The Life of Carl Labuschagne

4 March 1948 � 16 September 2013

By Herman Labuschagne

Latest update: 17 February 2014

This is the story of the life of my father, who passed away a few months ago. I will be adding detail as time allows.

An article by my father: A Mauser in Africa

My father was born on the 4th of March 1948. He was named Carl Stephanus, after his maternal grandfather, Karel Stephanus Vermaak. He was the son of Izak Hermanus Labuschagne, a well-known Merino wool farmer, and Johanna Magdelena Vermaak. His ancestors had come to South Africa as French Huguenots in 1711. The founding ancestor had to flee his native home of Bergerac in the southwest of France when he was young, on account of bitter religious persecution. Exactly what transpired is not known, but it did turn out that as far as could be established all the Labuschagnes in the world were exterminated, except for our founding ancestor alone. From him every Labuschagne in the world descends today.

The Labuschagne family has always been a family of hunters and frontiersmen. They were early to leave the Cape Colony for the wild frontier beyond the Eastern Cape border. This they did in order to escape an increasingly corrupt and repressive rule of the Dutch administration. Civilization overtook them where they lived in no-mand's land, however. After that, they faced the horrors of eight border wars. All in all, the family knew practically no lasting peace or 120 years. Times must have been hard to the utter extreme. Their ancestor would have been grateful to know that after all that he had had to endure, his descendants never lost their religion. Somehow, even in the darkest hours of the wildest frontier, the Labuschagne family always remained religious, and always remained educated.

My father being held by his mother on their farm, Wydgelegen, between Wakkerstroom and Amersfoort. My grandfather established that farm on the open plains. Over the course of a lifetime he and my grandmother built it up to a showpiece.

In the wilderness boys grew up fast, and men had to learn to be heroes or perish. All of them were fighters and all of them were hunters. Hunting was in our family's blood. My father was the sixth generation born to what had once been a very wild and savage land. His two great-grandfathers were still alive. They were veterans of the First Boer War and the Eastern Transvaal native wars such as the war against Malaboch, for instance. His great-great-grandfather who had passed away not long before my father was born, had still been on the Great Trek, and must have helped to load rifles or even possibly fight at the Battle of Vegkop in 1836. His grandfathers were Second Anglo-Boer War veterans. And his father had served as an officer in the home guard during World War II. It is no surprise, therefore, that like all both this two brothers, my father's hands somehow held a gun since a very young age.

My father as a baby, together with his father, his mother and his older brother.

It has been a long-standing tradition in our family that each boy gets too hunt his first antelope at the age of six years. It was no different with my father. But before that - probably at the age of five - he had already made his first kill. Our family had always been extremely concerned with ethical hunting, the principles of responsible sportsmanship and conservation in general. Accordingly, there were the strictest rules about what may and what may not be shot. Killing for the sake of killing was frowned upon. The object was always to harvest what was needed. If collecting a specimen was a need, then that was acceptable. But merely shooting to see if you could hit a target was absolutely forbidden. It was logical that some species were therefore strictly off the list of shootable animals. Birds of plumage, birds of prey, and rare animals were such examples. And sunbirds definitely counted among those. My father therefore practically told me in whispered tones about his first kill at the age of five - it was a sunbird, shot with his BB gun. Knowing full well that his first act had already been the almost unpardonable sin, he then proceeded to dispose of the evidence by throwing the bird into a dense hedge where it would not be found.

When my father confessed this story to me, I took this as encouragement to make my own confession to me. For I too, had comitted the same shameful act with my first illigitimate trophy at approximately the same age. Only, in my case it had been a little glass-eye bird. My father didn't say much when I told him that. But he smiled in a conspiratorial manner. And so we wordlessly understood that we would keep each other's secret safe until death released onen of us of the responsibility.

It was a good time to be born. Our family's farming had prospered during both world wars. His father was still a young man, at the start of what was to become a very successful life, and the country was becoming stable and looking to the future after six years of war in the faraway north. My grandmother always said he was her "soete" kind - her easy one. He did not give her much trouble, except for the fact, she insisted, that had had a bit of a foul mouth as a small boy. This, my father told me, frustrated her so much that oned day she picked a switch from a privit hedge and gave him a sound hiding. Still, he was a by all accounts an easy child to raise. From early on, my father had an unusual attraction to firearms and the sport of hunting. Military matters did not interest him much. It was the thrill of the chase that mattered to him. He always had a gun in his hand. For as long as I knew him, if he left the home to do his rounds on the farm, he had a gun across his shoulder 9 1/2 times out of 10. It was part of what definted him.

My father as a young boy of perhaps 3 years old.

I heard someone ask my father once what he did for a living.

�I�m a professional hunter,� he explained.

Suddenly the other person�s face lit up.

�You�re so lucky to have such an exciting profession!� he cried.

To which my father answered without a moment�s though, �yeah, it beats having to work for a living��

He had always been quick with a comeback line. 

My father did not have an unusually long life, but he had a lucky one. And it was a life that began with the dream of a small boy. He came from a family that enjoyed hunting as a sport and a way of life for generations. In our family, the custom has always been for a boy to shoot his first antelope at the age of six. And so it came that his father took him to the Klaserie at the age of six for his first safari. There he saw what was to him the most beautiful place in the world. Enthralled with this untamed world full of wild animals he firmly announced to his parents that his ambition was to become a "great white hunter" and to own a farm there when he grew up. His family just laughed at him. His father told him said that this was an unlikely dream because he was a sheep farmer's son, and a sheep farmer is what he will be. My father was of a different mind, however. With his little Box Brownie camera he took this picture of the mountains near Mariepskop. And he never forgot his ambition. Meanwhile the years went by. My father did become a sheep farmer like his dad. But he didn't like sheep and he didn't stay with a dream that was not his own. He chose to follow his destiny in stead.  When he was fifty years old he retired. He returned to the Elephants Valley where he had taken that picture - and bought the land he had wanted for 44 years. It was expensive, but he managed it despite all the odds. One day I realized that at the age of fifty he had quietly achieved every one of his dreams that I know of. And some were big dreams. I don�t know anyone else who can say that. He never read motivational books, or wrote down goals and mapped out strategies as we are taught in books and seminars. What he did in stead was to never lose sight of is dreams. He just kept moving persistently towards it, one small step at a time - no matter how long it took. 

