Schoolfriend Louis is nuts and has no handbrake. He gets onto a bicycle, the kind that don’t go unless you pedal, and rides 2150km from Maritzburg to Wellington along the Cape Fold mountains – it’s too far, it’s non-stop and it’s ridden offroad – exactly where you can fall off your bike and graze your knee. And did you read that right? Two One Five Zero kilometres!
But he has a beautiful farm just outside Omaruru, so I visited him despite this disconcerting evidence that he can make some worrying decisions.
He and his neighbour have dropped their boundary fence and cut bike trails on their huge properties, including ones that go up the Omaruru mountain. Like I said. Luckily, he took one look at the fine physical specimen I am and he chose to show me around in his oversized 4X4; the kind you drive if you’re nervous of sitting vas. It’s called ‘toyota,’ which is the Herero word for ‘invincible.’
Then he parked at the foot of the Omaruru Berg and made me walk. On my feet.
– Louis’ snug cottage was once a milkshed! – He serves beer now, thank goodness –
I got a lifer I had dipped on in Namibia in 1986, Rüppell’s Parrot; and a lifer thanks to splitting, Damara Red-billed Hornbill. I dipped on another sighting of the Hartlaub’s Spurfowl, which I’d last seen west of Omaruru in 1986. Next time.
Procrastination R Us. Eighteen months after my driver’s licence card expired, I was refused a hired car, the first real consequence of the expiry. Plus fines in Hazyview, Mpumalanga and Port Alfred, Eastern Cape. And a stern admonition near Ondangwa in Namibia: ‘You must go back to South Africa and get your new licence and then come back to your holiday in Namibia. You cannot drive like this!’ This prompted me to finally move my butt, but only after meandering back to Durbs via the Namib Naukluft, Upington, Kimberley, Makala National Park south of Kimberley, and the Vrystaat.
And damn! Less than two hours after being dropped off at the gate at Rossburgh by friend Bruce, I was done. Easy and pleasant. All that dodging, delaying and avoiding was unnecessary. And the fine for being so long overdue was . . zero. No fine, no fuss. Only friendliness. One day I’m going to consider giving up my chronic procrastination.
I’m legal again. And my new mugshot is not much worse than the old one, just a lot more forehead.
~~oo0oo~~
Six weeks later I went to collect. Done in twenty minutes. Would have been ten if I’d known by osmosis what the lady told me when I asked after being in the wrong queue for the first ten minutes: ‘You must go to the window.‘
Red: Where I applied – Yellow: ‘The window’– ‘the window’ –
I grew up in Darkest Wildest Africa to the sound of a lion roaring in the evenings and the early mornings. Some of this is true. Just not the ‘Darkest Wildest’ part. I would lie in my bed at 95 Stuart Street in Harrismith, and if the wind was right, there’d be the clear, authentic sound of the ‘King of the Jungle’ roaring in the background. Except of course he didn’t live in a jungle and he didn’t really do what I’d call roar – he went uuuuunh uuuuunh uh uh uh uh like lions do. Here’s how that came about:
On 1st June 1955 I was exactly two months old and in other notable news, Mr CJ (Bossie) Boshoff was appointed as parkkurator of the now well-established President Brand Park by the Harrismith Municipality. It seems to have been a happy choice, as his entertaining letter about the history of the zoo attests. It was written in November 2005, fifty years after he’d established the zoo. He moved to Harrismith to take up his new post, and stayed in Soekie Helman’s Royal Hotel while his council house was being renovated.
As park curator, the thought came to Bossie that he could do more. Maybe, he thought, he could: ‘n kampie in die park aanlê waarin n paar wildsbokkies kon loop wat ‘n aantrekking vir die publiek sou wees.
make a fenced paddock and keep a few antelope in it to attract the public!
