Living the Rhythms of a Bush Life Part 1: Prologue & 10km Trip

By Dean McCleland in Other Personal 0 Comment

Prologue

Rob Liemer might have been a Chartered Accountant & my boss at Barlows Heavy Engineering but his two loves in his life were the bush of Botswana & repairing Land Rovers.

Rob’s love of the bush manifested itself in his annual two to three week migration to Botswana. Being an accomplished motor mechanic, Rob did not take the road trip through Botswana but rather the bundu bashing route.

To mitigate the risks, he fitted his long wheel-base Land Rover will 500 litre tanks, water containers & storage bins that contained all conceivable manner of spares imaginable.

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Large scale Army exercise in Bloubergstrand area in 1972

By Dean McCleland in Other Personal 0 Comment

Main picture: In the Army in 3SAI Battalion during 1971 in Oudshoorn

Prologue

The decrepit Army Bedford truck noisily made its way into the unknown with its cargo of twenty troops aboard. With its back flap also tied down, its cargo was cocooned within its own world.

The reason for our for these measures was that our platoon was going to be the enemy – a band of terrorists – for a large scale Army Exercise somewhere in South Africa.

The destination was classified but there were two dead give-aways: we were heading west all the time & we had a map of our destination: Bloubergstrand.

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