It took some time to get there, however. First there was the matter of an education.  

His first big game safari in 1954, Portuguese East Africa. My father is the small boy on the right, posing nex to to a lioness trophy.

My father in the foreground as a six year old. This eland was mounted and the trophy still hangs in his study.

My father in the hunting field.

Camp in Portuguese East Africa, 1954.

My father (left) and his brother, Leon. Posing by the Jeep is my father's best friend as a boy, Stephen Woodburn.

1951 � 1961 Primary School

For a while he attended Piet Retief primary school. But then one day something happened. On a Wednesday night in 1955, unexpectedly and completely without warning his father�s car pulled up. He had somehow had a quarrel with the headmaster and in the heat of his anger, decided that pull my father and his older brother from school. They never found out what the quarrel had been about. After this, however, the two boys were sent to the little town of Goedgegun in Swaziland, which is now called Nhlangano. It was a quaint old country town in those days with a strong colonial character. Jacaranda trees lined the red dust streets of town and turned the town into an explosion of purple when they bloomed in spring. My father was happy at Evelyn Baring School at Goedgegun. His best friend�s name was Stephen Woodburn, and the two boys seemed to have had the best of times together. He also had a teacher whom he not only admired, but grew to love. By all accounts she must have been genuinely caring person for he spoke of her for the rest of his life, and always in the kindest possible terms. She came to visit him when he was already married, so the feeling seemed to be mutual. He used to describe how when someone did something wrong, Mrs. King used to cry: �You w-i-c-k-e-d little boyyyy!�

My grandfather had a Zulu driver by the name of Flip who was a genuine man of character. It was often his task to fetch the boys from school on Friday afternoons. At other times my grandmother would pick them up in her blue Cortina. One day she had an accident on the gravel road home and overturned the car. Nobody got hurt, fortunately. With her she had Zulu boy named Kiewiet. Grandmother often used to say that when she had to climb out the top window as the car was lying on its side, Kiewiet was gentleman enough to avert his eyes in stead of looking up at his madam�s exposed legs on her way up. This would indeed have made an impression on Grandmother, considering what a lady she was.

Mrs. King with her pupils at Evelyn Baring School. My father is third from the right, back row. This was approximately St. 1 in 1956.

My dad on his pony called Boesman.

I was told that he was an outstanding horeseman. Horses were part of regular farming. Our family has maintained our own distinct bloodline of the SA Boerperd since at least 1879 to date. My father told a story of how as a young lad, he was on a jackal hunt one day. They were chasing a fleet-footed jackal across a burnt plain, when his horse suddenly stepped into a hole and fell. My dad hit the ground with his face, neck and chest firest, and with arms out-spread like a landing aircraft. He skidded across the burnt grass until he came to a halt in a loud of dust. The pieces of charcoal had imbedded themselves below his skin and he was bleeding all over. When asked "are you hurt?" however, he just shook his head and ran off to go and catch his horse. The hunt had to continue. Strangely, though, I never saw my father on the back of a horse in my life. Those were adventures of his younger years. He always said that he didn't like horses much himself, and much preferred a motorbike that wouldn't run away from you, or kick and bite you or no reason.

1961  - 1966 High School

When my father finished his primary school education at Evelyn Baring, his parents decided that he should go to a private school. Accordingly he was sent to Kersney College, near Pietermaritzburg in Natal. This proved in many ways to be an unfortunate decision. He was never happy at Kersney, although somehow or other he never clearly communicated how he felt to his parents. Kersney was an extremely English-orientated school, and being one of the only two Afrikaans boys in the school, he was often given a hard time. My father told me that in those days school masters still wore black togas and certainly did not attempt to spare the rod very much. When they were given a hiding, my father said, custom demanded that they had to respond with a solemn, �thank you sir!�

Years later I think I managed to figure out what an impact Kersney had made on my father�s life. To his adolescent mind, even if it was only subconsciously, I suspect that it must have felt like a sophisticated form of abandonment. My father told us many times how the steam train ride to Botha�s Hill used to take two days.  Young as he was, he had to make the trip alone, with all his belongings packed into a big old school trunk with his name stencilled on the lid. This same trunk, incidentally, became my school trunk when I was first sent to boarding school in 1980. My father only came home four times a year, and he told me several times that it was very wrong because as he put it, �you become a stranger to your own parents that way.� Still, his father and mother believed it was an investment in their son�s career, and fully believed that only the best could come from sending a son to such an expensive school.

At his school my father became a discreet rebel. He somehow smuggled a .22 rifle into the school. In the afternoons and his friend Rory used to lie on their beds in the top floor room that they shared in the residence. With the French doors of their balcony open they used to shoot at a spot on the chimney across the courtyard. In time they succeeded in gradually shooting a hole right through the bricks in that chimney. Many years later when he took us to go and see his old school, he pointed out his room and the same chimney � still looking very much as it did during the early sixties.