Once he was given the nod by the town council, he chose an area about one hectare in size just above the Victoria lake, and put a fence round it, then put a road round the fence so people would be able to see his planned wild animals from their cars. Much like in the Kruger Park’s two million hectares. First, though, he’d have to bekom some wildsbokkies.
obtain – somehow – some antelope
His first inmates were a mak ribbok ooi – a tame mountain reedbuck ewe (‘rooiribbok’), two fallow deer and a tame aap mannetjie – a male monkey, likely a vervet. A female baboon named Annemarie, a tipiese raasbek boerbok – a typical ‘loudmouth’ goat!, and a blesbok ram who he thought was behaving a bit oddly – nie lekker op sy pote nie. On enquiry he discovered it was onder sterk brandewyn kalmering.
Not steady on its feet – it had been given a strong dose of brandy to tranquilise it!
Next he was offered a lioness from one of the Retiefs from Bergville; the asking price was fifteen pounds Sterling, and as with all finances, he knew he would need council’s permission and a formal decision. He went instead to Soekie Helman, as he knew Soekie’s “voice was loud in the council at that time.” He’d got to know Soekie when he stayed in his hotel. Soekie’s decision was a confident: “Buy the thing and we’ll argue later.” They did. Bossie soon noticed this five month-old pet was gentle for a while and then would ‘suddenly get serious,’ so he realised a strong cage was needed fast. Two high brick walls were built at right angles with a roof on top; a semicircular front of strong iron bars made by town blacksmith Pye von During was installed from the end of one wall to the other. A big bloekomstomp was placed on the floor of the cage (you can see it in the feature pic above), and a brick shelter was built in the back corner. The roof of that inner shelter became the lions resting and outlook spot.
This was the concrete stage on which the poor male lion you see in the picture, the one I heard in my youthful bedroom, would soon be lying; and daily roaring his pent-up frustration over the hills of Harrismith.
bloekomstomp – gumtree stump about 3m long and maybe 700mm diameter I would guess
Next thing Henrie Retief (Thys se broer) phoned from Bloemfontein to say he had bought a male lion which he was donating to what was now undeniably a zoo (not just a wildskampie) on condition that if ‘something happened to the animal one day’ he would get the pelt! The lion-lioness introduction was – according to Bossie – ‘Love at First Sight!
The male lion grew up handsome, and his roars could be heard all over town, ‘to the top of 42nd Hill,’ says Bossie, and certainly at 95 Stuart Street where we lived. The lioness fell pregnant but died in labour. The male watched them closely as they removed her body. She was soon replaced by another from Bloemfontein, who was placed in a separate cage for two months so they could grow accustomed to one another, but – alas! says Bossie – when they introduced them, the male killed her with one bite! Later they got new lions: A male and two females. Bossie said they had to ‘wegmaak’ the original male – kill? sell? Did ou Henrie get his pelt? Wait – The Chronicle of December 1959 says there was talk that ‘a local farmer’ would take the lion in exchange for two blesboks which would be swopped for three lions from Bloem! So it seems Kerneels Retief got the first lion?
Bossie’s zoo later got two wild dogs and a warthog from South West Africa in 1959, swopped for two mahems – crested cranes. In 1965 the Natal Parks Board donated six impala and two warthogs. I wonder which of those three warthogs became ‘Justin’ the famous one the Methodist minister Justin Michell would feed and talk to on Sundays after his sermon? I’m guessing Justin the warthog probly listened to him a lot more attentively than your average Harrismith Methodist, as the reward he got was immediate and yum; not just the vague promise – but no guarantees, nê – of later eternal life.
In January 1964 three lion cubs were born. One was killed the same night, the others were removed and raised by Mrs JH Olivier. In 1966 the Chronicle told of two five month-old cubs for sale. These cubs had ‘been involved in a hectic incident’ a while before when two African attendants were tasked to remove them from their mother and she attacked them! Workman’s Compensation, anyone? And was the story suppressed when it happened?
How to Feed this Menagerie!?
Suddenly food was an issue! How to feed the growing menagerie? They started charging adults a sixpenny entrance fee. Kids were free but had to be accompanied by an adult. Most of the meat for the lions was supplied by generous farmers. He mentions oom Frikkie (Varkie?) Badenhorst whose dairy had no use for bull calves and donated these. Mostly it was on a ‘yours if you fetch it’ basis, so Bossie would have to travel all over the district to keep his lions in meat. Farmers would donate their horses once they got too old to ride. The fact that many of these had names, and that they were still ‘on the hoof’ and looking at him when Bossie arrived didn’t make matters any easier for him.
