Dundee-based tour guide, historian and author, Pat Rundgren, reflects on his first flight over the famous battlefields: I have been guiding around the battlefields of northern KwaZulu-Natal for over 20 years but have never had the opportunity to fly over such evocative sites as Blood River, Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift … that is, until last weekend.
Battlefields Country Lodge hosted their annual fly-in (the 16th one), which attracted a multitude of conventional fixed-wing aeroplanes, as well as helicopters and gyros.
I was asked to do a ground briefing and then conduct an aerial tour of these three iconic battlefields, and so hitched a lift in Grant Raubenheimer’s ultra modern and very expensive machine.
Things have changed since the last time I’ve been up in a Cessna – you don’t get into Grant’s machine, but rather stand on the runway and put it on.
Having successfully buttoned it up, I couldn’t get my seat belt to meet in the middle. Not really believing that I had put on so much weight since breakfast, I discovered that I was sitting on the damn thing but, having raised my bum somewhat to release it, off we went, trailing half a dozen other craft behind.
Blood River was amazing, laid out like a military map, but Isandlwana was absolutely stunning from the air. Its’ imposing, sphinx-like bulk always impresses, but seen from above, surrounded by a couple of hundred mass graves with whitewashed stones placed on top of them, the run of the battle was clear, all the way down to the gorges at Fugitive’s Drift.
Unless you know what to look for, however, it’s difficult to pinpoint the positions of the hospital and storeroom at Rorke’s Drift from the air – they are surrounded by the mission complex and I think most of the pilots had to use their imagination a bit on this one. The flight was over all too soon. The first drops of rain hit the windshield as we were coming in to land, and it rained for the remainder of the day.
My thanks to Grant and to the guys at Battlefields Lodge for a truly great experience!
There’s no other way to do a tour – an hour and you’re back on the ground. Vastly superior to an 8-hour road trip!
Our historic battlefields – a bird’s eye view
. The first drops of rain hit the windshield as we were coming in to land, and it rained for the remainder of the day.
