Africa, South West Africa, Cuba, China, East Germany, Russia, the USA (unofficially of course) and a number of so called Liberation Organizations all shooting the crap out of each other. Into this boiling pot I was going to fly to get my curios.
The flight on an international airliner from Johannesburg to Windhoek was uneventful, except for a long delay in Kimberley while a passenger, a military doctor, received treatment for a bout of alcohol poisoning.
The South West African Development Corporation had booked me a flight on their 2 engine, 8 seat plane to fly to Rundu. The six passengers were four military officers, a very attractive female reporter for some magazine in Germany, who wanted to experience the border conflict first hand, and there was me.
I quickly got a conversation going with the journalistic lady, who sat in the seat right in front of me. Our conversation made me very optimistic that I wouldn’t be sleeping alone in the Guesthouse that night, so in celebration I pulled out a bottle of Irish whiskey from my bag, with two plastic mugs, and did some generous pouring. We must have been on our third drink when the plane, which was flying fairly high at the time, went into a sudden steep dive! The contents of my mug went flying, splashing on the back of the lady’s head! Her mug was emptied down the pilots back!
Once the plane had settled down on even keel again, a few meters above the ground, brushing its underbelly on the tree tops, the pilot apologized for the sudden acrobatic manoeuvre, and explained that he had to take evasive action as some idiots were firing ground-to-air missiles at us from across the Angolan border. Seeing we got out alive we forgave him.
Unfortunately I wasn’t forgiven for spilling me drink on the back of the journalist's head, the alcohol reacted with some chemicals in her hair gel, and besides, the pilot was the hero of the moment, so he did not sleep alone that night. I did!
I spent the next day, escorted by soldiers, in case of attack from across the border, visiting various wood carvers, making deals, appointed an agent to see to the collecting and packing of the curios and arranged for the transport of the container to Oshakati where I hoped to add to the consignment.
That evening, while the pilot was being entertained by the journalist, I cracked a few jokes and a lot of beer bottles with the soldiers that looked after me during the day, and then had a peaceful sleep till the early morning hours.
I was awoken by explosions; the mongrels from across the border were lobbing mortar bombs into the town. Seeing that there was nothing I could do to stop it, I wanted to carry on sleeping. Just in case a mortar found its way to the Guesthouse, and dislodged some bricks, I pulled the blankets off the bed and settled down now lying under the bed. The night before's beer did help me go back to sleep again, after things quietened down a bit.
We were in the air early the next morning, again brushing any dust off the aircraft on the tree tops. The journalist stayed behind to get some more first-hand experience with soldiers and of the war, while her seat was taken by my newly appointed agent. It was a short uneventful, whiskey less, flight to Oshakati. It took two days to complete my business in Oshakati and Ondangwa, another small town nearby, where I was taken by the military in an armoured vehicle convoy.
The first 80 kilometres or so of the flight back to Windhoek was again done at tree top level, with the rest of the distance covered at normal flying altitude, just below the clouds.
Early a Friday evening my good friend George phoned me, wanting to know if I was busy that weekend. If not, would I be interested in going Deer hunting near Piet Retief, a small town in the then Eastern Transvaal? Deer was not an indigenes antelope; this farmer had imported a small breeding group which had by then built up into a substantial herd.
I had nothing of importance on for the weekend and hunting Deer sounding like an interesting new experience. So I immediately set off on the three-and-a-half hour drive to his farm at Sterkrivier, about 70km away from Potgietersrus.
George owned a Beechcraft Baron and we were going to fly to Piet Retief, an estimated three to four hours flying time. A gentleman named Nel was the contracted pilot for this trip. We boarded early in the morning, at the first glimmer of light, and flew to Marblehall where George’s wife was dropped off to visit her parents for the weekend. Then we set forth for Piet Retief. As I had a fairly late night driving, and with the early rising, I felt tired and made use of the air time catching up on some sleep. George and Nel sat up front doing their thing with the controls of the plane, so I had plenty of space for a good stretch out.
