards. One of the local chiefs, Kanyembo, had ambitions of creating a super race for he would measure his young men against a tree of about 6 ft. If they failed to grow to this height he would sell them to the slavers.

I sat on the opposite bank, in Zimbabwe, on the crumbling walls of the slave pits, tears in my eyes and goose bumps on my arms for the suffering of those who lost their freedom here.

There is a memorial at Fiera that reads as follows:

 FIERA

These are records of a 16^th century Portuguese settlement here abandoned in 1600. In the early 18^th century Portuguese colonialists arrived at Chitakatira Island moving soon afterwards to Zumbo with a subsidiary trading centre (Fiera) here. From 1730 to 1760 both settlements prospered greatly.

In 1745 a church and a convent were built here by Father Pedro Da S Trindade, a Dominican and vicar of Zumbo for 30 years. In 1804 Chief Mburuma 1V of the Senga destroyed Zumbo.

The merchants moved to Fiera but Zumbo was soon reoccupied to be destroyed again. In 1818 both settlements were again rebuilt but from 1826 trade gradually declined until shortly after 1830 when both settlements were abandoned.

In 1856 David Livingstone visited and saw the broken bell of the Mission. In 1887 John Harrison Clark (Changa Changa) set up his headquarters here maintaining law and order in the district.

The Chartered Company built their first boma here in 1902 and the township became an important staging post on the cattle route from Tanganyika to Southern Rhodesia. Its importance declined with the building of the railway.

BWANA CHANGA CHANGA

John Harrison Clark

A strange tale indeed. Rumour has it that John Harrison Clark, called Bwana Chang Changa, hailed from the Eastern Province. He was in love with a local girl who was promised to another. The two rivals fought and John shot his rival. Thinking he was dead John fled and wandered north where he landed up at Fiera. He arrived when the local Chief had died with no suitable replacement available. The tribe made John their Chief and called him Changa Changa. He married several of the local ladies and had many offspring. He trained the Senga tribes young men into an army to ward off slave traders while he indeed traded in ivory. He ruled here for some years until visited one day by one of Cecil Rhodes’s young men, Neville Pickering I believe. He was offered land if he would leave the tribe so that Rhodes’s men could develop the area. There is another story about his dealings with the British South African Company but my version is what I dug up in the Archive library in Cape Town.

John headed south and landed up at a mine that was then called Broken Hill now known as Kabwe. Here he became storemaster and ever since the mine storemaster is called Bwana Changa Changa (Bwana meaning Boss). He made history in becoming the owner of the first motor car in Zambia.

I love coming across these forgotten corners of our continent and ferreting out the history. When in Cape Town I visit the South African library and burrow into the old tomes, discovering many tales that Google does not have. The staff there are so helpful and recognize me when I appear every  year or  so. Then I head for the delightful restaurant in the Gardens started so long ago by the Dutch East India company to victual its ships seeking the sea route to the east, with centuries old trees around  me and a glass of wine to hand.

We will remember them…

This Friday morning at 6.30 I heard the strains of The Last Post on the radio. Of Course! Sunday the 11th is Remembrance Day. The First World War Armistice was declared at the eleventh hour of the 11^th day 1918.

In November 2011 Susan and I flew to London to attend the World Travel Mart. The English capital was still reeling from the awful events in America when the Twin Towers had been attacked by el Qaeda operatives. The city was on high alert with the remembrance service due to be held on the 11^th.

Susan and I stayed with our friends Andrew and Leanne de Jager and took the tube to the travel mart every day. Our duties done we wanted to attend the Remembrance ceremony but were being dissuaded due to the threat of a possible terrorist attack. I remember us walking down a London Street and simultaneously turning to one another. “No bloody likely is any pesky terrorist going to stop us going!”

We duly set out on that Sunday. Security was everywhere and we were guided through a metal detector that pinged when I went through. The policewoman searched me from top to toe and eventually said that I probably had some oil on my ski jacket that had set the machine off. She let us go.

