A Small Time Capsule Of The Wankie National Park 1959

Time Capsule Rhodesia 1959 - A Pictorial Tour Of A Beautiful Country

Main Camp in the Wankie Game Reserve. This is a pet ground hornbill, much pampered by all visitors

About my love for old pictures and photographs, you know. My fascination of finding a timeline between a place, eternalised on pictures years ago and the reality of the same place today, I am sharing with you now.

In the beginning when I started this blog my vision was to create a time capsule for me and the ones I share and have shared my life with.  There was a moment when I realized I have lived so much already, have been given so much, received so much, experienced so much that I could fill ten adventure story books for boys and girls. This is a blessing of the highest kind. 

But to my great disgust and even greater fear I had to accept the fact that some memories were starting to fade, becoming not so clear anymore. The past is taken over by the future at a rapid pace. 

And life is still exciting ! Another great blessing. But what of all this would I like to remember ? And what would I like the others that come after me to remember ?

I want to remember pretty accurately everything I had in my life. 

Soon I realized others have been doing it all the time inconsciously. Small time capsules are everwhere, still vibrating with energy in some hidden places, waiting to be found just to be sent on a journey of spreading wisdom again. I see them everywhere, small time capsules created by writers, painters, publishing houses and individuals who have left their memories in written or pictorial form behind for the world to see. They are waiting to be released so that they can time travel again. The whole universe consists of traveling time capsules.

One of the few places where men and animals are friends Wankie Game Reserve 1959

So today I am sending a small African time capsule from 1959 in your direction. May it float across the vast cyber universe forever. May somebody find a liking to it. The time capsule has left a beautiful place named Zimbabwe, then called Rhodesia, many decades ago. What it had to say at the time was of greatest accuracy and importance. It is not anymore.

South of the Victoria Falls the road leads to the Wankie Game Reserve, fast becoming recognized as the best game reserve in Southern Africa and, for density and variety of animal life, comparable even to the great game reserves of East Africa. Wankie takes it's name in corrputed fashion from the chief Wange, who ruled over this wild stretch of countryside before the white man came with modern ideas of game conservation. Scenically and geologically, it is a projection of the Kalahari, and there is talk of great a companion reserve being developed one day in Betchuana, across the boundary line which marks the western limit of the Wankie Game Reserve. Such a development would turn the twin reserves into the greatest single area in all Africa for game conservation. ( Pictures, Text by Howard Timmins Cape Town, 1959)

The Wankie Game Reserve is called the Hwange National Park today.