As we age, we begin to realise we all had experiences and events that helped shape us into who we became – some for the better, some for the worse. I was the son of a bankrupt farmer forced off his land. My father never recovered, and it was maybe my subliminal shame of always being the poor kid that drove me to look for solace in quiet places.
In 1983, my parents rented a farmhouse along the Kat River in the Eastern Cape. I spent a year fishing in the river almost every day and hunting dassies and guineafowl with our neighbour’s son and my best friend, Michael Kobus, and my Xhosa friend, Zed. We always borrowed Michael’s father’s .22 Winchester. My first devastating blow relating to the real world happened in the winter of that year. I found my friend Michael dead one night. He died under the most tragic circumstances imaginable. In 1984, I was sent to boarding school, and. As a young teenager, the political context of the book was lost to me, but the adventures of Peter Mackenzie and his .416 Rigby stayed with me for many years. I knew then already that I to live in the wilds of Africa, and I to own a .416 Rigby.
