A French explorer who spent about six months in the Knysna district in 1782. He’s said to have been the first white person to shoot an elephant in the area - at Die Poort, between Plettenberg Bay and Knysna. In his five-volume work on his travels, he recorded that he’d come across Dutch people in the Plettenberg Bay who were exploiting the timber in the forest and planting crops. He made suggestions for the establish-ment of a formal forestry industry in the area.

Francois le Vaillant (1752 - 1824)

An Englishman who trained at the Nancy School of Forestry in France, and then went to work for the Indian Forest Services. He came to South Africa in 1882, and was transferred to Knysna in 1888.

“Under his regime in South Africa not only was scientific management applied to the remaining

indigenous forests, but extensive plantations were made of eucalypts and other exotics, which are now yielding an annual revenue of about £20,000.” ~ Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand 1868-1961

Hutchins went on to write reports on forestry in Kenya, Cyprus, Australia and New Zealand. He was knighted in 1920 for his services to the industry.

David Ernest Hutchins (1850 - 1920)

A South African (born in Grahamstown) who received a scholarship from the Cape Forestry Service to study for a B.Sc. in Forestry at the University of Edinburgh. He became the first Forest Research Officer in the indigenous forests when he was transferred to Deep Walls in 1922 (this job also carried the title of ‘Keeper of the Knysna Elephants’). He spent the next four years working on field experiments and research, and was later awarded a D.Sc. by the University of Edinburgh.

His thesis - ‘Forest-Succession and Ecology in the Knysna Region, etc.’ - was published as The Botanical Survey of South Africa Memoir no. 14 (1931).

He went on to become (amongst others) Professor of Botany at Witwatersrand University (1931-1948), Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Ghana (1951-1960), an Honorary Visiting Professor in applied ecology to the University of Pennsylvania (1966), and President of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science (1969). He was awarded an honorary DSc from Rhodes University in 1969.

John Frederick Vicars Phillips (1922 - 1997)

The forester D.E. Hutchins oversaw the construction of a number of stone houses on sites that were selected for their views. These included houses at Gouna Forest Station, Diepwalle, Harkerville, and Fisanthoek.

& FAMOUS FORESTERS

OF JEANIE PHILLIPS

“We had many visitors from overseas while in the forest (official cars were available then). It appeared to be one of the show places in the district, and the ‘Big Tree’ below us had to be shown to all. Our tales of happenings in life in the forest, we knew, they didn't believe, but when entertaining guests once, they did realise a little of the danger when a trumpeting elephant - probably an old one for there were none of the herd with him - charged the house and got one tusk through the corrugated iron roof of our only water supply, an underground one.”

VISITORS AND ELEPHANTS

“Next to Concordia was a privately owned piece of indigenous forest, belonging to a firm called Parkes - so it was known as Parkes Station. Strangely enough the Manager was Perks whose wife, Mrs. Perks, was known as the ‘Forest Fairy.’ Weighing at least 300 lbs, she could only move from her house to her enormous rocking chair on the veranda - where she dispensed medicines (mostly revolting), gave advice to expectant

THE FOREST FAIRY

mothers, administered justice especially when her sjambok could be reached and an unfortunate small or even not so small boy was about, and although she was so immobile could dispense all the local gossip as well.”

“Coffee and rusks were served on a tin tray by the first of the woodcutters’ daughters I had met; and though astonished that white people could look so wild and toothless I got used to it - for men, women and children were all just as toothless and

Jeanie Phillips also tells of her fears when gathering berries for jam and jelly from an enormous bramble bush near the “Big Tree”. Every crackle in the bush made her feel that they were breathing down her neck!

bedraggled looking. I think she must have known every family in the whole district, including ours at Deepwalls (Diepwalle), and very likely knew all about us very soon too. I quite liked her though, and wheeled my two small daugh-ters there where I was regaled each time with black coffee and rusks. She roared with laughter to see that I didn’t know the technique of eating the rusks for I couldn’t bite them and found one had to dip each bite into the coffee and then eat the sodden part. I never got used to this ritual and had the greatest difficulty in having my children forego the treat (black coffee) though they did struggle with the dry rusks which kept them occupied. Her cure for chest trouble was a newly killed dog skin, which I imagined served as a poultice, and for a whitlow a live frog split and tied on to the finger. When the dressings, filthy by then, came away of their own accord, the whitlow was to have disappeared. Many of her remedies were very good, though, mostly passed on to her by old Hottentots, who knew a lot about medicines they could make from leaves or bark of trees - and poison too.”

Jeanie Phillips was the wife of the forester John Phillips. They were stationed in Knysna from 1922 to 1927. She describes life at the Diepwalle forest station in her memoirs: