A SENSE OF PLACE: A Gem Called Zwartkloof

Whenever I tell people that I am about to spend some time in the bush, their response still bemuses me: “Enjoy the peace and quiet!” ‘Peace’ is a relative term and may be used differently by folks to express very different states of inactivity, calm, tranquillity, lack of conflict or even stress, for example. However, the term ‘quiet‘ is far less abstract and so should mean a similar lack of loud noise, at least to most humans.

Possibly, people can ignore noises emanating from the bushveld; perhaps these noises are not relevant to most human beings, these noises are not directly related to their own personal lives of work, family and friends. I have never inquired quite what connotations people associate with the good wishes – I just know that the bush is never quiet; there is never silence in the bushveld. In fact, it is a tremendously noisy place.

As I am writing this blog*, sitting in the shade of the thatched roof of a tiny rondavel at midday (while family members are snoozing away the hottest hours), in a tiny patch of bushveld near Bela-Bela in the Limpopo Province of South Africa, a hot wind is susurrating through the still-leafless branches of the thorn-trees. A Tree Squirrel is chatting out its alarm call nearby, a group of Glossy Starlings is ratcheting away at some discussion, and a family of Grey Go-away-birds is busy settling some domestic dispute to the accompaniment of several Rattling Cisticolas. The most insistent and penetrating noise is the screaming of the cicadas, begging the sun to have some mercy on them on this hot, early summer day.

When I did finally tie the knot (as they say) relatively late in life, I had no inkling of the most generous gift that would be bestowed on Jacqui and myself. Every year we have had the privilege to be invited to Maroelarus, a beautiful small thatched-roof compound situated in a tiny piece of bushveld at Zwartkloof Private Game Reserve close to Bela-Bela. Our visits usually coincide with Christmas or New Year; however, in the past we have been invited occasionally to join my late brother-in-law Flip, my sister-in-law Elize and the nieces and nephews at other times of the year too. This present trip to Maroelarus is the first family outing to this most marvellous place since the sudden and untimely passing of Flip earlier this year. Sala kahle, Ou Grootte. Ngiyabonga kakhulu.

Zwartkloof lies at the edge of the Waterberg Mountains. This tiny game reserve measures just two kilometres by two kilometres in size. The bushveld is very dense since it is difficult to manage a reliable fire regime to control old growth on such a small property. Yet, despite its size, Zwartkloof boasts with a great diversity of veld-types. A small portion in the north-eastern corner of the reserve covers the first gentle slope of a large kopje situated on the neighbouring farm. Here, on the rocky soil, the bushveld is dominated by bushwillows, and includes (amongst many other tree species) wild figs, Candelabra Euphorbia, Live-long and Mountain Karee. In the opposite south-western corner, the ground is sandy and a deep red in colour. Silver Cluster Leaf trees and very tall grasses dominate this part of the reserve.

The rest of Zwartkloof is covered by the typical bushveld of the area, changing between thornveld (with various species of Acacia (particularly Umbrella Thorn, Robust Thorn and Red Thorn) and patches of mixed bushveld (dominated by bushwillows (Red, Velvet and Large-fruited), with African Weeping-Wattle, Bushveld Saffron, Marula and Jacket Plum. The smaller shrubs in the mixed bushveld include Common Guarri, several Wild Raisin species and small, scrubby Sickle Bush.

Large game is scarce at Zwartkloof and restricted to the common antelope (Kudu, Nyala, Common Duiker, Blue Wildebeest, Red Hartebeest and Impala, including Giraffe and Warthog) and Burchell’s Zebra. Watering-points scattered across Zwartkloof are rotated and controlled carefully, to prevent overgrazing or damage caused by browsing of the vegetation. Only small predators are resident on the reserve – Banded Mongooses, Slender Mongooses and, increasingly over the last decade or so, pairs of Black-backed Jackal and their offspring.

The birdlife at Zwartkloof is spectacular for such a small and usually quite dry bushveld reserve. The parched winter months can be challenging for keen birdwatchers, but the summer months reverberate with the calls of a host of resident species and summer migrants, including six cuckoo species and four species of owls.

This singular, tiny patch of the bushveld of South Africa is definitely never quiet, as indicated at the start of the blog. Obviously, there is no roaring of resident lions, no sawing of local leopards and no cackling of hyenas – there is, however, the nightly howl of jackal.

