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Walk with the Lions of Africa
TAKING PRIDE IN A WALK WITH THE LIONS David Ellis TAKING the dog for a walk isn’t quite what it used to be: she’s had her hackles up ever since springing us showing friends a video of a walk we had with a cat. But try explaining to a highly-sensitive miniature poodle […]
Wild Bill Hickock, a Deadwood Calamity
DEATH OF WILD BILL, DEADWOOD’S CALAMITY David Ellis ONCE one of the shootin’est places in America’s West, Deadwood in the famed Black Hills of South Dakota has a population today of just 1,280, yet over 80 gambling casinos. And it’s got a cemetery whose 3,600 graves draw 100,000-something aficionados of the Wild West every year, […]
Man finds fortune in unclaimed luggage
LOST AND FOUND – LOSING IT BY THE TRUCKLOAD David Ellis BACK in 1970 an entrepreneurial Doyle Owens borrowed a mate’s utility and $300 and went off to the Trailways Bus Lines depot in Washington DC in America, where they were selling off piles of clothes and books, cameras and backpacks, sports-goods and jewellery, and […]
FESTIVAL WILL HAVE YOU OVER THE MOON
David Ellis IF you believe everything you read you’ll know that the Moon is in fact nothing but green cheese, it’s inhabited by rabbits, can be responsible for rampaging werewolves and temporary lunacy down here on earth, and that once upon a time a cow jumped over it. As well, those supposed landings on it […]
EYE-BALLING AFRICA’S BIG FIVE – THAT’S WILD
David Ellis WITH some 35 years of travel scribbling behind us we’re pretty much used to jumping on the web and doing our own thing when it comes to getting there and doing that, but with an over-sized wish-list and conversely under-sized time-frame for a recent trip through Southern Africa, we opted for […]
Wild hunt for Africa’s big five
GOING WILD IN HUNT FOR AFRICA’S BIG FIVE David Ellis MOST who head off to Southern Africa armed with bravado and binoculars, do so in the hope of bagging in their cameras the Big Five – lion, leopard, elephant, Cape buffalo and rhino. Not all achieve their goal. For those whose holiday packages see them […]
THE GHAN’S TIMING BUCKLES UNDER THE HEAT
David Ellis WHEN it began over eighty years ago passengers were never led to believe there would be much in common between the time their train from Adelaide was scheduled to arrive in the little Northern Territory town of Stuart, and the time that it did, in fact, get there. And even when […]
Cliveden House: Waldorf astonishes Queen Victoria
WEALTHY AMERICAN RATTLES UK’S HIGH SOCIETY David Ellis AMERICA’S then-wealthiest man, William Waldorf Astor had England’s high society in an absolute tizz back in 1893 when he had the audacity to buy his way into their ranks by paying US$1.25m for the Duke of Westminster’s grand Cliveden House on the River Thames in Buckinghamshire. And […]
Wales: Putting Portmeirion on the map
FOLLY OF BEING TIME-WARPED IN WALES David Ellis WHEN we were told to “expect something of a surprise” at the village of Portmeirion while on an already eye-opening self-driving trip through Wales, we had little idea just what a surprise. I say self-driving, for while we had booked ourselves a rental car for our week, […]
Shongololo Express: South Africa’s dream train
WITCH-DOCTOR ON TRACK TO RAIL’S SUCCESS David Ellis MOST blokes dream at some stage of owning a train, something for a table-top maybe, or if really lucky, to run around the garage walls. But for Leon Plutsick, dreaming of owning his own train meant going one step further than most. Growing up in South Africa […]
