ROCK N’ SOUL

“Even though you might leave Africa, Africa never leaves you,” says South African-born Julian Koski. He left South Africa for the US as a young man in the 1980s, but his vivid memories of his childhood safari holidays stayed with him. Now living with his wife, Aida, in New York City, working on Wall Street and raising a family of his own—twins Leo and Tess—his thoughts turned once again to his childhood memories of the South African wilderness. “I wanted to give them a piece of what I had as a child growing up,” he says. He saw the potential of a holiday home in a nature reserve to open up another realm for them, a counterpoint to the privilege of New York City. “We wanted to give them a different perspective of the world—something environmental, ecological, human,” he says.

He found a spectacular site overlooking a dam in Thornybush Private Game Reserve, pristine savannah adjacent to the