A sixth generation white African and third generation Zimbabwean, Rob’s ancestors arrived in Cape Town in 1803, when the Napoleonic wars were at their height. Henry Francis Fynn of Shaka Zulu fame is among them.

 Rob pioneered and established the first big safari lodge in Rhodesia(as it was before being renamed Zimbabwe), Fothergill Island on Lake Kariba, followed by Chikwenya Safari Lodge in the world heritage site of Mana Pools on the Zambezi River.

 The story covers some extraordinary escapades, from his early days in the 1950’s on the family farm, through his schooling in Rhodesia, joining the Royal Navy, onto university and an unusual trip to Iceland, a failed plan to fly a Tiger Moth from England back home, the replacement overland journey across the African continent in a landrover, and his subsequent thirty years as one of the first safari operators in this wild and untamed land.

 It is an intimate account in a quiet engaging humour, with close insights into living in the curiously different environment of the Rhodesian wilderness during the bush war that brought Robert Mugabe to power, his marriage and its sad failure to Sandy, and the extraordinary up bringing of his family in this unusual environment, traversing a history from colonial Africa to today’s Zimbabwe.

 The story battles through harrowing adversities, changing and building a man. The spiritual, philosophical and political comments on life and its realities in this beautiful and battered nation bring an interesting perspective in the light of Africa today.