Page 40 - Waterfall Issue 8 2021

Waterfall Travel

kRUGER sHALATi:

THE TRAin on THE BRiDGE

By James Clarke and Mary Broadley

It rates as South Africa’s most unusual hotel – walkway or lean against the railing
watching for whatever might be
not that a stranger would recognise it as a hotel. moving about down below.
i t’s a specially designed train and Sabie and experiencing the night sounds, For a birder, this alone was a thrill

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

38 Waterfall Issue 8 2021