African Adventure 2

African Adventure 2

The following are snippets from the drop down tab:

A Story to Remember

So what does this story have to do with the Kruger National Park. As someone with insider information, you will know how the largest national park in South Africa nearly did not exist as a result of this railway line. See how the Selati Line changed the face of tourism in the Bushveld for ever.

A true African story of intrigue and drama played itself out when two French bankers decided to build a railway to nowhere in the Bushveld known as the Selati Line. The outcome of which would amaze any big modern venture.

The bribery, death, deception and subterfuge that followed these two bankers is almost unparalleled in Southern Africa, involving an entire government and the alteration of a large strategic region of the Southern continent for ever. This railway is no more… it never reached its destination and never accomplished its intended purpose. Yet it had such vast and far reaching impacts on the Lowveld, the Second Anglo Boer War, then later the Kruger National Park and even across the world.

Selati Goldfields Private Line

They All Cried, “Corruption!”

To recap: In 1893, the Selati Railway was to be the new line to the Selati Gold Fields, situated around the Selati River near Gravelot, where a mine is still mining gold today, all-be-it not much. In 1865 a teacher, – come geologist and explorer – Karl Mauch from Germany suggested there was gold in them, there mountains near the Selati River. (See the map below at the 8725 foot Mauch Peak, named after this man.) It might be of interest that Karl Mauch recorded the Great Zimbabwe ruins on 3rd September 1871. Later in 1871 a party consisting of Edward Button, James Sutherland, George Parsons and Thomas MacLachlan having followed Mauch’s trail, found gold at the mountains they named the Murchison Range (named apparently after the great geologist Sir Roderick Murchison) and reported it to the Transvaal Government, as was then the law. A government official was sent out and confirmed it was a workable gold region. What ensued was a gold rush to a very inhospitable area and considering gold was sparse, only a small town was established.