We found a place behind some tall young Englishmen in their Burberry coats one pace from the barrier. Chatting about our experience we were overheard by the young men who turned to us laughing. “The Boers are here!” This was of course a referral to another war, the Boer War where Britain and the South Africans were engaged in conflict. I will not go into that here. We got on famously when they offered us their hip flasks of whisky!

Opposite we could see snipers on all the roofs. The old and young soldiers from current conflicts began marching past, men and women. I was touched as the British public shouted out their thanks to these servicemen and women. Tears came to my eyes.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth stepped out alone to lay the wreath on the Cenotaph standing all alone with her head bowed. A target for any terrorist! Two minutes silence commenced when not a pin could be heard amongst this huge crowd.

Little did I know then that the ritual of two minutes silence had its origins in South Africa. A Scotsman, Robert Rutherford Brydone who was born in Edinburgh immigrated to South Africa when he was twenty two. He had a career in insurance and became a town councilor in Cape Town. At a meeting in 1915 a man stood up and said “You will forget us as soon as we are gone!”

Mr. Brydone promised that the City would not forget them in their absence. He organized a monthly meeting to remember those fighting in Europe. The mayor of Cape Town at that time was Sir Harry Hands and his son was killed in Europe. Mr. Brydone suggested that the noon day gun would fire, marking a pause in activity in the city for people to pray for those in the war.

The first minutes of silence were observed in Cape Town on 14^th May 1918. A trumpeter played The Last Post from the balcony of Fletcher and Cartwright store.

Enter Sir Percy Fitzpatrick a mining financier, author and pioneer of the fruit industry in South Africa. Sir Percy is still well known for his book Jock of the Bushveld. Sir Percy suggested to the British Government that it should become a ritual to have a 2 minutes silence for the fallen on Remembrance Day. This has been observed since 1919.

The Poem “For The Fallen” was written by Laurence Binyon in 1914 while sitting on the cliffs overlooking the sea from the Cornish coastline. The fourth stanza was adopted by the Royal British Legion for remembrance ceremonies.

 

They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

 

Well I remember my Grandfather Tagg teaching these words to me

The Moths also used The Poem for the Fallen. Moth stands for the Memorable Order of the Tin Hats. They were marvelous after my Grandfather died, helping to ease my grandmother’s life as she was crippled by arthritis.

Grandfather was born in Shoreditch London within the sound of the Bow Bells so he was a Cockney. Grandfather took the King’s shilling. This was a custom in the English Civil War but has stood the test of time and is still used today. It meant that he agreed to serve his country for the then payment of a shilling a day. He came to South Africa as a signaler and was stationed at Norval’s Pont near Colesberg in the Karoo.  He survived the Boer war (now called the South African War) and his name is on the Grahamstown war memorial.

Norval’s pont is named after a Scotsman from Glasgow who ended up in Colesberg. He designed woolen hats to protect the head from the elements. It is very cold in the Karoo in the winter. He bought a sheep farm so that he had the wool for the hats but gazed longingly over the Orange River wondering how further he could market his hats. “Ah! A Pont!”

This pont was used by the early Trekkers from the Cape and later from both sides during the Boer War. My Grandfather had to guard it then!

Back to Remembrance Sunday. During the Apartheid era young men had to do National Service and were stationed in far off places like the Caprivi Strip and ultimately were drafted into Angola against the Cubans. One such was my son and my then son-in law.

When in Berlin for the Travel Fair I visited the place where Churchill, Eisenhower and Stalin met to agree the terms of the end of the war. Churchill never trusted Stalin. We should also remember another South African intimately involved in that war. Jan Smuts. Churchill particularly requested his help in this war making him a General. Jan Smuts is credited with the idea of the League of Nations that evolved into the United Nations.

We must remember in this modern South Africa that many black soldiers served in both the first and second World wars and the Boer War and the South African War and in the conflict that was called the border war in South West Africa. At this time we remember them all, as the First World War song said:

 

Bless ‘em all

Bless ‘em all

The long and the short and the tall

Bless all those Sergeants and WO1’s

Bless all those Corporals and their blinkin’/bleeding sons

‘Cos we’re saying goodbye to them all

And back to their Billets they crawl

You’ll get no promotion this side of the ocean

So cheer up my lads, Bless ‘em all!