One such was Ou Klinker, a Clydesdale used in the town’s forestry department. Piet Rodgers, the forester, told Bossie he could fetch Ou Klinker – but only when Piet wasn’t there! Bossie says usually when the shot was fired the horse’s legs would just fold and they would drop on the spot, but not old Klinker! When the shot went off he rose ‘like a loaf of bread and fell as stiff as a pole,’ says Bossie. And then he says ‘dit was baie vleis!’
that Clydesdale was a lot of meat!
The local police also phoned whenever they came across road kill, and the health inspector Fritz Doman would tell him whenever he condemned a pig with measles at the abattoir. One guy even offered a dog on a chain. But surely Bossie didn’t . . Oh, yes he did! But the lions ‘het nie baie van die vleis gehou nie,’ says Bossie. They did like the pork, however.
didn’t much like the dog meat
So you see!? it’s True!
And so now you know I really did grow up listening to a lion roaring uuuuunh uuuuunh uh uh uh uh as I lay in my bed in Darkest Wildest Africa – except for the ‘Darkest Wildest’ part – back in the day.
~~oo0oo~~
Originally posted here as the story of Harrismith Zoo, where there’s more detail on the zoo itself, the many other animals, and the man who started it. I couldn’t resist modifying and personalising the story here!
Most of this source material comes from Harrismith’s Hoarding Historian Biebie de Vos. who asked me to write the zoo story. Thank you Biebie! Much would have been lost if Biebie hadn’t saved it.
. . but as a friend wrote, ” . . I have such a sense of dread for 2024″
I share her foreboding. Among many other things we just had COP28 – where we “address climate change.” And it was held in an oil-producing country and chaired by the CEO of an oil company. And the newly-elected chairman for COP29 also worked for an oil and gas company for 28 years. Don’t worry – they are good people and they really ARE trying to reduce use and sale of their primary $$$-producing products! Yeah, right. And most people nod sagely and slate Greta Thunberg – or anyone else – when she DARES to speak truth to power. Fuck me!
Here’s what COP has managed in twenty-plus years, us FOOLS:
COP28 agreed to reduce fossil fuel use verbally, while actually arranging to produce more, drill more and burn more. Our grandkids are fucked. They’ll have even more wars and poverty than we have now.
And then we’re having elections, in which people will be promised services like water and electricity and be disappointed. Again. What could possibly go wrong? *sigh*
A quiet week in the Soutars’ Mtwalume cottage on the KwaZulu Natal south coast. Tom joined Jess and me for a few days. On xmas day we enjoyed a lovely lunch, expertly sourced by all of us in a supermarket about 25km away. Pre-cooked gammon, me-made veges and Tom-made pasta. Jess probly did pud, but we can’t remember what is was.
– Larry in Ohio called my delayed timer pic “Four Hams” –
My hair is mussed as I’d just come down the chimney – dunno what Tom’s excuse is . .
– Jess took this one, showing more of the lounge – I will get round to that paperwork one day –
Some people have engineering brains, some only believe their own eyes.
I explained clearly. You guys weigh about 60kg. This harness can hold 1000kg – a ton; the cable attached to it holds a ton; the safety cable, also one ton. The main cable it attaches to has a three ton breaking strain, and the spare cable alongside it that your safety cable attaches to, also three tons. I might also have boringly explained ‘perceived danger’ vs ‘real danger’ using driving on our roads as a ‘real danger’ example. I hope not, but I could easily have been that boring.
Tom waited 0.001 seconds after my sentence and announced firmly, I’m not crazy, and stayed in the car. Jess said ‘I’m in!’ She then listened attentively to our guide’s instructions, clipped on, hopped off and went WHEEE!
