Bushgirl Diary

27/08/2025

If you pay attention while you are out in the bush, you may pick up on little signs that can indicate what time of year it is.

In the lowveld, when the K**b Thorn trees all begin to flower, you know it is the beginning of August. This brings with it the first glimmer of hope for rain, even though it is still two months away. You will see trees with a handful of flowers on them and day by day they produce more and more. This year I saw my first sign of a flowering K**b Thorn on the 2nd day of the month. It is almost as if the trees know exactly when August starts.

During the June and July months the bush is so dry and so brown, and it is a little depressing. Although this is the best possible time for safari-goers because the bush thins out substantially making the spotting and viewing of animals much better, for me these are the worst two months of the year. I often find myself feeling quite glum during this period and longing for the greenery to return. The k**b thorns always get me excited because their subtle pop of colour brings life to an otherwise dreary scene. A little over three weeks later, almost every k**b thorn is in full flower and on the way to Hoedspruit there are plenty of them on the road side, providing the perfect opportunity for a close up inspection of their pretty flowers.

The flowers are pale-yellow and have a bottle-brush like form. When you look at a flowering k**b thorn from the ground, the shape of their canopies almost looks like a hot air balloon (at least I think so) and if you view them from the air, their circumference is surprisingly wide. The wildlife is grateful for these wide canopies as it provides a fair amount of shade for them during the heat of the day. The insects are also thrilled to have the flowers and if you stand at the base of a k**b thorn and listen carefully, it sounds as if the tree has been taken over by a swarm of bees.

Another little sign that you can look for which tells you it is August, are the impalas. If you look carefully at all of the pregnant ewes, their little baby bumps are starting to show!

In South Africa spring day is celebrated on the 1st of September, which is in exactly 5 days time. I cannot wait to start seeing little green buds on the trees and bushes!🌿

Bring on Spring!!!🌱

25/07/2025

📖My Job on the reserve📖

Both my partner and I work for the reserve management team, which oversees the general running and maintenance of the reserve, wildlife, ecology and fence lines. My boss is the Warden and my big boss is the Chairman of the reserve.

Majority of my time is spent in the office behind a laptop and although this sounds very boring, it can be both challenging and exciting at the same time. This is my first job in the wildlife industry and when I started I knew a fair amount about wildlife but I had no knowledge on the management of a game reserve. Before I started working on the reserve I worked in the heavy earthmoving machinery industry, so this job is the complete polar opposite!

I do have office hours which are from 08h00 to 16h00, or are supposed to be😅, but this is very rarely stuck to. More often than not, there are urgent things to attend to, that can't be pushed to tomorrow. Something I have learned since being here, is that a Game Reserve never sleeps! Whilst we are fast asleep in our beds, the animals are up to all sorts of mischief! Our first hour or so of each days feels like its the damage control hour, where we find out what our priority for the day is.

There are certain things that I do like creditors, orders, reports, Staff rosters etc, that happen on a monthly or weekly basis and are essentially scheduled. Then there is everything else where there is a constant ebb and flow. We are ALWAYS busy with projects and quite often we land up with many projects happening simultaneously, which can be very stressful and then there are times where we only have one or two projects on the go.

It is exceptionally difficult to plan your days as things pop up all the time. So often we get invited to a dinner or a braai or even a simple family video call, and unfortunately we often have to say, "it will depend on what time we finish up", which makes us feel a little bad because we feel that we appear flakey. This really does make me feel bad, especially when it comes to my family because sometimes there is quite literally nothing we can do about it.

Another thing I have learned is that emergencies always happen either on the weekend or late at night. For example all of the veld fires that have popped up have been late at night and we have to drag ourselves out of bed and gear up for a very long night! Whenever we get an emergency call, you will absolutely hear moans and groans about having to get out of bed, but the reality is that we land up enjoying whatever it is that we have to do and return home full of adrenaline😵‍💫

Whenever we have wildlife interventions I get to tag along, which is pretty cool, in fact it's more than pretty cool. I also don't just stand there like an ornament, I get involved and I particularly enjoy working with the vets. I like learning about all the procedures they perform and I am usually the person asking most of the questions. I love asking questions! I will post more about some of the procedures and interventions I have been fortunate to witness, in the future.

Sometimes we have wildlife interventions that are not medical in nature and if they happen out of working hours, I am usually needed as a third set of eyes.......or as a small person who can fit through the holes animals dig under the fences....okay this has only happened one time and I hope it never happens again because I would like to maintain my record of being the only person on the management team to have not been shocked by the reserve fence! Some wild dogs had dug under the fence, and through another fence on the other side of a servitude road. We managed to lure them back into the reserve without exiting the reserve, but the problem was that there were now two decent sized holes that needed to be closed. I managed to wiggle my way under the fence, closed the hole on the neighbor's property from our side and then wiggled back under our fence and we closed the hole there. All in all it was a great success as we didn't have to drive all the way around the reserve and the boys thought it was awfully handy having a small person on the team😂

The picture I chose to post, is of one of the emergencies we have had to attend to, where a wild dog had come onto the property with a snare around it's waist. The damage was quite extensive but the vet could stitch it up and was confident the wound would heal, it would just take a long time. During the suturing, the vet asked me to assist with pulling the needle through the matted hair and keeping tension on the thread. I had a smile on my face for hours afterwards.

