Page 36 - Blue Valley News August/September 2021

TRAVEL

KRUGER SHALATI:

THE TRAIN ON THE BRIDGE

By James Clarke and Mary Broadley

t rates as South Africa’s most unusual Sabie and experiencing the night sounds the development of its first rest camp -
hotel - not that a stranger would and spotting game as the sun rose. Skukuza.
Irecognise it as a hotel.
The government soon realised that Having known the landmark bridge
It’s a specially designed train and it tourists were more entranced by the stop- for most of my life, I was anxious to see
stands, permanently, on the century-old over on the bridge than by the journey. the train and with photographer, Mary
Selati Railway Bridge downstream from People hankered for a chance to stay down Broadley, we went to Skukuza’s revamped
Skukuza, Kruger National Park’s main rest below in a camp among the giant riverine Selati railway station and were cheerfully
camp. Despite the precipitous fall-off in trees with the night-time roar of lions and greeted, though, because guests were
overseas visitors caused by the COVID the cackle of hyenas. This spurred the 1926 occupying the train, we could not enter the
pandemic, ‘The Train on the Bridge’ is declaration of Kruger National Park and ‘carriages’ but were taken up to the bridge.
open to guests.

The stone-pillared bridge spanning the
Sabie River provides an evocative link
between the Kruger Park and its 19th
century beginnings. The bridge was built
in 1893 to accommodate a railway loop
from the main Delagoa Bay-Pretoria line
and was hastily planned to carry goods
and labour up to the mountain ridge
beyond Gravelotte where a gold rush
was causing great excitement. But the
rush quickly fizzled out and investors,
including the British government, lost
millions.
The Selati railway became a line to
nowhere.
In the 1920s, it was re-opened to offer
tourists a nine-day railway tour of the
Lowveld which included a night on the
bridge looking down at the wildlife of the

34 • Issue 4 2021 • BLUE VALLEY NEWS