The birds add to the daytime cacophony. I have heard several European visitors remark that Africa does not have a dawn chorus of bird song. What Africa has instead, is a dawn-raucous, less melodic perhaps, but just as voluminous. Almost invariably, the francolins and spurfowls will start the African melody, followed by the unmatched range of calls of the Fork-tailed Drongos whistling out their own repertoire of songs or disguising their voices with the mimicked calls of innumerable other bird species. The various robins, scrub-robins, thrushes and tchagras soon join in. The slightly later risers of the avian menagerie of the bushveld, the hornbills and go-away-birds, add calls that are more grating later in the morning.

In summer, Woodland and Brown-hooded Kingfishers, Black-headed Orioles, numerous cuckoos and the high-pitched trills of a few bee-eater species, boost the daily performance. The less obtrusive, soft bubbling of doves, the tinkling of fire-finches and the sibilant swizzling of Blue Waxbills provide the real melodic musical talent. The noise continues throughout the day, with a ratcheting of grasshoppers and locusts, the buzz of bees, the drone of flies, the screams of the cicadas and the tremolo of leaves as a wind tickles past.

Despite numerous visits during the last decade and a half, it remains a privilege that I am invited to experience and to explore this small gem intimately. Zwartkloof has never disappointed – never, not once, have I encountered at Zwartkloof the same conditions, the same exuberance of the bushveld. Each visit reveals a different combination of flowering grasses, trees in bloom, diversity of insect and birdlife. The seasonal changes at Zwartkloof are dramatic, but even the summers have exposed their unique individuality, year-to-year.

I have set myself a hopeless task – to capture in a single image, the entirety of the most awe-inspiring qualities that Zwartkloof has to offer. I have spent at least a week a year for sixteen years now working tirelessly to attempt to hold in a single photograph, a single exposure, Zwartkloof’s unique sense of place. I have captured many good images of the environment, the flora and the fauna. I have been able to snatch many special moments in images.

As a collection, the photographs taken at Zwartkloof do reveal, in separate images, the charm and character of Zwartkloof. Yet, I am still captivated by a conviction (certainly fiction, not fact) that Zwartkloof will reveal its most treasured sense of place at any moment, to allow me to capture it in a single photograph, an image that encapsulates all facets that make Zwartkloof so extraordinary a place.

I know I have not succeeded yet; I know too that my obsession is a pipedream. Every photograph, every image, is an abstraction by definition, simply because it is a careful composition that includes only a chosen subset of elements of a place or its inhabitants, while deliberately excluding all other, distracting parts. Why then do I proceed with this mania? I continue searching because I remain convinced that it is possible to capture in a single frame – although it does not document all species and only a smidgeon of the geographic locality – a genuine, integral and summative sense of place of Zwartkloof.

As long as I may still be invited to enjoy this tiny jewel of bushveld, I will pursue my most tragic romantic passion that obsesses me still.


*   This blog was written on 20/21 October 2020, and is dedicated to my late brother-in-law and his family, the Bornman folks that have invited Jacqui and me repeatedly to share in the experience that is Zwartkloof.
 

ABOUT THIS IMAGE… ‘ ‘Predator’ on Predator’ and ‘Wild Eye’

Since the vagaries of the market place ensure that a few select individuals are rewarded for their work much more handsomely than the majority are, I have been able to afford only very few longer photographic trips. On only three occasions, I have managed to spend a significant time in the Kruger National Park, attempting to capture and express the passion that I feel for this awesome reserve. All three opportunities were washed out completely – rain or drizzle rinsed the Lowveld clean, every day, morning and evening, leaving only the midday hours on a few days with harsh, uninspiring sunlight.

My last wet and grey sojourn to Kruger took place in February 2017. (This was the last time a long Kruger trip was hampered by continuous rain, not the last occasion during which the rain-gods blessed me with an unwelcome present. That happened in March of this year, on my last pre-lockdown photographic trip.) In 2017, I had planned to spend sixteen nights in Kruger, for once swapping my favoured northern regions for an exploration of the central and southern sections of the park.