The song was written by Fred Godfrey and first recorded by George Formby. It was made famous by Gracie Fields and Vera Lynn.

 

 

 

 

OF WRITING AND SUCH . . .

 

I started writing as a child of ten. Blessed with a vivid imagination and spending the early years on a chicken farm in Kuilsriver near Cape Town, I could run wild while the path of my life was mapped out although unbeknownst to me at the time.

My younger sister had polio and had to wear a caliper. She was also frequently ill. My mother and father had bought the farm in partnership with a Welsh couple, Lalu and Taffy. The men went to work each day while the two women farmed chickens. My mother had a lot on her hands running the farm and looking after an ill child. I was left to my own devices.

Behind the chicken runs was a stretch of land that was covered in fynbos, the Afrikaans name for our floral shrubs and bulbs. Here I explored, loving the

freedom of being alone in this wild place. Back home I made up stories about my adventures.

Each Christmas I was given a couple of books, the most beloved of which were the Biggles books. Intrepid Biggles flew to exotic places such as the South Sea Islands, India and Borneo. I lapped them up and made up my own stories.

To the present. I wrote July Fever on an old manual Imperial typewriter. The original manuscript was about twenty pages long. By chance I met the then editor of YOU magazine, a popular monthly in South Africa and told him about the story. He asked to read it. His name was Peter and he had a great love of red wine. He invited me to join him and threw the manuscript at me. “You’ve got a story. Now write the book!”

He threw it back at me in all five times! Once he took a gulp of his wine, turned a page, looked up and asked “Have you ever had sex?” I bridled. “Of Course I have been married and have two children!” “Well then, write about it as it is and not this rubbish!”

I drove to Plettenburg Bay thinking about what Peter had said and in the Joyce family holiday home with wonderful views of the ocean I hammered the final copy out, true to Peter with a glass of red wine at my elbow! Returning to Cape Town I took it to him. Two days later we met at a restaurant and he handed it back with green corrections and turned the last page for me to see in his green writing “Wonderful! You are a writer!”

Then of course came the battle to find a publisher. Hodder and Stoughten sent it back with praise and apologies that at the time it was inadvisable to publish a South African writer. We were the polecats of the world because of the Apartheid policy of the Nationalist Government.

I found a private publisher and approached Frances Bond who ran a writing course in Howick to edit it which she did. Frances was very complimentary and also called me a writer! She undertook to launch the book at that year’s Durban July Handicap, the year was 1980.

The newspapers all gave the book great write praise and the leading Durban newspaper made it their book of the month.  That was a long time ago.

I met my friend Steve Blignaut, here in Johannesburg at one of our favourite pubs, The Irish Club. Steve was a fellow writer and he offered to help me put it on Amazon which we did. It has not flown, largely due to my computer incompetence and insufficient marketing but I am learning and you, my followers of the blog are I hope helping to get my writing known.

This week my first novella is on Kindle and will be on Amazon too. It is a story of love, betrayal and courage against the backdrop of the wild places of Southern Africa. I painted the cover picture myself and once again Steve has put it on Kindle for me while my younger son, TJ has helped with lodging my blogs and his wife Maud with getting the manuscript into one document for Steve. I can’t thank them enough.

My new novel, Bring me a Dream, with the theme of hunting and conservation set against the backdrop of the Lugenda Wilderness in Northern Mozambique will be out next month. Please look out for it. I also painted its cover.

Below you will see two of a set of three paintings that I have finished trying to portray what it is like to be a writer. The first with the eagles flying in an out of a page represents the ideas. The second tells of the loneliness. The bird at the foot is a Secretary bird, always alone, stalking across the Karoo that stretches for miles

with only a solitary windmill and distance farmhouse to be seen, searching for prey.

The third will try and portray the joy of getting one’s own book published!

 

 

 

OF A LADY FLIER AND BITS AND BOBS

 

Funny how sometimes smells linger on and remind one of yesteryear. Many, many years ago I attended my first Thoroughbred Yearling Sale at Germiston in the then Transvaal, South Africa. The sale was held at the Agricultural Show Grounds and the accommodation for the horses was really aimed at cattle so that the lines of stables were very close together and it was a hazardous thing to bring the fresh young horses out for trainers and prospective buyers to inspect.

