Lonehill

The Lonehill headquarters of African Parks is bursting at the seams. Some of us are sharing three to a room and some of us (me) are currently without a phone as a result. African Parks is negotiating to acquire more parks - 20 by 2023 - and we are staffing up to do it. Parks in Ethiopia and Nigeria, more parks in Malawi, another in Chad .... So we are seriously on the hunt for new office space. But even though we are cramped, I am going to miss this space for a couple of reasons.

First, Lonehill is very close to my home and my commute is against the predominant flow and therefore blissfully traffic-free. I drive away from Sandton during the morning commute and return unencumbered in the afternoon. That shouldn't change with the new crib as I am told we are looking to relocate nearby.

But I will miss the view from our headquarters in the Lonehill Office Park. Specifically this view ...

This is a photo of The Granite Tor, the lone hill of Lonehill as seen from our conference room. According to the Blue Plaques of South Africa (it has one),

"This hill, Lonehill, represents one of the most prominent of a number of Archaean granite tors ('Castle Koppies') developed in the central and south-western parts of the 3200 million-year-old Johannesburg granite dome. The tors vary in composition and texture, but generally consist of medium to coarse-grained, homogenous granodiorites and ademellites, as well as banded gneisses and migmatites. In some tors the granite rocks contain large feldspar crystals in a finer-grained matrix and are referred to as porphyritic granites. Tors similar to Lonehill are extensively developed in the Archaean granites of Zimbabwe, the Eastern Transvaal and Swaziland, and formed mainly by differential weathering of the faulted, fractured and jointed granites."

I have not done more than gaze at the tor from afar. It sits on a plot of around 20 acres of veld surrounding the koppie, which is around 80 metres high. The plot is fenced and locked during the work week but unlocked on the weekends, allowing hikers and picnickers to climb to the top, or just lay out a picnic blanket in its surrounding grassy area. I am never there on weekends so I have yet to see it up close and personal. Too bad too because it is an extremely significant site - it has three Stone Age furnaces in the veld below the koppie which were excavated in the 1960s by Professor Revil Mason, formerly head of archaeology at Wits University.

I keep meaning to climb it one weekend, but it might take a move to a room without a view to motivate me to do it. Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone? Well at least we won't be able to say that about African parks if African Parks has anything to say about it.