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The lift shaft opened
two years ago.

raskop is an agreeable little pancakes and coffee shops
sort of town. It sits on the edge of the Great Escarpment
looking down on to the Lowveld with a distant view of
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would engulf the town.

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the Escapement. It is as if a giant axe has sliced into the landscape
splitting it down almost to the level of the Lowveld
1 000 metres below.
I stood on its edge and stared down into what was one of South
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the dense canopy; what manner of birds and other forest creatures
lived down there in the deep shade and in the silence.
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among the giant branches and close to the trunks of centuries old
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The jump &RDVW
off point for
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is also the campaigning environmental journalist I would have vigorously
departure point appealed against it.
for the cable “Sacrilege!” I would have cried. “Why destroy the integrity of one
rides. of the country’s last surviving native forests just so the public can

Kyalami Estates • CONNECT • Issue 1 • 2020 13