I was nearing the end of this marvellous trip, despite the constant heavy rain. I had booked the last three nights at Pretoriuskop, a camp in the southwestern sector of Kruger, and one that I had last visited as a very young child. In general, I avoid the southern regions of Kruger – they are too crowded for my liking. I loathe even more having to travel long distances between camps, so I was not looking forward with any glee to the 140 kilometres or so from Satara to Pretoriuskop. Using the morning hours to travel slowly, to spot, to investigate and to work any potential sightings photographically, this trip would take a minimum of eight hours to complete.

So far, the trip had been a mixed bag of bad lighting, meagre photogenic sightings and, by now, a small, wet and somewhat musty tent. Worse still, I was heading into an area of the park that I could remember only vaguely. I would be working for two days in an environment that I was struggling to previsualise. Nevertheless, I trundled off down the main tar road towards my next accommodation.

Along the way, I stopped at the ‘city’ of Tshokwane. Gone was the intimate picnic spot in the bush that I remember from childhood. Now, several restaurants were vying for the attention and the tourist dollars/pounds/euros. I fled as quickly as I could squeeze out a long-overdue personal pit-stop.

I confess that my mood at this point was sombre to say the least. The crowds, the traffic in southern Kruger do not agree with this old codger. I rattled on down the tar road. At midday, as I rolled over a blind rise, I spotted a massive male leopard ambling along the tar road, also heading south, some 200 metres in front of me. I slowed down immediately to follow this magnificent beast. I was hoping that he would soon leave the road so that I could get closer without spooking him. As I snapped off a record shot through the rain-spattered windshield to show the folks back home that I indeed had seen a leopard on this trip, I caught a glimpse in the rear-view mirror of a jeep-jock safari-vehicle motoring over the rise behind me.

For me personally, these are the worst moments in any game park. I will always share sightings – after all, all visitors spend time in Kruger or another game reserve precisely for the unexpected encounters with game. Yet, a sighting of game ambling along the road inevitably draws a mini-traffic-jam, a circumstance that I will avoid at all cost.

I could not change lenses and I was trapped with long focal-length lenses on all cameras. Moreover, game on a road is not my game as a photographer. Perhaps I could overtake the leopard slowly and very carefully; then, as he ambled past my window, I could possibly snap a portrait of this walking cat. Everything worked out according to plan: I passed the leopard, pulled over to a stop on the opposite side of the road, switched off the engine and the leopard kept on walking towards me. As I peered through the viewfinder, I realised I could not get a shot of the head of the leopard without the road being included in the frame. As he got closer, I spotted an engorged tick on his lower lip – this was it, this could become the focus of a very different portrait, not of a leopard, but of a parasite on a leopard: ‘‘Predator’ on Predator’.

After a single exposure, I fired the ignition to continue following the leopard. By now, the jeep-jock behind me had almost caught up. Ahead of me, still at some distance, I saw two more jeep-jocks pelting towards the leopard from the south. I knew that the leopard would bolt, so I followed it slowly at some distance. As soon as the safari-crowd pulled alongside my vehicle and accelerated, the leopard vanished in a streak, off the high embankment and under a dense thicket of low scrub. The jeep-jock had overshot the mark in his haste to deliver a leopard to the wildly gesticulating and very noisy crowd perched atop his vehicle. I pulled onto the oncoming verge and chose a spot where I could see the entire thicket into which the leopard had vanished. I used my longest lens to scan the undergrowth for any sign of the leopard. Very occasionally, I could glimpse through the dense twigs, leaves and tall grasses, only a few long, white whiskers whenever the leopard yawned.

Obviously, I was swamped by the inevitable southern Kruger traffic-jam. I could not move my vehicle at all, so I decided to wait it out as patiently as I could do. If the leopard moved out of the thicket, I might be able to snap off a shot. I picked a very small opening in the undergrowth, just in front of the hidden head of the leopard, pre-focused my lens on this tiny gap, and waited.

After 40 minutes or so of loud shouts, revving engines and even much hooting, the leopard had had enough. Suddenly he sat up inside the thicket, still concealed behind impenetrable twigs, leaves and tall grasses. He must have been a proponent of telepathy; he must have picked up my loud thoughts of ‘Only one look!’. As if he understood my mental entreaties, he leant forward and granted me just one momentary glance with one eye through the tiny aperture in the bush on which I had chosen to focus, spun around and crashed out of the back end of the thicket.