One of the naughty things my father got into trouble for, was throwing wet toilet paper against the ceiling of the bathrooms. For this he and his friend were punished in front of the entire school. Already disenfranchised with the school system, he had moments when he apparently enjoyed irritating his school masters in unusual ways. One example was when a major conflict in Israel was announced at school assembly in the main hall one day. My father had nothing at all against Jews, but knowing that there were many Jewish boys in his school, he felt like upsetting them by shouting �Jay for the Arabs!� Again, this resulted in punishment for the naughty farm boy. During these years he also developed the habit of smoking. One day when his father came to collect him for the holidays at school, his dad said to him: �En toe seun, het jy die pyp gerook?� � or �So on, did you smoke the pipe?� In Afrikaans this expression means �did you pass the exams?� My father, by this time somewhat out of touch with Afrikaans culture, shyly replied: �Nee pa, ek het hom net saamgevat� � �no dad, I only took it along with me��

My father took part in school sports and apparently displayed the same marked talent as a rugby player that his father had. My grandfather used to say that �Carl plays with his head.� He figured the game out mentally first. He was also in the school�s riflery team, and learned the skill of sailing small boats at Durban harbour during this time. He so enjoyed sailing that he ordered an entire sailing boat through mail order one day. In due course  crate full of planks and pieces arrived at the train station. These he sanded, planed, glued and screwed together until he had a very respectable sailing boat. He called his boat �The Ark.� We went sailing in it on the Heyshope dam once or twice when I was a child. He and his brother in law restored the boat the year before he died, and it is currently in good working condition again.

Kersney College, Standard 6, 1961. My dad is 5th from the left, back row.

Kersney College group photo. My father is 7th from the right, back row.

Kersney College names and signatures of my father's classmates, 1966.

1966 - 1968

After his schooling my father might have been eligible or conscription into the South African Defence Force for mandatory military training. He was not conscripted, however. He thereupon took it upon himself to join up as a volunteer. Since he always showed little interest in military matters, I somehow believed that he did not enjoy this time. A few days  before he passed away, however, I asked him about it, and he told me that he actually thoroughly enjoyed these times. He spoke of how at Kimberley the nights were so cold that when they got wet their hair used to freeze solid at night as they lay beneath the stars in their sleeping bags. He became a marksman in the army, and attainted the rank of sergeant.

After this he took a two year diploma in agriculture at the Potchefstroom agricultural college. This was the same college where his father had completed the same course in 1934-35. His father came from a generation where the only form of transportation that students knew was the bicycle. Accordingly, he kitted his son out with a brand new bicycle. If anyone knew my father well, they would have understood that whatever he did in life, riding the bicycle was not part of his activities. He rode the bike once and then promptly sold it. He then pooled the proceeds with his savings and bought himself a decrepit old Ford Anglia. Whilst driving down the main street of Potchefstroom one day, the carburettor fell off and rolled away. Not knowing much about engines he then set about finding a replacement carburettor at a scrap yard. There the sales attendant took him into a room that had shelves full of carburettors of every size and description.

�Which one do you need?� the salesman asked.

My father did not want to reveal his ignorance, and therefore pointed at a random carburettor and said: �That one!�

It proved to be an Opel carburettor, but fortunately, with the aid of a file to enlarge the holes for the mounting bolts he was able to not only fit it, but also make his car run again. His father was very surprised when he showed up for the holidays in his own car. Later during his college time, he somehow managed to pool more cash and one way or another, succeeded in buying a beautiful white 3.8l Mark II Jaguar. This very fast car he enjoyed driving at the highest possible speed until the cost of maintenance slowly revealed to him the sad fact that high performance cars and student budgets do not compliment one another.

During his college days he continued to play rugby for the college. Of these times he once told me that playing against Carletonville was always traumatic �as those guys did not have teeth, yet they bit in the scrum.� He also met my mother during this time. He first dated her older sister, and one day when he came to her home to drop his date off, he noticed the younger sister who was still a school girl at the time. I don�t know how he engineered the delicate matter of switching from one sister to the other without creating conflict, but he somehow pulled it off. When he first told his parents about her, their first question was: �What is the politics of her parents?� When he told them that they were SAPs his parents were immediately satisfied. The most important criterium had been met!

Starting out as a farmer

Hard but happy times on his very own first property.

My was enthusiastic about becoming a farmer. He had just finished his education at the Agricultural College in Potchefstroom and he was full of ideas and dreams. Behind him stood a history of at least 250 years of agriculturalists, and for him it was a matter of tradition, of culture and of passion to continue.

Unlike most other farm boys, my father did not have the gradual spin-off experience where a boy would work with his own dad until he was experienced and financially strong enough to continue on his own. In his case, he was either thrown into deep end, or jumped himself. I suspect it was a combination of both, although probably more of the latter.

As his first farm, he was given an old sheep property that belonged to his father. The property was called Madola. It lay in the triangular-shaped stretch of land that cuts a jagged notch out of the otherwise more or less round-shaped border line of Swaziland. This is where, during the 1800�s, a small number of farmers had their own sovereign republic, which they called �Het Nieuwe Republiek� or simply �The New Republic.� My father often told us how the property that became their republic had been bought from the Swazi king for a wagon, a span of oxen and a crate of whiskey. The New Republic did not last very long as a sovereign state, however. When finally faced with the burdens of make fiscal ends meet in such a small country, the triumvirate who comprised the entire government of the small state elected to hand it over for peaceful incorporation into the Transvaal Republic.