When I woke the plane was obviously on auto-pilot as George and Nel were in a serious discussion about the merit and demerits of various calibres in hunting rifles. On glancing at my watch I realized we have been in the air long enough to have reached our destination. I interrupted their conversation and queried our whereabouts. My mind was set at ease with an explanation that due to head winds our flight would take a bit longer than anticipated, and they turned their attention back to .303’s and .370’s.
As I was satisfied with the performance of my 8mm rifle, I did not want to get involved in the discussion and stared out the porthole. It took me a short while to realize that there was something wrong with the scene on the ground far below us. Piet Retief is on high lying ground, and semi-tropical and tropical plants won’t be found in the town’s vicinity.
What I saw below on the ground was not only semi-jungle, but also sugarcane fields, a crop grown in Natal, not on the Highveld! On pointing this out to the ‘pilots’, they forgot about calibres and started worrying about distances and directions. Another shock was in store for me, and them. While they were arguing about our whereabouts, the scene below changed. When I questioned if the plane had enough fuel to reach Madagascar as we were heading out to sea, the Indian Ocean, the two gentlemen acted with what I regarded as appropriate urgency.
We made a sharp turn to port and flew north, a few kilometres inland from the coast, searching for an airstrip or small airport. Within 10 minutes we spotted a small town airfield and went in for a hasty landing. While slowly taxing to the small terminal building we came across an elderly gentleman tending the lawn on the side of the landing strip. We opened the door and shouted a question at him: “Hay there, where are we?”
The old man gave us a look that could have filled volumes, he must have thought we are either very drunk or very mad, and gave us the obvious answer:”You are at the airport! Where the hell do you think you are, on the beach?”
By the time one of us could thing of a retort, we had passed and left the old man staring after us, shaking his head.
Once inside the building I went to find a toilet while our pilot and his amateur navigator tried to find out where we were, and I suppose also how to get to where we want to be. We were near the town of Empangeni, in the north of Natal.
Soon we were airborne again, flying North-West with both my companions assuring me that they now knew where we were heading. I held my tongue while the other two were discussing what the possible reason could be for us flying off course. Whatever the reason was, I thought, Deer hunting just was not worth it, far too expensive on the nerves.
After flying for a while Nel suddenly exclaimed: “Here we are, there is our destination ahead of us, Piet Retief!”
A short while later George grumbled that that town ahead is not Piet Retief. He had flown to Piet Retief before and that certainly was not it. Piet Retief had a single landing strip, with no terminal buildings and one small hanger. The airfield below us had two runways, crossing each other, and there was a small terminal building with three hangers.
To settle the argument we found the railway station from the air, dived low and flew through the station with the undercarriage barely above the railway line. We could read the name of the town on the boards on the platform: Paulpietersburg! We all knew then where we were, not too far from our destination.
So we flew a few hundred feet above the railway line, following it to our destination. We found Piet Retief, we found the correct landing str
ip, and landed.
Seeing that we were hours late for meeting the Deer farmer, who was to collect us at the airfield for our hunting expedition on his farm, he had gone home believing we won’t arrive. This was our next problem; how to let the farmer know that we were actually there; No buildings, thus no telephones and no people.
We were still sitting around contemplating our next move when a small military vehicle arrived. The road from town to the airfield ran close past a small military camp. The soldiers had seen us land and knew that no other vehicle had gone past their camp to meet any arriving plane after the farmer had left. So they came to investigate. Our problem was solved; they contacted the duty officer per radio who in turn phoned the farmer to tell him that his clients had arrived, rather very late than never.
The farmer collected us an hour later, took us on the long drive to the farm where we preceded hunting Deer. This was really not a challenging experience, and for one I would not hunt Deer again. By early evening we were back at the airfield, loaded the three carcasses and took off, Potgietersrus, we are on our way.
I was very apprehensive about flying with these guys again, but had no choice. It soon was dark, and the only landmarks were the town’s lights,