T.I.A. Baby!! Pt2

Welcome to Part Two of the South Africa blog, if you missed it the first part can be found HERE. This one concerns the second week's doings and our trip to the Drakensburg Mountains in the KwaZulu-Natal Province and the Battlefields of the Anglo-Zulu and Anglo-Boer Wars.

It was Granny (Joyce) and Fiona's joint birthdays on the Sunday after we finished in Kruger Park. Granny's birthday was the reason I was actually in South Africa anyway. It was her 90th and Craig had asked me if I wanted to go over with him as he was going anyway. Quickly finding cheap flights I said yes. Any chance to travel and I'm on it like a rat up a drainpipe... Granny had her celebration at the Piccadilly Deli in Barberton and this is were I met Archie, the playboy millionaire of Barberton. The man with his many fingers in many pies around Barberton. Flash with his cash, this man lives the dream. Of the rest of the guests, Mark, Craig, Fiona and I were the youngest by many decades. Barberton is famed for having the oldest rocks in the world, some 3.5 billion years old, to be semi-precise. That afternoon the Piccadilly Deli appeared to be full of people who were around at the time the Barberton rocks were forming. Needless to say, it turned into a drunken orgy of violence.

The oldest rocks in the world in Barberton, with the obligatory 'Asian Pose' Number 23 'Heart Shape'

The next morning we (Fiona, Mark, Craig, Lynne and I) set off for the Drakensberg Mountains. We stopped outside Dundee in KwaZulu-Natal and had lunch in the shadow of Talana Hill. In fact I had what was presented as 'London Fish and Chips'. Whether the fish and chips had been flown in from London especially for the occasion was unclear, but they were by no means as tasty as the Osbaldwick chippy's fish and chips in York which I covered in a previous entry. In other food related news, I tried no less than three different types of Chutney flavoured crisps on the way to Kwazulu-Natal. The Simba 'Mrs H.S. Ball's Chutney' flavoured ones were the best.

Simba Crisps, probably illegal in the EU due to dangerously high levels of flavourings and preservatives

Passing through Ladysmith, where a relative of mine died during the siege between 1899 and 1900, we continued the journey. Over the coming week we passed through Ladysmith several times and everytime we did I mentioned that I had a relative who had died there during the siege. There is nothing like spreading a bit of Sotheran family history. The place which we were staying at was Cayley Lodge thanks to Lynne's shady time share dealings. We were booked in by a rather pleasant Zulu, who told us all about the local services and entertainments rather than shoving an Assegai into our faces, thankfully.

The view from my window at Cayley Lodge. Jealous yet?

Before I left the UK, I had insisted to Craig that I would have to visit Rorke's Drift if I was to go to South Africa, so this was one of the reasons we had gone to the Drakensburg as it was close to the old battlefields. Tied in with this was the battlefield at Isandlwana, scene of the massive British defeat at the hands (literally) of the Zulu army. We followed almost the precise route of Chelmsford's army when they advanced into Zululand that fateful January in 1879. Down a dirt road where it appeared to be grass burning day inKwaZulu-Natal as everyone and his dog was at it.

One starts it and everyone else joins in. Bloody typical.

We rounded the Shiyane Hill and the missionary station stood before us. It was actually amazing to see the place, which until then had only been visualised in my mind by the film Zulu. Although all the original buildings were either destroyed or pulled down after the battle, the ones that stand there now are pretty much on the originals footprints, so one can get a real sense of the tiny compound and how much balls it took to stand and fight in the face of an oncoming Zulu army.

'Zulus Sir! Thousands of them!'

'Where?'

Craig and I climbed up Shiyane Hill and looked down on the complex from the point of view of the Zulu sharpshooters. In fact we were pretending to be Zulu sharpshooters when a jogger turned up and spoiled our fun.

'Now there's a bitter pill. Our own damned rifles!'