By the time my dad moved in the land had already been farmed for generations. It was a beautiful, gentle country of rolling landscapes, low- to medium-sized hills, and many streams and small rivers. The rainfall was high, the climate was mild and the soil was fertile. Everywhere, that is, besides at Madola. There was something peculiar about this property for nestled as it was, against the mountains that formed the Swaziland border, even the geology itself was of a kind that was strangely out of character with the entire district. There were beautiful clear quartz crystals in the hills and strangely-shaped minerals which had big smooth knobs that looked like suction pads on an octopus. And elsewhere there were slate deposits which also, were unheard-of in the entire region.

Unlike the deep red granitic soil of the surrounding area, Madola�s soil was white like chalk and exceedingly poor so that the grazing yielded little and the fields yielded even less. Nevertheless, my father was a young man who possessed that valuable combination of youth: energy and dreams. He quickly set to work.

One of the first things he did was to start ploughing his fields. In this he had a problem because he only had one ancient old tractor. It was a McCormack International of the vintage era where tractors did not have hydraulic lifts yet, and came with a pully next to the engine for powering belt-driven equipment. This old tractor had an interesting history. It had originally belonged to a farmer in Tanzania. When the whites were kicked out of the country it was the only thing that he could keep. He therefore drove it all the way to South Africa. There my grandfather�s neighbour near Wakkerstroom, Wim Rabe, bought it and used it for years. After that my grandfather bought it and used it. When his eldest son started farming it was given to him, and when my father started out, it was to be his first tractor. This tractor could only pull. Without lifts you could not use modern implements that had to be periodically raised. But this did not matter, because my father did not have modern implements anyway. He had two or three ancient mouldboard ox-ploughs which he drew behind the tractor. The ploughs were designed to be drawn by a team of 12 or 16 oxen, which was stronger than even this powerful old tractor was, so the going was difficult. His planter was also one of the ride-on types which dated back to the second world war or even before that. But living that near the land was a pleasure, and my father always knew that hard work was the fertilizer of dreams.

There was another problem, however. Having practically no money at all, my father had been forced to plant without fertilizer. When his maize crop sprouted, it soon became apparent that they just would not grow beyond knee-height. Fortunately his older brother eventually took pity on him and one day showed up with a truck load full of leftover fertilizer from his own planting. After that it went somewhat better, but there never was much of a crop on that land.

In the meantime my father spent his days fixing up the ancient old house that was now his. It was actually a very romantic old place. It had precious yellow wood floors and ceilings from the nearby escarpment, which lent a very stately atmosphere to the old place. There as a staircase that lead down into a sunken lounge, which had a big window that provided sweeping views. Against one wall there was an imposing fireplace built from the strange local geological specimens, and as a roof column, my dad somehow fitted an enormous blue gum tree stump. This gave the house rather an exotic look and feel which certainly must have fitted in perfectly with the alternative styles of the late 60�sand early 70�s.

In this reasonably big old house the young boy lived all a lone. His only companion was one old Zulu servant who lived in a hut nearby. My dad knew nothing at all about cooking, and neither did the old Zulu. But the Zulu, at least, could prepare one single dish � and that was dry maize meal porridge. And so that is what the two of them ate, three times a day. In the mornings, my dad said, they ate porridge milk and sugar. For lunch they ate milk, porridge and sugar. And for supper they ate sugar, porridge and milk. And he always insisted that that was the healthiest time of his life.

Meanwhile the farm continued to do poorly. But for the time being times were good and his needs were small so it did not matter that much. My dad had a pack of fox hounds and he enjoyed keeping them exercised by going jackal hunting on horseback. And besides, there was the matter of his growing relationship with the pretty young girl he�d met in Potchefstroom. He had to wait for her to finish school first, obviously, but once that happened she succeeded in obtaining a job at Barclays Bank in the nearest town of Piet Retief. That enabled him to see her more.

And so the time eventually came that the two of them were married. The two families immediately liked each other. Politics were big in those days and my dad often told us that when he announced his new girlfriend to his parents their first question was: �What politics do heir parents subscribe to?� When he told them they were SAPs, there were no more anxieties at all.

After their marriage in Potchefstroom, my mother moved into Madola as well. They always spoke happily of their times there. My dad�s other companion had been a female baboon called Jack. Jack made life interesting in many ways. She used to catch little puppies and take them high into a tree where she would fleece them for flees. When she grew bored she simply let them drop to their deaths. Or she would catch a ridge on the back of a pig while holding on to the tail as the pigs went screaming across the yard. Or she would rush into the house, rip open the old paraffin refrigerator door, scoop everything out and such an egg or two before running away before anyone could catch her.

My father's female pet babaoon, whose name was Jack.

My mother made peace with Jack and started to exercise the roll of a very young housewife. They had a battery-operated record player, and the songs they played were always lots of Neil Diamond, with ABBA, and Pussycat, the Beetles and the Rolling Stones, and sometimes � just to scare his old aunt when she came to visit � the horrible screaming of Little Richard. He was a baby boomer after all.

It eventually became patently clear that my parents would be making no life at all at Madola. Things turned better, though, when his grandfather finally felt sorry for him and gave him an enormously precious gift: the old family farm Wagendrift of which my father would become the fourth-generation owner. This farm was one of the jewels of the district, and contained a comfortable old house that would be warmer and more practical for raising an imminent family. And so my father gave Madola back to his dad and moved to Wagendrift.

The move itself was painful. Firstly, my father�s Afrikaner cattle were so mineral-starved that they ate barbed wire and stones and died. The transition from poor to rich grazing was also too quick for their constitution and so more of them died. Still, it was the start of what would become exceedingly good times in the near future.

My father's first home, c. 1969 where he lived alone as a young man before he got married to my mother. This was on the farm Madola in the Little Free State, against the border of Swaziland, Piet Retief district.