The actual sale was in a large hall with seats around a central circle, the floor of which was strewn with fresh smelling sawdust. The auctioneer sat high above in a podium to spot the bidders. I was young, had just been introduced to the racing world and looked around in wonder. At the back of the stands someone was cooking silverside and offering it on rolls with mustard. I have never forgotten that smell, of the meat, the sawdust, the sweating horses, the murmured consultations of the trainers and their buyers and the sheer suspense as each young horse came under the hammer.

At the time Lady Kenmare, who used to have horses in Kenya had decided to buy some yearlings in South Africa. Her daughter, Pat Cavendish O’Neil was still in Kenya. You must try and read her fascinating books, A lion in the Bedroom and A Chimpanzee in the Wine Cellar. Anyway someone, I can’t remember who, introduced me to Lady Kenmare and her trainer, Beryl Markham.

Beryl Markham was the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo from east to west. When the early flying pioneers are lauded, it pains me that Beryl is never mentioned. She was a remarkable woman in that she was the first woman in Africa to be licensed as a racehorse trainer and probably the only woman in Kenya to have hunted with the chieftain of the Nandi Murani. Try and get her book, West with the Wind.

Now I sailed to the UK on a Union Castle Liner when I was eighteen. I had to bid a tearful goodbye to my first lover as my mother was adamant that our relationship should be broken. The hulls of these elegant liners were painted a soft pinky lilac with the chimney stacks black and red. The food was wonderful and the entertainment fun and of course there was a visit from King Neptune when we crossed the equator.

I had to find work and applied for a place as Air Hostess in the second intake of the then British European Airways. I was successful as had good legs and spoke Afrikaans that the examiners thought was Dutch! I was based at Ringway Airport in Manchester and flew on World War two Dakotas with ex Battle of Britain pilots to the Channel Islands, Ireland and further. Later I was based at Heathway and flew on Viking Turbo Prop aircraft. I had to laugh when tell this story to Janet, one of the women who attend the art studio that I do. Janet, much younger than I, had been an air hostess on SAA Boeings. “My God, Mols! Those aircraft you flew on came out of the ark!”

But I digress.  Beryl Markham flew from Kenya all the way to the Uk to make her attempt at a transatlantic flight against the prevailing wind and who should be sitting behind her, so terrified that he had to have a bottle of Doctor Turvey’s Elixir on his lap (Gin) to sustain him, but Bror Blixen himself, of Out of Africa fame. In fact Beryl used to fly and game spot for Bror who was a passionate hunter. Rumour had it that she had a fling with Denis Finch Hatton who was Karen Blixen’s lover; who knows, but it adds to the romance of the story.

Beryl’s brave little Gull began to splutter as she approached the shores of America. It coughed and spluttered until finally dying and she glided to the earth between rocks and into a swamp after flying for twenty-one hours and twenty-five minutes, hitting her head but able to climb out of the plane. Cape St. Breton Islanders found her and took her to the airport she had been bound for. In my book that still makes her the first woman to fly from East to West from England to America.

So; on to a wedding to be held next year when my eldest grandson Jacques is to marry the beautiful Denielle. I was thinking of a gift and have decided to make a book of all the safaris and excursions through Southern Africa that I dragged my grandchildren to. Today I was paging through the guide books his mother Susan and I produced on Botswana, Namibia and Zambia and will write some of the stories, insert pictures and give it to the happy couple as their wedding gift. Those of you in South Africa who follow this blog please do not spill the beans.

Of course you, my followers will be treated to some of the stories!

ALONG THE MOLOPO RIVER

KALAHARI
Red dunes, dry rivers.
Sweaty arms, icy shivers –
Extreme desert –
Upon my soul
Make me gentle
Make me bold
Give me strength
To carry on
In icy wind
And burning sun,
In your special community
If you need a human
Make it me.