Dad! I found a very nice rehab place! Oh good Jess, are you thinking of rehab, girl? Um, yes I am *thinking* about it, she hedges. She’s in Folweni and alone so she has time to surf the internet on her phone. It’s called White Rhino Manor, she says, and it sounds very nice. They do courses and hikes and outings and stuff. Great, love. Sounds like Terry’s one that she recommended that her friend owns and runs. Oh, OK.
(This was some time in 2021).
I go looking online. There’s a Manor with white rhinos in Pembrokeshire, Wales. They run a fancy zoo with three white rhinos as the star attraction. There’s White Rhino Manor House Murder Mysteries who run team-building exercises ala Agatha Christie murder-solving. They don’t have a place – you have to supply your own venue in England.
Then I find White River Manor in Mpumalanga that do rehab. Ah, thank goodness, I think, we’re not talking Pommy ££ Pounds here! But they bill themselves as a 5-star discreet retreat for executive rehab. And I’m thinking Pommy ££ Pound numbers again. See their introductory pic on top. Nice! Wouldn’t mind a bit of rehab meself! A hot towel and a complimentary drink usually means ££ in my book!
Oh, well, it’ll be a good while before we have to commit, so in the meantime: All Options Open, Jess. Quick background check: Would our medical aid contribute towards this, I wonder? It seems they will. A little.
~~oo0oo~~
Later – June or July 2022 Jess spent a month at a rehab outside White River – I wouldn’t recommend them. Currently she’s on Dad rehab – aiming to beat her fourteen week record. Fingers and eyes crossed.
Lucky me, Jess chose St Lucia village for a three night getaway with good friend Tarryn for her birthday this year. The beautiful isiMangaliso Wetland Park is nearby, and I thought, ‘Great!’
The word mangaliso means ‘miraculous’ or ‘wondrous’ or ‘amazing’ in isiZulu, and it lives up to its billing. The tiny section I explored this time is marked on the map of the greater park in squiggly yellow: from St Lucia estuary to 20km up the Eastern Shores. I’ve been to many corners of this amazing place since my first visit ca.1965.
Birds I was looking for were White-backed Duck and Southern Banded Snake-Eagle (my main targets, I hadn’t seen them in ages); Also Lesser Moorhen; Rufous-bellied Heron; Pygmy Goose; and I saw all of those. Plus, as a bonus, Half-collared Kingfisher and Green Coucal – now Green Malkoha. I stared at these last two thru my lovely Zeiss binocs and by the time I remembered the camera they’d moved off. I’m still mainly a binocular person, not a photographer! Gazing in awesome wonder rather than recording.
The Samsung phone feature pic is on the vlei loop road, looking west across Ngunuza Vlei towards the setting sun. I turned round where the road went underwater as I wasn’t sure of the depth of the water flowing across the road. Being 2WD, lazy to deflate my tyres, and on my own, I thought best let discretion be the better part of valour! And retracing your steps is a new road anyway – you never cross the same river twice*. On the map, the vlei is south of Mission Rocks. What a joy the frog calls are all over the park after good rains.
I’ll upload pics when I get home – (done) – left my Canon to laptop cable behind! My mighty Canon is a SX620 HS. Lovely pocket camera, tragically ‘discontinued!’
Meanwhile, Gen Z was taking pics of their food. This in Mtunzini, well south of St Lucia.
For more organised and more frequent trips into Southern Africa’s wild places, see Dewetswild. Dries De Wet recently went to isiMangaliso – he guides photographic safaris. His blogpost on his last visit is what prompted me to look for that duck and that snake-eagle.
*Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher said, ‘No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.’
. . is beautiful. The sandy rivers have huge fig, jackalberry, apple-leaf, marula, nyala and thorn trees along their banks. Lots of shade.
The surrounding area is dominated by mopani woodland and mopani scrub. Little shade.
When Jess chooses to loaf in camp, I go on slow short drives consisting mainly of parking and letting the birds come to me. When she comes along there’s more searching for furry creatures.
On one of those I left early to the sound of a booming duet: There aren't, There aren't, There arent any earthworms! There are There are, Dig Deeper, Dig Deeper! of a pair of Ground Hornbills.