My parents on their wedding day.

His grandfather later gave him the family farm, Wagendrift, where I grew up. This was how the house looked until 1979. The house had been built by my great-great grandfather as a winter home in the warmer middle veld.

Farming at Wagendrift

Life became very good when my father moved to Wagendrift. Every district had a few choice farms - Wagendrift was one of them. Its history was interesting. There were no indications of stone age settlements on Wagendrift. There were, however, a large number of very unusual stone circles on the farm which could often only be seen clearly on aerial photographs. These were clearly the remains of ancient stockades and settlements of a people long vanished. Our Zulus shrugged when we asked them and declared that these structurers were there before their history started. Zulus don't build with stone, they said. It appeared to us that these might have been settlements of the peoples who can be identified with today's north-Sothos. Whatever the case, by the time that that our ancestors settled there the land was uninhabited.

On older maps it was always noticeable that there was a long, thin sliver of the Transvaal province that sliced in-between the southern hills of Swaziland and the northern valleys of Zululand, which of which the Pongola river was the boundary. This, anciently, was no-man's land. Whether by agreement or whether incidentally so is not clear, but since times immemorial this had been a buffer zone between the Swazils and the Zulus. Whoever lingered here did so at the risk of their lives, and whoever passed here only did so to raid cattle or make war.

I am standing in front of my great-great-great grandfather's summer house, which is where we lived until I was about 8 years old. There was freedom in those days. Not only could you get by without having to wear pants if you didn't feel like it, but life just felt simple and uncomplicated. People worked, but not like slaves. Nobody I knew had any idea what it was like to go hungry. People laughed a lot on those days.

My father told me many times what his own grandfather had originally told him about the time when he discovered the beautiful valley that was to become our home. His name was George Augustus Kolbe, and he was the grandson of the founding ancestor of the Kolbes who came to South Africa in 1820. Grandpa George said when he came to Wagendrift the tamboekie grass was so high that it came to he brim of a man's hat when seated on a horse. This seems unthinkable today, unless one understands that the veld type is what is known as a "fire disclamax" - in other words, a composition of pasture which requires periodic burning to be healthy. When pasture is not burnt for very long periods of time, as is the case in the absence of human settlement, tamboekie grass becomes dominant. This is a grass which is unpalatable to game and domestic animals, except in the young stages after veld fires.

To this land, George Kolbe came when it was still new. He immediately recognized the region's potential on account of its limitless water supplies, fertile soil and almost uniquely mild climate. My grandmother, in turn, described to me how he went home and told his friend who would later become his son's father-in-law, "Izak, I have found us some splendid winter grazing. You have to come and get some for yourself." It would appear that the two families chose the central part of the Wagendrift valley and more or less divided it in two amongst themselves. I think they must have used it as winter grazing for a long time before they formally bought the land from whoever the first registered owner was.

Wagendrift bordered on a farm that belonged to the government of the Transvaal Republic. On the banks of the White River, which formed the backbone of the entire valley, there were some hot mineral springs. "Warmbad" or "Warm bath" as it was known, was very famous in those days for its therapeutic qualities. President Paul Kruger himself used to come to this pleasant spot to soak himself in the 37 degree C water and soothe his arthritis. It was widely known that the water was indeed, astonishingly effective in soothing athritis and also skin wounds that would not heal. Wounds obtained outside the water healed extremely rapidly when soaked in the sulphur-laden baths, but wounds obtained inside them were slow to heal. Over time, many families built their own holiday cottages at Warmbath and it was said that in peak season as many as 300 people would be camping there. Our two families, naturally, also had cottages there. The Labuschgne cottage was, as I was told, the biggest one, first on the right as you entered the grounds.

My sister, my dad and I on the patio at Wagendrift. The old house is well over a century old now.

Wagendrift was unusual in several ways. The climate as so mild that you could pick mangoes, bananas and peaches from the same garden on the same day. Our family made a conscious point of always selecting farms which contained large reed marshes or "vleis," and farms that had some mountainous parts which were the primary water catchment areas. The result of this was that we were never dependent on upstream water usage of neighours. The vleis were unique grazing spots which were valuable as reserves during drought. On the whole, we were never effected by droughts at all. Not one significant fountain ever stopped delivering and not one stream ever dried up on Wagendrift. Even in 1983/4 which were record drought years for the entire country, when for the first time in human memory, boreholes dried up across the district and water had to be tanked in to cattle stations, I rememer my father telling me that we have had our best year ever.

The area was famous for supposedly having the second highest lightning activity in the world. Winders were dry and balmy, but summers were sub-tropical. It was very typical to regularly have 1 - 3 severe thunder storms every day, except for a short mid-summer drought period around mid-December/January. The lightning was so harsh sometimes that it would strike the threes around our house so that you could clearly smell the fumes of the strike.

My great-grandfather Kolbe built himself a house on Wagendrift, while my great-grandfather Labuschagne first inhabited the old settler's cottage (which still exists on Mattis Bodenstein's land) on White River at the other end. Later he built a bigger house near the main road, which has now disappeared completely. The Kolbe house on Wagendrift was built with raw bricks on dressed stone of a kind which we called black granite. My father used to joke that it is so hard that you could not shoot through a wall even with a tank. This old house became the home of my father and mother when they moved to Wagendrift.

People always said it was a happy home. You could feel it. It was light and airy, and the rooms were sunny. From the front veranda you could see across the valley towards White River and the old waggon road which snaked down the long incline towards the bridge. From the back veranda you looked out upon the old Wagendrift mountain that frowned down only a mile or so away. The house never had electricity, but my great-grandmother did buy my father a good Lister generator which served the home very well indeed and for all I know is probably still standing there, ready to be cranked.