Gone. Yet he had given me a special present: a single frame, a single photograph: ‘Wild Eye’.

Since that trip, I have revisited the southern sections of Kruger on several occasions. The noise, the hubbub and the traffic – particularly of the jeep-jocks and their safari-crowds from the countless ‘game lodges’ that border the south of Kruger – still let my hairs stand on end. Yet the southern part of Kruger – not visited and experienced since childhood days – has crept into and lodged itself permanently in this old heart of mine.

REMINISCENCES: Sojourn in the Mountain-Lands of Kruger

In a previous blog, I mentioned and explained my devotion to the central and northern regions of the Kruger National Park, South Africa. I also pointed out several reasons why I had neglected the southern sections of this magnificent park during the past decades. Yet, following a very brief trip to the southwestern region of Kruger in early 2017, I had vowed to return before long to the previously shunned expanses of the park.

So, towards the end of 2018, Jacqui and I set off to spend a week at Berg-en-Dal Camp. This camp had been built in Kruger long after my childhood. It also featured a different style of architecture of the buildings, a shape and layout that was very different from the quaint rondavel circles of the older camps. Several other factors that impinge significantly on my enjoyment of the wilderness and any chances of snatching good photographs had kept me away from Berg-en-Dal previously.

I spent quite a while mulling over the pros and cons of such a visit, before I finally resolved to stay over at Berg-en-Dal for a week. The camp is stationed very close to the entrance gate into Kruger at Malelane, which itself is very close to countless ‘safari lodges’ (without game!) crowded along the southern border of the park. Moreover, Malelane Gate is only a short drive away from the bustling city of Mbombela. This combination of circumstances ensures that throughout the day all the roads in the immediate vicinity of Berg-en-Dal carry heavy traffic – trucks carting supplies to the park’s southern camps, buses conveying staff into and out of the park, and day-visitors who are eager to traverse the greatest distance possible in limited time. Of course, my nemesis, the presence of countless safari lodge jeep-jocks and their noisy guests required exacting consideration.*

Besides, the location of Berg-en-Dal Camp at the edge of the Malelane Mountain-land restricts the choice of any visitor (leaving the camp or returning to it) to a single decision – whether to turn left or to turn right at the camp’s entrance gate. Therefore, traffic close to camp is concentrated and increased dramatically in the earliest and latest hours of the day – precisely the time that is ideal for photography.

Despite grave reservations, I decided that I could not delay the opportunity to explore the hills and kopjes in this part of Kruger. For too long, I had abandoned the scenery, the many distinctive species of plants that grow in this region and an enjoyment of a different part of the Kruger National Park.

Inevitably, I had packed some rain amongst our camping equipment – luckily, this time, a few mornings and afternoons remained clear enough for some splendid play of light and shadow. Notwithstanding the crowds and the rain, we enjoyed a most wonderful trip. Our luck with photogenic sightings was astonishing – no doubt, the presence of my lucky game-spotting charm bolstered our luck; my youngest sister, Bärbel, joined us on this trip. Each day confronted us with exceptional sightings of game and photographic opportunities. Our short trip was so packed with excitement that we even forgave the camp’s resident baboon troop after it had ripped through (not opened) our tents – one side wall of our two, small tents each were aerated by metre-long tears, despite us storing all food safely inside our locked vehicle, day and night.

The roads through the mountain-lands were fabulous. The numerous densely-vegetated gullies between smaller hills, the narrow expanses of flat land bordered by the boulder-strewn slopes of some kopjes across which the roads threaded their way, and the many views of majestic hills and a few mountains enthralled us. Each drive along these steeper, winding sand roads provided large herds of buffalo and elephant. The recent decline of the lion population in the southern section of the park meant that we could not travel without lurching into leopards along the bases of kopjes and along the many smaller rivers and vleis on the flatter plains around Berg-en-Dal.

The assortment of stunning sightings of game in the picturesque landscape that surrounds Berg-en-Dal kept me quickened and very busy every day. Animals, plants and the landscape enveloped me. For once, I trundled across several photographic opportunities that I could work earnestly to capture in images at least a few impressions of this splendid environment. I even managed to spend twenty minutes or so in the company of a young honeybadger that was busy excavating a large dung-pile for juicy beetle grubs.