So I lead a very exciting and busy life but at the same time it is a peaceful life💚

16/07/2025

🐘*Living in a Big 5 Game Reserve*🦁

I often get asked what it is like living on a game reserve and the simple answer is, it's awesome!

Both my partner and I live within the reserve. Our house is simple and is nestled in a private spot, with our nearest neighbors living over the hill. We have a surprisingly large garden that does have a fence surrounding it. The fence is not electrified, but it is a very tall fence so our dogs can't escape and anything looking to come in, will find it very difficult to do so. We are quite spoilt really, because we have everything that we need and we are also given the space to do what we like with the house and garden decor-wise.

My office is less than 2kms away from the house which is both a good and bad thing only for vehicle/travel reasons. My bakkie's (pick-up truck) engine does not warm up enough on the short trip, which is not good for it, so my form of transport to the office and back to the house is a quadbike. This is pretty cool, but more on that another time...

The only thing separating our house from the reserve is literally our garden fence, so we often have wildlife within view of our porch. We also have to walk a small distance on the outside of the fence to get to our cars, so we are especially careful in the dark and always take a torch. There are some animals like nyala, kudu, zebra and impala that are around constantly and we have had a few very special visits from giraffe, elephants and lions. The lions are very skittish around our houses so they do not stick around for long. Both my partner and I are very against feeding of wildlife at your home because this often leads to accidents and the animals suffer the most at the end of the day. We do however have a little bird bath within our garden.

It is different to being a visitor in other game reserves like the Kruger National Park because there you have gate opening and closing times that you have to abide to, but here we have a certain amount of freedom. There are a few commercial lodges here that have guests out on game drives at certain times, so we avoid bumping into guests as much as possible, but if we hear lions roaring for example out of game drive times we are allowed to go and see if we can locate them. We are also allowed to go out for night drives as this doubles up as an anti-poaching patrol and these are my favorite drives, because you don't often get to view nocturnal wildlife.

In terms of shopping our nearest town, which is Hoedspruit, is about 75kms away and takes roughly an hour and 15 minutes to get to. This is where we do all our grocery shopping and the town has all the necessities one needs for daily life. We do have to plan our town trips and keep strict shopping lists because it is not a short trip!

In general it is a busy but peaceful life and we love it. Our porch offers us some of the best sunsets I have ever seen. I get amazing bird sightings in our garden and nothing beats having a morning coffee on our porch when there is a herd of Nyala or Kudu browsing peacefully on the other side of the fence. Being surrounded by the magic sounds and scenery of the bush 24 hours a day is nothing to complain about!

Again I will never post the name of the reserve we live and work on, or the names of the people we work with. This is for safety reasons.

14/07/2025

A little over two years ago I made a big transition, moving from Johannesburg to a big five game reserve in Limpopo (SA). It was not an easy transition, but it was the right one. The main reason for my move was to join my partner who already worked on the reserve. Fortunately a job opportunity opened up and I was accepted for the position.

The move was not easy because it meant leaving everything and everyone I knew behind. I found it especially difficult leaving my family behind as I worked with my Mum everyday and my beautiful niece had just been born. Moving away from my family was the worst of the move. My amazing Mum helped me move my belongings to the reserve and unpacked with me, staying here for a few days to help me get squared away.

I cried almost everyday for about two weeks, then it was once a week and then it was when I was missing out on a family occasion, and now it is whenever I just really miss them. I often find that I have a bout of tears right before I am due to go to JHB for a visit because by then it has been close to two months since I last saw my family.

I officially started work on the 6th of March 2023 and while I was very excited to start a new adventure, the thought of starting up in a whole new industry was daunting and especially because i had almost no experience. It took a month or two to settle down and my new boss, was exceptionally busy so had very little time to show me the ropes. I figured it out though and taught myself.

My job is office based and I am alone in the office for majority of the day. I was and still am surprised at how much I enjoy the solitude. There is a great little water point just on the other side of the fence, where plenty of wildlife comes to drink and there is an abundance of birdlife around the office so my binoculars are never far. I get daily visits from Nyala, Kudu, Impala and Zebra, and occasionally elephants and Giraffe come for a drink as well. It can be quite exciting!

My partners job is based more on fieldwork and wildlife. On Saturdays I go out and work with him in the field on things like erosion control, bush clearing, camera traps or monitoring. We both love working in this industry and initially I think we both had a few concerns about working together for the same company, but our concerns were unnecessary because the two of us work exceptionally well as a team.

In the last two years, aside from my office work, I have taken part in many weird and wonderful wildlife operations. I have had the fortune of flying in both a helicopter and a small fixed wing plane. I get to experience wildlife on a daily basis, whether it is birdlife or a lion walking up our drive way and I have met some very cool people a long the way!

It has been a wonderful journey, even though there have been some difficult moments, and I thought it was time to start sharing some of our daily shenanigans with those who are interested.💚

26/06/2025

Welcome to Bushgirl Diary, a place where I can write about the things that I see and experience, living in a big 5 game reserve. Things can be pretty exciting and different out here so I hope you enjoy the content.

For privacy reasons the reserve that I live on will not be mentioned and no photos of the people I work with will be shared. I may post a photo of myself from time to time but, I too would prefer some privacy.

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