My father was ahead of his time in many ways, and the older I became, the more I realized it. As is frequently the case with men who are forward thinking, that also meant that he was often misunderstood. For one thing, he told me that during the very early years, he once declared at the local farmer's union meeting that the Nguni cattle race would be a race of the future. He said all the proud cattle breeders laughed him to scorn that day. And yet, today the Nguni race is very highly tought of and carries very considerable presitage value, let alone commercial value.

My father and I at Wagendrift. I was a happy child because I lived in a happy home.

In those days, organic farming was also relatively unknown to many farmers. It was sometimes considered to be an exotic fad that had vaguely blown over from America. But it was not a fad to my father. It was something he really believed in. At the time he corresponded with Ambassador College's Brickett Wood campus in England, and became very inspired to implement the principles of wholistic farming. Unfortunately, as he often told me in later years, it was too soon. The world was not quite ready yet and the necessary knowledge and technology that was required for farming conditions where were lived was not fully available. His experiments were met with partial success and partial disaster.

He began by building dams that were gravity fed. In time he made sure that every house and every drinking point and dam was gravity fed. Nothing was pumped. You simply opened a valve and the sprayers started working. The dams he converted to fish farms, only to find that while he could produce pickup-loads of the most succulent tilapia and bass with their superior taste in our clean water - nobody would buy them. People were accustomed to ocean fish only. Fresh water fish was what little boys caught in their spare time and obtained for free. Still, he maintained an interest in fish which he never lost. Ever since he was a little boy, when the family went to a restaurant and asked what he wanted, he would answer, "fish." Shortly before he died, he still mentioned to me that he hoped to visit the Sea Gypsey restaurant in Mosselbay with me once more - to enjoy some east cost sole.

Converting to game ranching

Even though my father still enjoyed conventional farming, he never let go of his ambition to make a career out of hunting. He gradually started converted from livestock farming to game farming. Those were the early days of the 1970�s and early 80�s when very little was known about game farming and the capture and handling of wildlife. Most of the knowledge that was available came from the Natal Parks Board. However, it was a never-ending struggle against officialdom to get a game farm established in those days. The Transvaal authorities, in particular, were often exceedingly unhelpful and indeed often went out of their way to obstruct his efforts. They were, in some instances, downright rude and hostile to his ambitions.

Every three years we captured game to sell live. One or two years we used the Natal Parks Board, and they were always very professional and effective.

We tried many different methods of game capturing, including darting with tranquilizers, driving animals into nets by means of motorbike and vehicle and horse and on foot, but helicopters still worked best. One pilot was in a class of his own. In stead of driving animals wildly into the funnels with swooping dives and howling siren, Jerry du Plessis guided them so gently that they were often inside before they even knew they were being herded. This incredible man was an artist with a helicopter. He used to be a pilot in the South African Airforce. During the Falkland War he flew for the Argentinians. Since they lacked proper equipment to engage British warships, he had to fly over British military vessels while a companion shoveled bombs out the door. Jerry was the only man I ever knew who would land his chopper directly on it's transport trailer. First one corner of his skids, and then gently he would lower the rest without a bump or a jolt. Sadly this good man died during a game capturing job near Pongola when he did not see the power lines.

As a boy I can remember my father often engaged in lengthy correspondence with the authorities who themselves did not always know much. For instance, his application for permits to re-introduce blue wildebeest was stubbornly denied on the grounds that they did not suit the habitant and �would all die out.� My father�s persistence eventually carried the day and blue wildebeest became the most successful specie out of the 17 hunting species that he carried.

Still, a lot of knowledge had to be obtained by trial and error � and the error part was significant. In the early days he had to devise ways of weaving his own game capturing nets as the commercial product was either unavailable or too expensive. Similarly, game fencing had to be laboriously woven by hand. And losses were substantial. The very first animal to be re-introduced was impala � and they slipped through the fences as soon as they were off-loaded. When a few of them were captured, they were carried upside-down and died as a consequence.

A consignment of reedbuck came from False Bay, more or less dead upon arrival. The first four rhino were off-loaded and one pregnant cow did within a week. A big consignment of red hartebeest was off-loaded at the start of an unseasonable cold spell with driving rain, in which half of them died. And in-between there were endless experiments with trapping methods, darting and tranquilizer doses.

This picture is from the very early years, probably around 1981 or 82, with a good trophy common reedbuck that my father had to shoot for some reason.

Still, those times were years of constant adventure and never ending learning. My father seemed genuinely happy. He sold some of the land that he had inherited and used the money to build his game farming operation up. In those years pre-woven game fencing did not exist. He had to replace all the fences on his properties with higher poles, and then weave all the wire squares by hand. The old Zulus who worked for us worked so hard at this, yet they all seemed to be happy and excited. They did not fully understand what was being done, but they enjoyed the newness of it all - and they were hunters by way of long-standing tradition. If this all meant more hunting, then they were delighted.

We also had to do a lot of our own game capturing. Many species had become extinct in our area over the years and had to be re-introduced. Game capture nets were hard to obtain and hugely expensive, so my father devised a method of weaving his own nets. He then boldly set out to capture what he could. Sometimes things did not work out as planned and there were expensive losses. Most of the time, however, it was well worth the effort.

For some strange reason, my father had never shot a kudu before until he bagged this one on his cattle farm, Verlies, in Zululand. I was probably 12 years old at the time.

