Page 16 - Dainfern Precinct Living 6 2021

TRAVEL

It rates as South Africa’s
most unusual hotel - not
that a stranger would

recognise it as a hotel.

KRUGER SHALATI

THE TRAIN ON THE BRIDGE

BY J AMES CLARKE AND MAR Y BROADLEY

t’s a specially designed train and sounds, and spotting game as the sun walkway or lean against the railing
it stands, permanently, on the rose. watching for whatever might be moving
century-old Selati Railway Bridge about down below.
Idownstream from Skukuza, Kruger The government soon realised that
National Park’s main rest camp. tourists were more entranced by For a birder, this alone was a thrill and I
Despite the precipitous fall-off in the stop-over on the bridge than by now wonder which is the better birding
overseas visitors caused by the COVID the journey. People hankered for a vantage point - Selati Bridge, or Lake
pandemic, ‘The Train on the Bridge’ is chance to stay down below in a camp Panic’s famous bird hide, 10 minutes’
open to guests. among the giant riverine trees with the drive away.
night-time roar of lions and the cackle
The stone-pillared bridge spanning the of hyenas. This spurred the 1926 In the hazy distance to the west,
Sabie River provides an evocative link declaration of Kruger National Park and one can watch spectacular sunsets
between the Kruger Park and its 19th the development of its first rest camp – over the kilometre-high Drakensberg
century beginnings. The bridge was Skukuza. Escarpment while, to the east, one
built in 1893 to accommodate a railway can see the crest of the Lebombo
loop from the main Delagoa Bay – Having known the landmark bridge Mountains on the Mozambique border
Pretoria line and was hastily planned for most of my life, I was anxious to stretching southwards to eSwatini
to carry goods and labour up to the see the train and with photographer, (formerly Swaziland) and Zululand.
mountain ridge beyond Gravelotte Mary Broadley, we went to Skukuza’s
where a gold rush was causing great revamped Selati railway station and were At the end of the Boer War, there was
excitement. But the rush quickly fizzled cheerfully greeted, though, because uncontrolled hunting along the Sabie
out and investors, including the British guests were occupying the train, we and the government called in a Scot,
government, lost millions. could not enter the ‘carriages’ but were Lieutenant-colonel James Stevenson-
taken up to the bridge. Each carriage is Hamilton, to stop the killing which,
The Selati railway became a line to an en-suite apartment with a glass wall incredibly, he did. A quarter-century
nowhere. allowing guests to either sit in armchairs later, he became the first warden when
or lie in bed observing the elephants the region was proclaimed as a national
In the 1920s, it was re-opened to offer bathing and watching the ever-present park. I met him on his 90th birthday and
tourists a nine-day railway tour of the fish eagles patrolling the river. heard first-hand how he took control.
Lowveld which included a night on the
bridge looking down at the wildlife of On the south side of the carriages, He was called ‘Skukuza’ by the local
the Sabie and experiencing the night guests can stroll along the bridge’s people. One interpretation of his name
41
41
14
DPL
DPL
DPL