Later, when watching a pair of Jacobin Cuckoos chasing each other round and round my parked car, the distant sound of a lion giving his best constipated rendition: Ooom, ooom, ooh, uh uh uh
– Jess finds the third leopard of our trip in a faraway tree –– me n Jess’ travels in the park in pink –
After three nights in Shingwedzi I said Punda Maria next, Jess? But she said, Whoa! Dad. Three weeks is enough. I need some DSTV and aircon. So we left the park thru the Phalaborwa gate and Jess found a chalet with her essential necessities. There was good birding there, and a great outdoor shower. Phalaborwa Safari Park.
Chuffed to have spent my longest spell in Kruger yet. More to come, I hope!
No sooner do I manage to evict an unwanted Congolese from my apartment than I’m busy trying to evict an unwanted Mocambican! This time from my bakkie – my new home.
I went to see what the glossy starlings were shriekingly unhappy about, as we were packing the bakkie to leave the camp – and leave the park. And it was this Mocambique Spitting Cobra at our hut steps, about a metre long. In Shingwedzi camp, Kruger national park.
When I approached the Mfezi, he turned left into my mag wheel and climbed up into the engine bay; and so I phoned the rangers who soon arrived – many of them, one with long handling tongs.
But all of them agreed rather to wait for Shadrack. ‘He’s a qualified field ranger who handles snakes. He’s been trained,’ they said, standing way back. The gang of capable-looking, officially-dressed, but caution-is-the-better-part-of-valour rangers (who were mostly ‘in admin’) grew, as word got around camp; Then a Zim couple from a caravan across the road approached. ‘What’s up? A spitting cobra? Oh we know that snake. He has visited us a few times the last couple weeks.’ Turns out they have camped on that spot for a full year this month! And I thought our three weeks in the park was lengthy! They also had a coupla pythons visit their caravan and watched them until they were back in the bush outside the camp fence, telling them shoo.
Once Shadrack the braver ranger arrived, he took the tongs. We tried to grip the Mfezi from the front (him) and flush from behind (me) but he spat at us and coiled around things, so in the end we thought whoa! Also, the Zim camper said, Rather wait till he emerges vanself. So we moved off about ten metres away till Jess spotted him emerging at the front right wheel. Shadrack then got him, but he was wedged and not budging, so I fetched a mop handle to prize his rear end out so Shadrack could draw him out. After a while, Shadrack said, ‘I’m gonna have to let him go so he can breathe.’ I imagined him turning round and saying, So YOU’RE the oke pulling my tail! and spitting-cobra at me, so I said, Wait, Shadrack! Give me One More Try, and out he came like Abednigo, to be bundled into a big black rubbish bin and driven off to be released – the poor terrified and no doubt exhausted Mfezi – far from camp. What an ordeal for him.
I had ignored the glossy birds at first as they had been shouting the previous two days at two yellow-billed hornbills who were wanting to raid their nest hole. But that was just a pair of them. Today about eight of them were joined by a Crested Barbet and they were using really rude starlingese to tell the Mfezi he was unwelcome. One brave one flew at him a few times and slapped him in the face with her wing! Old Mfezi was stoic, like, ‘I know you ous don’t like me, but I’m just doing my job.’
So Jess and I have been in the park for over two weeks now. We’ve stayed in Pretoriuskop, Berg n Dal, Skukuza, Satara and Olifants camps so far. I’m hoping to keep heading north – Shingwedzi next, but will have to negotiate. I’m aware that three weeks in nowhere with an old toppie might not be every 25yr-old’s idea of heaven. Can’t understand them, huh?
Negotiations opened with (and ended with), ‘First let’s get to a town so I can get all I need, then we’ll come back into the park.’ Fair enough Jess, so tonight we’re in a chalet just outside the Phalaborwa gate. Tomorrow hopefully camping in Shingwedzi.