Not long after we received our first white rhino, my father's older brother phoned him - evidently in much distress. He said he had just been informed that the rhino had broken out and had gone down the valley to demolish the German neighbours' cabbage fields. He said the Germans were furious and that they had announced they would be suing him for damages. My father had already been so anxious about the unfamiliar project. And there was the cost. He had paid R4,000 for them, and it was a loss that he would find hard to recover. This news on top of all the other worries really shook him. And then my uncle phoned back later to tell him it had all just been a joke. My father was not amused. The fingers of his biological clock had been advanced by five minutes, and he was sure to repay his brother for the fright that he had been given. And that's a story that I will tell a little later on.

Life as a professional hunter

Professional hunting, as a profession, was hardly a profession at all in the South Africa of those years. I don't know when the first rules were actually formalized but it must have been around that time. What rules there weren't written down, it appeared the officials made up as they went along. Nobody seemed entirely sure of how the system was going to work, but for now the important thing was that all professional hunters that operated international safaris had to become registered. That meant hitting the books and learning.

My dad had always been a bit of a lazy scholar, but he had a gifted mind. He absorbed knowledge quickly, and when it was knowledge that appealed to him in any event, he absorbed it very readily indeed. I remember him swotting up books containing the names of grasses and trees, books about animals and anatomy, books about rifles and ballistics - and most of all - an ugly green book that was the bible containing South Africa's game laws. There were theoretical tests and then there were practical tests. As I recall he had to shoot a blesbuck on his own land, with a nature conservation official in attendance. It all went well and he was awareded his registration with compliments on how well he had scored, and a note which said that the only area where he might have done better, was on the matter of the botanical names of plants. I smiled when I heard that. My dad and Latin? I could have predicted it.

My father and Cal Tiption in the Zambezi Valley, 1983.

The first step was to attend an international hunting convention to obtain some clients. These were sanction years and South Africans were not particularly welcome around the world. And nobody in the family had ever been to America before, so this turned out to be quite an adventure. The Safari Club International convenation that year was held in Las Vegas. There he and my mother set p a booth and soon signed up their first clients.

My father could not have asked for a more pleasant introductioin into the safari busienss. The very first to arrive was a man who would play a hugely important part in our lives and who would, in fact, come to be one of the family so to speak. Cal and Aurdyce Tipton were two of the nicest people we would ever have the honour of knowing. Cal would ultimately hunt with my father for 27 consecutive years - sometimes more than once per year. He became my father's best friend, his mentor and one of those hunting companions that many men would never be privileged to have an an entire lifetime. They hit it off right from the start.

His second set of clients were a couple that woudl equally become lifelong friends. Jim and Sharlene Bell - owner of the very well known BELL factory, or Brass Extrusion Laboratories Limited, was an American manufacturer of ammunition, as he continues to be to this day. But first and foremost, he was a gentleman of the first order, and Sharlene was a lady that exhibited a rare sense of nobility.

After those two safaris my father must have known that he had made the right choice in life. From then on, he had a career that was built out of years and years of adventure. Somehow, I never knew him down on safari. The hunting field was his world. That was where he belonged. That's where you saw him smile most of all.

As a host, I knew my father to be a true gentleman in every way. Over the years I have known, and accompanied very many professional hunters. I often found it discomforting that so many of them may have been skilled at killing animals, but they were certainly limited in their abilities to deal with sophisticated people. In some cases, it shocked me to see how mere youngsters talked to men clients that were vastly older and more accomplished than they, or simply know very little about the world beyond a campfire. My father also remarked on this and on a few occasions expressed to me his astonishment at how professional hunters would take out men who were bankers and millionaires - men of refined taste who had seen the world and understood its complexities - yet were so ignorant and so lacking in social graces.

People appreciated the sense of refinement that my father had. He was an engaging host that could speak all night about politics and world affairs, who held well-thought out views about the economy and history, and who had an encyclopaedic knowledge of plants, animals, rifles, ballistics and the hunting world. My father was a man who did not tolerate silliness in children. But he as also someone who did not deny them the opportunity of contributing to advanced conversation if they would make an effort to say something intelligent. My memories are filled to the bring of many winter nights around the campfire, or around the dinner table, or in front of the fireplace in the trophy room, listening to my dad's conversations. I only realize it now, in writing this, how utterly absorbed I must have been in the stories that he told and and the conversations that passed. Unbeknown to me this would turn out to be a major chapter in my education and development as a child. My father demanded absolute respect and dignified conduct, so I had to learn to listen much and speak little. And when I spoke, I had to carefully plan what I was going to say and then try to deliver it in a compelling manner which would result in men who were beyond my class by far, to pause and listen for a minute. I am grateful for that experience for it has served me well in business and in life for the rest of my years.

In the hunting field, of course, my father excelled. There was many a time when we went out with hunters whom we knew to be unreliable shots. In most cases, when it came to dangerous game, they asked my father to be a backup shot. There really is such a thing as buck fever, and I have seen even old and experienced hunters who have hunted around the world suddenly be gripped by it in Africa. Strangely, I never doubted my father's ability to be a deadly shot that would eliminate all possibility of things going wrong. And indeed, my faith in him was more than adequately borne out. There were many incidents where he provided the killing shot - and sometimes the only shot - that brought a big game animal down. He did have the social grace, however, to always stand back and let the hunter either believe, or claim, that the successful shot had been his. It was a silent agreement that existed between men in such a situation and I'm sure it happens far more than is ever admitted to in the safari world. But it also did not matter that much. Hunting is a shared experience, and in the end it is a combined effort. It is a game of skill and chance, an endeavour that requires courage and opportunity to be present in varying quantities. And besides all of that, my father and I always agreed that hunting is a spritual experience. It is more than simply slaying some beast that was minding its own business in nature. It is part of a deeply-engrained sense of heritage in man - an expression of a culture that is as old as mankind itself.

