KNP HISTORY: History of camps

» Lower Sabie – favourite of the southeast

In Issue 12 of KRUGER MAGAZINE, we featured Punda Maria Camp’s history. In Issue 13 we look at the history of Lower Sabie Camp.

Origin of Lower Sabie

This favourite of the southeast formally dates back at least 120 years although the area was inhabited by local people long before that. The first ranger of Lower Sabie was Captain Gaza Gray, who was in charge of Steinaeckers Horse, the British military unit operating in the southern Lowveld during the Anglo Boer War. He was based at Gomodwane where the H5 crosses the Vurhami. Lower Sabie was then an outpost and on his first visit to Lower Sabie in August 1902, Stevenson-Hamilton described Gray’s camp at Lower Sabie as follows: “He had a pleasant little camp of half a dozen well-built round huts or rondavels enclosed within a neatly-made reed fence. This enclosure he kept sacred to himself and his personal servants. But outside,”