off from Zwartkop, fly almost due north with the Johannesburg/Nylstroom railway to guide you, aim for the gap in that low range of hills, cross into Southern Rhodesia just where the Shashi River joins the Limpopo, then keep that course until a north/south green plateau, that of the Doro Range, appeared ahead. Soon after that, keeping the same course, the round, bare rock known as Umgulugulu was easily picked up and just beyond it the town of Gwelo and Thornhill aerodrome. The flight from Durban to Thornhill, going direct from Zwartkop rather than via Pietersburg, was just 840 miles. There was one amusing incident during that business trip to the Union which I must retail. At the week-end during our visit our ISCOR friends took us all down to the Kruger National Park to see the wild life. Although there was no commercial flying to the Park, there was a military airstrip there and ISCOR, which was of course a powerful nationalised undertaking, had permission to fly us down in one of the company’s executive planes. We had a wonderful couple of days there, with excellent hospitality and exciting trips on the dirt roads of the National Park in Volkswagen minibuses, called ‘Combies’. Margaret and I happened on a particular trip to be in separate Combies, she in one with Olive Kruger, wife of Mannie Kruger, the ISCOR Managing Director, as hostess. On the Park roads the wild animals have right of way at all times and the dirt tracks are built with severe dips in their surface at close intervals, so that speeding becomes impossible. The ladies’ Combie was proceeding along its chosen dirt track at a sedate enough pace when it slowed down even more and crawled along some twenty yards behind an elderly male lion which was padding very slowly indeed up the left hand side of the road. The Combie occupants suffered this for a while but became gradually more impatient. ‘What,’ asked Olive Kruger, ‘does that stupid lion think it’s doing?’ ‘Oh,’ replied Margaret, quick as a flash, ‘It’s looking for a zebra crossing!’


* * * * * B


ack from leave, it was another six weeks’ intensive flying and another handful of pupils straight from their Tiger Moth hours at Guinea Fowl, the neighbouring EFTS at Gwelo. The little biplane they had been flying had no vices. The Harvard was just a bit different, for it had practically the same wing loading, although not the same top speed, as a Spitfire and it could be tricky to land. Being a typical machine of its time, with a retractable undercarriage in front and a fixed tailwheel at the back, it was not flown on to the grass or the runway to touch down before stalling but was held off a couple of feet above the ground until it stalled and landed on all three points, the two front wheels and the tailwheel, at the same time. If it was stalled two or three feet too high, there was a nasty tendency for the wing, usually the right wing, to drop suddenly,


63


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