My father always held the strongest of ethics about hunting.

My father with his friend, Danie Brink. This was probably at Vatnikaki near Hoedspruit.

Tigerfishing in the Zambezi River, Zimbabwe.

My father had his khaki hunting shirts tailored to his exact specifications. The cartridge loops were specifically made to hold cartridges for his big bore rifles. This was especially valuable when having to reload a double rifle fast.  c. 1980.

My father with his friend of many years, Roy Slabber.

Posing with a blesbuck ram at Wagendrift.

Zambezi Valley, "D Camp" 1990 - Carl Labuschagne and his friend of many years, Cal Tipton. I think I took this photo. 

My father always seemed to have a rifle in his hands. He had soft, small hands for a man, unlike one would have expected. Even when he worked hard, his hands were always soft and they did not grow hard and scaly with age as it the case with many men. His hands were not the hands of a farmer. They were the hands of a hunter. Hands that were made to hold a weapon, and hands that required the companionship of a good steady eye at all times.

There comes a moment in many big projects when you sometimes have to stand back and say, "OK guys, I think we need to call for help." Ever tried loading a full-grown buffalo onto a pickup with 5 men and a boy? It can be done. But with some difficulty.

What professional hunters do during idle moments - Boney M on a walkman while cleaning the rifle. That little green trunk on the floor housed rifle spares and bits and bobs. It belonged to my grandpa and then to my dad and went on every hunting trip that I can remember. 

A very tense moment in about 1983 - hunting elephant in the Zambezi valley. One shift of the wind and you might be trampled into the ancient dust like a butter pad below the foot of a professional wrestler. 

These pics are of my dad's best friend, Cal Tipton, when they were on a safari together in Botswana. The bow and arrows are genuine Bushmen items from the Kalahari and the shell is of a giant land snail from behind my house.

The annual bird shoots were part of our family culture. Once or twice every winter our friends would come from all over the country, Mr. Bartholomew and Mr. Demont were regulars. Sometimes Dr. McCarthy, Petri Burger and John Carter. We'd sweep the fields and each night prepare a king's feast with the bag. There never lived any happier gun dogs than these. 

My father the gun collector and master stock maker

I heard that my father used to be known for a while as the last professional hunter who still used a .577 Holland and Holland nitro express double rifle as a working gun in his career. He had a lifelong passion for British big game rifles - especially double rifles. His passion for double rifles was specifically inspired by the books of John "Pondoro" Taylor, which he devoured as a boy. Taylor, more than any other of the famous old great white hunters was his roll model and inspiration. His second most favourite was probably Karamojo Bell.

My father spent much of his time during his latter years, making miniature rifles out of African hardwoods.

Scale replica miniature rifle, usually made out of tamboti, red ivory, French or Turkish wallnut, combretum ("rooibos"), and ebony.

My father built this shotgun from scratch. The barrel had been sawn off shorter than the fore-end by someone who then gave it away. It lay on a shelf in a shed on our farm for years until my father decided to restore it. He had new barrels fitted by Danie Joubert in Pretoria, and made a brand new wallnut stock from a block of virgin wood. He also made the accessories and fitted them with handles from bushveld hardwood. The case is not original.

Some of his customized rifles. The engraving and gold inlay work was done by Armin Winckler in Paarl. My father made all the stocks.

Various objects that my father made. The lion claws were from some old family trophies plus some of his own. The large tooth is of unknown original. It had always been part of a collection of memorabilia that we had in a box that came from our ancestors. It was believed to be a huge lion's tooth, but I later wondered whether it could be a whale tooth. The blade was made by Paul Kenning from a bearing of a Soviet tank that was captured during the Six Day War. The screw driver set was made with ivory and ebony handles and the oil bottle and snap caps, as far as I know, are from Holland & Holland in England. The display cases were made by Keith Hobbs.

Small guns or small people. My dad loved it when little children handled these objects of art and were thrilled by them. Many people asked him to buy some of his miniature guns. He always said: "Would you sell your children? No? Well I won't sell my guns either." He actually did sell a small number of them, but only to people who for whatever reason, he really felt like selling them to. It was never for the money as money couldn't purchase he number of hours that went into each one. He also gave away two or three. I suspect that in time they will become treasured collector's items. I remember that the widely-known firearms expert, Dr. Lucas Potgieter, was one of the few who asked my dad to buy one and who eventually got one. The last one he gave away was a miniature Martini-Henry which he promised to his neighbour and good friend, Wynand Brits. A few days he died he took me into his study and told me that when he dies, that rifle must go to Wynand. He knew he was going to die but he gave no other last instructions. Only this one about the Martini-Henry.

My dad inherited a set of ivory tusks when his neighbour passed away. It came from an elephant that died upon the river bank in front of the neighbour's house one day. The ivory was subsequently legally registered and numbered. For some reason or other, transferring ownership to my dad's name presented some bureaucratic nightmare. Finally my dad asked the official involved whether all the drama would be required if the tusks were cut up? The official said "no." In that case, no further paperwork would be required. My dad went home and solved the bureaucrat's problem my turning the tusks into useful objects. He replaced the revolver grip on his .38 special and fitted a handle to this Damascus steel tanto. The blade still has to be acid-etched again to bring out the Damascus steel's beautiful patterns.

Doing the chequering on the grip of a miniature rifle. I remember when he first started teaching himself the art of chequering. It was approximately 1980/81 and he debated with himself endlessly on how the minute lines should be laid out so that each could be laboriously filed out with a micro file so that they made a flawless diamond pattern. He later become so good at it that it was practically second nature.

My father's sense of humour