Rorke's drift was definitely one of the highlights of the trip and somewhere I never thought I would see. People kept saying 'there's nothing at Rorke's Drift', but without knowledge of the ground and the turn of events battlefields are just fields. When you have an understanding of what went on at a particular time and place, then they come alive and you can almost see the fighting men. At Rorke's Drift this was how I felt. You could picture the men helping the wounded across the open courtyard under constant rifle fire from the surrounding hills. You could feel the desperation of the Zulu attacks against the hospital veranda. You could almost summon the gallantry and fear of the defenders as they pulled back into the tiny final mealie bagged position. It must have felt as though all hope had gone, the last position of fighting with no fall backs. But after hours of fighting off repeated attacks the British still stood. Both sides showed enormous gallantry that day and night of January 22/23 and Rorke's drift stands as a testament to it.

The British Monument at Rorke's Drift

The Zulu Monument at Rorke's Drift

Continuing the Battlefield theme we continued on to Isandlwana, over the bridge where the original Pontoon bridge stood in 1879. Despite being told by an elderly Zulu that the place was closed, we saw the gates were open and a party of Welsh Rugby supporters were already there. We had made it just too late to get a proper look at the Battlefield and I would have liked a couple of more hours to get the feel of the place. Still, the poignancy of the cairns which scattered the area, marking where the British dead were found, lent an air of sadness to what would otherwise is a beautiful spot. The hill of Isandlwana towered above the battlefield and one could easily imagine the Zulu army streaming down the surrounding hills and up the valley towards the British camp.

One of the many Memorials at Isandlwana with the famous hill behind

Whilst staying at Cayley Lodge there was an organised hike, so Mark, Fiona, Craig and I signed up. The guide showed us some Bushmen paintings in a small cave overlooking a waterfall. It's strange how people always want to make their surroundings better no matter where and in what time they lived.

It's DIY for the first millenium

As we hiked through a small Zulu village, Craig overheard one of the fat tourists that made up most of our party spouting shit. The dumb cunt said 'why has that shack got corrugated tin on the roof? Why couldn't they have used thatch like some of the the others? Corrugated tin ruins the ambiance.' It just exemplified the difference in South Africa (and other parts of the world) between rich and poor. There we were heading back to our safe, fenced off multi-million Rand holiday complex, back to our cars, computers and TVs, whilst some kids were playing with a broken plastic bottle in a stream because they had nothing else in the world.

These kids had literally NOTHING in the world, do you think they cared whether their tin roof ruined the ambiance?

Spion Kop was the next battlefield on the list and we visited it a couple of days after Isandlwana. Well, there was other people in our party who weren't interested in military history so we had to do some thing else in the intervening day. Unbelievable I know, but there it is. The most memorable part of this None-War day was seeing a newspaper headline which read 'Giraffe Horror Crash' I wanted to know what the Hell a giraffe was doing in a car anyway, is it just me or do we need tighter controls on allowing animals to drive around like they own the road?

Stop the Madness!!

After being saluted through the gate at Spion Kop, we made our way up the hill to follow the self guided tour the guard gave us. Again, the importance of visiting battlefields to understanding military history was clearly shown. The hill overlooks all the surrounding areas and controls access to Ladysmith. It was a very important position for reconnaissance. This is something that a lot of people don't understand. A South African family we bumped into got chatting to Craig and I, and one of them asked why were the Boers and the British fighting over what they thought was just a hill? He was making the point that the guns wouldn't be able to hit people in the valleys below. I pointed out it was more important to SEE the enemy than kill them from this vantage point. The mass graves and the pre-CWGC battlefield monuments were testament to the fighting men there that lost their lives.

At the setting of the sun...

The Spion Kop trip wrapped up the visit to the Drakensburg Mountains, a beautiful part of the world, even if it was cold. We all headed back to Barberton the following day, saying goodbye to Mark and Fiona who were on their way back home to Sydney. Craig and I were destined to stay in Barberton the following week, but more about that in the next episode of T.I.A. Baby!!

The Dramatic Drakensberg