– Found an Aitch tree – Sterculia – the African Star Chestnut –
A big black ‘garbage’ bag on my driveway. That’s strange, methought. I opened it up. Very nice clothes. Not new, but very good condition. Khaki safari shorts, Jeep branded shorts, lekker shirts, great T-shirts. Hmm.
Maybe they were taken off a clothesline and then, if the taker was feeling guilty and someone was approaching, he threw them over my gate so as to be empty-handed? I conjectured. I was on whatasap back then so I broadcast to the neighbourhood group – Found some clothes. Anyone lost any clothes lately? No reply. I asked again. One guy asked, What kind of clothes? I gave a neutral ‘male adult shorts n shirts’ answer. I wasn’t going to say Perfect safari shorts! Great T-shirts! Nah! Anyway, they weren’t his. Hmm.
I told my friends of the mystery. Oh we forgot to tell you! Those are for you. You need to wear some different, and better clothes for a change. So Louis Galop gooi’d those over your gate when he was out on a run, galop’ingin the ‘hood, as he does.
Mystery solved. I was now a well-dressed soon-to-be-homeless gentleman. Really lekker clothes, my new favourites!
Turns out their preacherman from America thought the 2021 insurrection and looting was a good reason to return home, maybe a sign from on high, and had left in a hurry. In God We Trust, but hey, discretion . .
My good Samaritan friends tidied up for him, and I benefited from that strategic retreat! I got, like, a makeover. Two years later, they’re still my best clothes.
~~oo0oo~~
I do miss my old fashionably ripped shorts, must say. I think they’da been worth a lot now. I know I pay extra for pre-ripped jeans for the kids.
En route to the park we stopped off in Harrismith for the 100th running of the well-known Mountain Race, where fools run out of town and up to the top of the mountain, only to run back to town again. This fool has done the pointless exercise myself a time or three. Back when I was fitter, lighter and naive. So this year I gave others a chance to do it.
On to Kruger where of course I’d made no arrangements or advance booking. We stayed in a very comfortable, clean well-equipped container here, outside the gate:
– Sleepover quick stay accommodation –
At the gate we were given one night in Pretoriuskop. At Pretoriuskop we got two nights at Berg en Dal camp, and there we got four nights in Skukuza, so all sorted.
Now we’ve run out of Jessie-luck. No more chalets available, so I have to save money. We’re camping, yay! Four more nights in Skukuza.
Dad! There’s smoke coming out from under the bonnet! Jess n Tom shouted in unison. It’s nothing, I said reassuringly, A lot of cars smoke like that.
No they don’t! Jess n Tom shouted in unison, ganging up on me. What? Suddenly you okes are automotive engineers? I asked defensively.
So I had to break one of my rules of touring and advanced automotive engineering and open up that bonnet – something I try and avoid, and advise against. Every time I do, it costs me money. A pint of oil here, a new head gasket there.
This time a smoking fanbelt, one that ‘drives the aircon.’ That ‘had seized.’ Who knew an aircon machine under your bonnet needs driving? Who knew the aircon machine under your bonnet has a clutch? Who knew it could seize? Whatever next?
The clutch. That’s what was next. The actual big clutch for gears n things, attached to the pedal for your left foot. So now the bakkie is up on blocks like an SA Navy submarine and we await spare parts from Pretoria, wherever that is. Come to think of it, when I was in the army, we were told that the SA Navy headquarters was in Pretoria, safe from any salty water n stuff. We were. Swear. Make this make sense.
So here we are, stuck on the South Coast in a comfortable cottage having to watch humpback whales breaching beyond the breakers and dolphins porpoising in the waves, and birds in the shrubbery.
And at night, Come Dine With Me, on OpenView satellite TV, with Jess giving stern advice and criticism to the participants. And saying ‘Sis’ and ‘Yuck’ about some of their dishes and some of their habits.
My next bakkie is going to be automatic, so the clutch won’t hlupa me.
. . you don’t live in a cardboard box. I just found out I do.
I’ve weathered rainstorms here and high winds. I thought I was safe and snug in this cottage, but this morning I get this message after I’d suggested where Bruce the wicked landlord mount his second luxury TV screen:
