School’s Thukela River conquest
Treverton had some unfinished business to complete over the recent holidays.
An intrepid band of canoeists from Treverton School in Mooi River arrived at the mouth of the Thukela River at the Easter weekend, ending an expedition that started at its source high up in the Drakensberg.
It was part of the 60th anniversary celebration of the Midlands school that has the Drakensberg in its view and encourages adventure.
The team of five pupils — initially seven — staff and experienced river guides completed the epic in two phases, one in the Christmas holidays, before the start of the 2024 academic year, and the other during the recent Easter break.
Phase two of the heritage expedition started close to Weenen, at the point where, a few months before, they ended phase one of their trip.
Not only 260 km of river lay behind them but six decades of their school’s history.
The school’s website relates: “Our story began in 1963, when reverend Sydney Hudson-Reed, then president of the Baptist Union of South Africa, visited the Treverton Preparatory School for Boys’ derelict site, which had closed in 1957.”
After visiting the site, he encouraged his brother Derek Hudson-Reed, a teacher at St Stithians, to take a look at the school site as Sydney HudsonReed had always cherished establishing a school with a Baptist ethos. Treverton Preparatory School opened in 1964 with 51 pupils under principal Derek Hudson-Reed. Eight years later, girls joined the preparatory school and the following year, the college.
Phase One of the canoe journey started a week into the new year, when the team hiked up to MontAux-Sources via the chain ladders to the source of the Thukela River.
“We followed this stream down to the edge of the Drakensberg escarpment known as the Amphitheatre,” they said.
“Here, having grown surprisingly quickly and benefitting from good recent rains, it plunged down to the Royal Natal Park valley in a number of huge leaps.”
A school statement read that cumulatively, it is said to be the highest waterfall in the world.
“Whatever the facts may be, this is a magnificent sight.”
(Wikipedia puts the Angel Falls in Venezuela as the world’s highest at 979m, with the Thukela Falls coming second by 32m.)
Day One comprised a 32 km hike and paddling commenced the following day.
“An impressive section was on Day Seven on The Harts Hill Falls, which is a 12m-high waterfall that stretches across a wide 250m section of the Thukela, broken only by an island towards the centre,” the school statement reads.
“It also has the thunderous ‘Little Augrabies’ whose presence is announced not only by sound but by the mist driven into the air by the Thukela being channeled through a massive rocky chasm. It is said to be un-runnable and obviously, these river features were portaged.”
A week and a day into the expedition, the team was paddling and swimming through the Thukela Canyon, which is infamous for rapids such as the “Rocky Horror”, “which scattered our entire team in separate directions and cost many a shoe to the river, a fair payment for the experience”.
Eventually, on Day Nine, the group entered the Indian Ocean on an outgoing tide and ended their river adventure. Matric pupil Christopher Nel; Grade 10s Alexander Tegg, Jaydon Muller and Jayden Davis; and Grade Nines Samantha Thompson, Maria Outram and Harry Killian-Louis made up the pupil component of the team. They all confirmed that there were many hours spent in 2023 converting useless K1 or K2 paddlers, staff included, into paddlers of some use.
The school added: “We are proud at how positively each pupil approached this expedition. Some had to deal with very real fear, while others dealt more with their fatigue. All-in-all, this is a great learning experience and it is what we value at Treverton.” In addition to riverside camping during Phase Two, they enjoyed hospitality along the way at a farm belonging to KwaSizabantu Mission and at a local home.
They also spotted a few crocodiles and heard of a 3,6m specimen having been shot some time back.
“It was special to think back to having started where the river is a trickle, some 550 km back and remember the mood of the river and what it does,” Derek Brown, an accompanying teacher, reflected.
“It’s a journey seldom done by schoolkids,” he said.