My daughter and I took the grandchildren who were very young up to the then Kalahari Gemsbok Park. It is now the Kgaligadi Transfrontier Park in the North Western corner of South Africa. I went to the reference library in Cape Town gardens and did some research on our route.

The Northern Cape was like the old Wild West of America in the early days with bandits and other desperados living on the islands of the Orange River – now called the Gariep – far away from the reaches of the authorities in the Cape.

Our route lay from Upington and across the Molopo River, always dry in this Kalahari world. The Kalahari is an enormous semi-desert that stretches even as far as Zambia, appearing here and there. We stayed on that occasion at the Molopo Lodge and it was here that I first heard the tale of Scotty Smith, one of South Africa’s best remembered notorious outlaws.

Scotty Smith claimed to be the son of a Perthshire landowner, Mr. St Leger Gordon Lennox who educated Scotty in veterinary science and land surveying which attributes were to stand him in good stead in South Africa. When he was eighteen he joined the cavalry and eventually found himself bound for India. On his return his father required him to marry the daughter of his next door neighbour but Scotty refused and his father threatened to disinherit him. Scotty took ship to Australia and it was on this voyage that he gained his nickname, already called Scotty by the passengers because of his nationality, he removed a tight shoe from a thoroughbred horse on the ship, performing the duty of a blacksmith and was from then onwards known as Scotty Smith. Scotty left Australia under a cloud to arrive in the Cape at a time of turmoil in 1877 and took part in the Galeka Gaika revolt of that year. This was a war between the local natives and the government of the time.

Legend around this colourful figure has grown to such an extent that it is hard to draw the line between fact and fiction for he’s been called the Robin Hood of the veld, Captain Starlight of the frontier and the uncrowned King of the Kalahari, which says it all. I’ll relate a couple of his escapades when he operated along the Molopo River and you can imagine this renegade of yesteryear.

Groot (Large) Adriaan de la Rey, a brother of the Boer War General (The South African War between the English and the Afrikaners) set out to catch Scotty who was at that time a notorious horse thief, with a bunch of commandos.

Scotty had his ear to the ground and together with a friend made certain that they met up with their pursuers near the village of Amalia. They accosted Groot Adriaan and asked him where he was going. “To catch Scotty Smith” was the reply. “Oh” said Scotty. “Do you mind if we accompany you?”

Together they all hunted for the elusive Scotty Smith until one night Scotty and his friend volunteered to stand watch so that the commandos could catch up with their sleep. The next day Groot Adraian woke up to find that Scotty, his friend, and all the camp horses had disappeared!

When the long arm of the law got too close for comfort Scotty made for Zeerust – the town a real den of desperados who haunted the notorious Zeerust Club which had its headquarters at the Bucket of Blood Hotel where everything to please the heart of a bandit was on offer – billiards, gambling, women and booze. It was from here that he ventured into the theatre of the Stellaland-Goshen campaigns and successfully spied for the Imperial authorities. Goshen declared itself and Stella a republic in 1882 – 1883 and the conflict was between the Boers and the British Empire that caused its demise and was a forerunner of the second Boer War.

Near Rietfontein a Mr. Bouwer, mounted on a particularly fine piece of horseflesh, met up with Scotty. Scotty was so taken with the horse that he offered Mr. Bouwer fifty pounds for it. Mr. Bouwer declined and rode off to the Police Station where he spent the night in what he supposed was security. The next morning the horse was gone and Scotty had left the money in its place.

One day a farmer’s wife came upon Scotty and that evening he turned up at her doorstep, asking for lodgings. Her husband offered him a bed and a good dinner and it was as the first rays of dawn coloured the sky that the farmer heard a tap on his window. “Goodbye Mr.Thompson, thanks for your hospitality.”

Not much later the farmer’s servants arrived to say that all the horses had been stolen. About two hours later, however, the whole herd of horses was returned with a note from Scotty explaining that they’d been taken in error. “You treated me very well and as your guest I ate your salt – I had no intentions of robbing you – it was a mistake of my men operating in the area.”

Scotty retired in the burgeoning town of Upington on the Orange River and died there – his colourful life adding zest to an already fascinating part of Southern Africa.