LIVING THE LIFE OF REILLY
Paul Ash discovers how past and present meet on a rock in Swaziland
‘H AVE a nice time in Swaziland,” says the road-tax lady at the border post. It is a better welcome than the sign on the South African side of the frontier, which says “High Crime Zone Do Not Stop.”
As we roll down the highway that swoops off the mountain to Mbabane and the Ezulwini river valley, I feel the thrill of arriving in a new country.
The road is red with iron-ore dust, black clouds press on the hills. Billboards flash past. “Different ads,” says my girl.
We speed through the dusk to Mlilwane, the game reserve that Ted and Elizabeth Reilly created out of their own farm. The reserve lies at the foot of a granite mountain called Nyonyane — the place of the small bird — once scarred by worked-out tin mines and littered with the industrial junk the miners left behind.
With the backing of King Sobhuza II, the Reillys translocated plains game such as zebra, wildebeest and other antelope and
let them loose on the 4 450ha reserve.
The reception building is a time capsule with tourism posters and photographs from the ’70s and the smell of wood and thatch and Cobra floor polish.
We are waved up the rutted rain-slick track, over the earthbound remains of the iron-ore railway that once wound its way up the hills to the mines at Ka Dake, and into the reserve proper.
As we pause to open a gate, four Nguni cows — classic specimens of their kind — rush the car. “They want what they’re having,” says my girl, pointing to a herd of roan antelope, which we can hear taking big, scrunching bites of sweet grass. We fend off the cows, ease past the roans, and slither up the muddy track, past a pair of twitchy oribi and into the trees that shelter Reilly’s Rock, the old homestead — dressed stone walls, tin roofs, wide verandahs and a view over the Ezulwini river valley to the secret mountains beyond.
As we park, a blue duiker skitters across the grass. “Don’t mind them,” says Ruth Mamba as she ushers us out of the rain. “There are lots of animals living here. You will see.”
There is a fire in the vast sitting room, where a German couple, sunk deep into their armchairs, are gazing into the flames. Three klipspringers perch like birds on a flat rock outside the dining room. Everyone, it seems, is waiting for dinner.
Ruth pours us a couple of stiff gins, entirely appropriate in this setting, which we slurp while tinkering with the fire in our own sitting room. But the wood is damp and the best we can do is make it hiss and smoke like a steam engine. Instead, we go down to the main house for dinner. Pea soup and thick homemade bread. Wildebeest wors and pork chops. Good, simple food, right for a wet night on a mountain in Swaziland. For pudding, says the cook “there is chocolate mousssssse”.
Afterwards, we dawdle by the fire in the sitting room. It is stuffed with memorabilia of the Reillys’ life in the kingdom. There are pictures of Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, a keen conservationist and an ardent supporter of the family’s efforts to conserve Swaziland’s wildlife. The prince is one of many famous past guests, Anton Rupert and Ian Player are others. It is a house of bush heroes.
A scimitar-curved rhino horn is a reminder of Ted Reilly’s bitter war against poachers in Swaziland’s game reserves in the ’80s. The solution was simple: fence the surviving rhinos at night — and fight back.
Outside the mist has come down with the rain and the forest seems closer, embracing the house. The ferns outside are bowed with droplets and a duiker huddles under an elephant ear. As we plod up the path, we startle an owl that beats past us with heavy wings. Some creature calls from the trees. We go to bed early, drifting off to the sound of rain on the tin roof.
It is still pouring at dawn and I wonder if our tour guide will show up. In the end, it is we who keep him waiting as we slide back down the mountain in the Corsa, fishtailing through the muddy ruts and stopping to look at herds of roan and zebra. Mlilwane is low-key — the rhinos and lions and other big animals are all in the big parks at Hlane or Mkhaya in the east — but with its tall stands of gum trees and the forest creeping up the flanks of Nyonyane, it is a beautiful spot.
Our guide, Dumisani Dlamini, has his work cut out for him as the rain continues to bucket down. He takes us on a whistlestop tour of northern Swaziland — the Mantenga waterfall, the Ngwenya glass factory and a cultural village, where a group of excitable Brazilians are silenced by haunting singing. At the waxy emporium of Swazi Candles, we swim against the tide and buy glorious bars of soap instead of candles.
Later we stop to take pictures of the elderly Bailey bridge over the uSutshwana River, built to replace old James Reilly’s pont. The story goes that old man Reilly built the pont in a lone protest against the government’s reluctance to build a proper bridge and charged officials 2 shillings and sixpence to use it while everyone else went for free.
It stops raining, the clouds part and the granite outcrops sparkle in the sun. “Are you having a nice time?” asks Dumisani, as we lean on the girders and watch the muddy waters swirl beneath.
As it happens, we really are.