A hefty storm that showered Berg-en-Dal for an hour one night, caused runoff from the slopes of the hills to start flowing down smaller gullies and rivers. From a bridge, we spotted a huge crocodile fishing below the low wall of an overflowing weir. Regularly, Sharp-tooth Catfish and minute Barbs attempted to leap up the rushing water to get over the river blockage to a fast-filling pool upstream of the weir.

At very early dawn and late dusk, Lesser Galagos (bushbabies) vaulted through the vegetation, tree-to-bush, bush-to-tree, past our camping spot to entertain us daily. At dawn on the morning of our last full day in the park, I spotted an adult bushbaby perched on a sturdy branch of an old dead tree. This parent was calling softly to a youngster that was still hiding in a very dense shrub. I backed off and waited patiently at some distance until I had seen both bushbabies entering a hollow of the dead tree. That evening we returned to camp slightly earlier than usual – I desperately wished to photograph these mini-humans as they left their hollow tree trunk to forage the night away out in the dark bushveld. I managed to snap only a single exposure.

I remain convinced that I will not be able to put up with the traffic and the crowds of the southern Kruger for an extended time. Yet, I have decided that the areas and camps that I have avoided for so long must be included from now on, albeit only for short visits.


*   Perhaps I need to explain why I loathe much (not all) of the so-called safari and purported conservation ‘industry’ in South Africa. The most significant source of my boundless detestation of this ‘industry’ is the unacceptable attitude of the majority of citizens – South Africans are renowned for exploitation of the wilderness. If money is to be made, all thoughts and considerations of conservation and ethics evaporate. There are countless examples that populate a list that is too long to discuss here in its entirety. Well documented examples include: the illegal import and export of rare and endangered species (animals and plants), the deliberate breeding of colour morphs of various species (primarily antelope) for hunting clients (individuals whose egos have become satiated by the slaughter of the available ‘common’ game, so that they now covet a unique, special victim), canned lion hunting, many other questionable hunting ethics (such as allowing clients to shoot game at waterholes or salt licks, the use of hides or vehicles from which to blast forth), ad infinitum.
 
One of the less offensive, yet equally questionable practices involves the concept of game and safari lodges and reserves. There are laudable proprietors who are indeed sincerely concerned and immersed in efforts of conservation of the total environment. However, the majority of ‘reserves’, ‘parks’, ‘zoos’, ‘lodges’ are frankly money-generating endeavours in a country that believes generally that ‘ecotourism’ is a valuable, honourable and necessary facet of the economy. This is an ‘industry’ that does not add value to a product of human intellect, discovery, manufacture and labour – rather, this industry simply affixes a spurious price tag to the rapacious exploitation (most often detrimental) of the environment and its inhabitants. There is simply no understanding that the wilderness has existed for millennia, without human assistance, despite ceaseless abuse by humanity. The wilderness exists; it is not a product of human ingenuity, skill or exertion. The smidgeon of wilderness that remains must continue to exist – to ensure that the planet remains habitable for a sizeable fraction of the biosphere (including humans), not for trade by a single, self-elected, self-aggrandising, renegade pest species.
 
The ‘safaris’ on offer usually do not provide an experience of wilderness; nor do they provide for an adequate understanding of the necessity of conservation. Rather, they are glorified, glamourized and pared down rattles through the ‘wilds’, hollow attempts at completing a tick list of game sightings, not filled out by a slow, deliberate and untiring search of the environment, but by travelling at the highest speed possible from one incident to the next, following the instructions of a radio operator. This is not game-spotting; this is not an experience of wildlife and the wild. Worse still, the running commentary provided by ‘expert guides’ in the majority of cases is based entirely on providing info-bites enclosing a certain wow-factor, using outdated and faded information, much of it false.
 
There! I shall stop now.
 

