The Wilderness Family: At Home with Africa's Wildlife - Tapa dura

When Kobie Krüger, her game-ranger husband and their three young daughters moved to one of the most isolated corners of the world - a remote ranger station in the Mahlangeni region of South Africa's vast Kruger National Park - she might have worried that she would become engulfed with loneliness and boredom.

But running a household and raising a family in a place where leopards, elephants, snakes, lions and the like are your only neighbours, where the only way of communicating with the outside world is a CB radio, and where a trip to town involves first crossing a river full of hippos and crocodiles, was far from dull. And being a surrogate mother to a steady stream of orphaned wild animals meant that she rarely had a moment to herself.

And when Kobie and her family, at peace in the lonely landscape of the north, were transferred to the relatively populated south after eleven years at Mahlangeri, Kobie wondered whether she would ever adapt. Eventually she acknowledged that their move had introduced her to other Edens, and had given her a store of precious memories. Foremost among these was raising Leo, an abandoned lion cub - a unique relationship with the king of beasts, which brought her family equal measures of joy and sorrow. Kobie tackled each problem she encountered in her untamed environment with admirable resourcefulness. The Wilderness Family reflects her deep love of the wilderness and her respect for its creatures, great and small.

Kobie Krüger was born on a farm in the Northern Province bushlands of South Africa. She met her husband, Kobus, at the University of Pretoria and they lived in Namibia and Johannesburg before moving to the Kruger National Park in 1980. The Wilderness Family was published as two volumes in South Africa - both were number one bestsellers. She has also published Buro van Babel and Boskonsert, nominated for an AKTV Prose Prize in 1992, and made two documentary films in the Kruger National Park which were screened on national television in South Africa. She now lives at Paradise Beach in the Eastern Cape with her husband and youngest daughter.