ABOUT THIS IMAGE… ‘The Hunter and the Hunted’

I have a vivid memory from my boyhood days of catching sight in a photography magazine of a dramatic image of a Black-backed Jackal hunting Cape Turtle-Doves at one of the many water holes along the Auob River in the then Kalahari Gemsbok National Park (now the Kgalagadi Transfrontier National Park) in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa. The photograph left an indelible impression on me at the time. The jackal was shown in full flight, jaws wide open, about to snap shut on a turtledove, one of many that had exploded upwards from the waterhole. The drama was captured at just the right moment; no contact had yet been made between hunter and prey, yet the image left no doubt about the inevitable outcome – the turtledove would be snatched despite its frenzied breakaway and the jackal would have its meal.

Sadly, I can not recall the photographer who portrayed this drama (and I apologise for this lapse of memory). Since this iconic instant was captured on slide film (in good light, with appropriate exposure and exceptional composition and drama), countless photographers repeatedly have attempted to recreate this singular image – none has succeeded to get it just right. Inevitably, the numerous published attempts have depreciated some of the uniqueness of the original photograph, yet it remains outstanding and unequalled to this day.

Once glimpsed, many exceptional images are stored away safely in a corner of my mind. I reimagine them repeatedly for their sheer brilliance of circumstance, camera technique and photographic vision. These outstanding achievements act as a constant reminder to myself to up my own game, to refocus and to re-sharpen my own interpretation of selected scenarios in nature and to hone my own personal vision in photography.

Several years ago, I had the good fortune to spend almost two weeks in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier National Park. I avoid copying an image of another photographer at all cost; however, I too felt the need to capture some of the relationship between the Black-backed Jackal and the Cape Turtle-Doves of the Kgalagadi. Despite my relatively short stay at Nossob Camp, I decided to dedicate two full mornings of photography to my own attempt at a different interpretation of the relationship between these hunters and their prey.

On two mornings of the trip, I took up position at a waterhole that I had selected for this task. Other than focussing on my previsualised mini-project, I remained receptive to all of the many interactions happening at this one locality. On both mornings, the low thorn-trees surrounding the waterhole were chockfull with feathered folk. Hundreds of doves descended from the trees onto the rocky rim of the waterhole once a small number of them had scraped up sufficient courage to do so. After settling on the ground, it took only a few jittery individuals, taking off in panic, to trigger a swirl of doves to ascend back into the air, to flail around the waterhole in wide circles and finally to settle down again on the thorn-trees.

Each morning, several individual jackals kept trotting in to the waterhole to quench their morning thirst. A few times, individuals snapped at turtledoves, but only half-heartedly – no jackals showed any determined attempt to start hunting doves. Nevertheless, the time I spent at the waterhole proved fruitful – I managed to capture doves in flight, several other small seedeaters, several portraits of jackals and even lions coming for a drink.

It had never been my intention to copy the image of the jackal hunt of turtledoves that I can recall so clearly from boyhood. I needed to attempt my own photographic summary of this interrelationship between hunter and the hunted. The first morning allowed me to observe the dynamics of the Cape Turtle-Doves and the Black-backed Jackal – how both species acted while on their own and when in the presence of the other. The first morning thus produced images of the Cape Turtle-Doves and the Black-backed Jackal separately – in particular, the difference in appearance and behaviour of individual jackals fascinated me, as did the haphazard explosion of doves from the rim of the waterhole.

By the second morning, I felt confident that I could capture the relationship between the hunter and its prey. I had seen that the turtledoves would lift off en masse whenever a jackal approached the waterhole. I knew that I would not witness a hunt; yet, I had previsualised a scenario where I could possibly snap the portrait of a jackal surrounded by flying doves. With this in mind, I concentrated exclusively on the shenanigans of the turtledoves and the jackals.

After several hours of waiting, a youngish jackal approached the waterhole warily – every time any doves flew up, the jackal would stop. This ideal scenario would allow me to capture my imagined image. I focused continuously on the head of the young jackal and clicked the shutter whenever several turtledoves appeared in the viewfinder around the jackal’s head. In total I took seven exposures – four turned out to be duds because the jackal’s face and eyes were concealed by part of a wing or a body of a dove. Of the remaining three images two had worked really well, but one image, in particular, summarised as closely as possible the image I had dreamt up in my imagination – the much gentler, less tense relationship between ‘The Hunter and the Hunted’.

I did not return to this particular waterhole for the remainder of my stay at Nossob Camp. Instead, I roamed around to capture, whenever possible, other fascinating, awesome and beautiful images of the Kgalagadi.