For 5.00am it was hot. It had been a long night with little sleep. In Rhodesia the sun shows its face early and, without compassion, it pours down its heat until eventually it disappears over the western horizon in a spectacular orange glow.

I climbed off my narrow camp bed, and avoiding the tent pole, stepped outside into the early morning sunshine of an African day. Two days earlier we had moved onto a site in a remote area of north-eastern Rhodesia and were busy setting up camp. Our contract involved drilling deep exploration holes into the ground to ascertain the possibility of a Madziwa Mine nickel ore-body continuing to the Mazoe River through the Ruangwa Valley. The Ruangwa River flows east, and joins the Mazoe River on the western side.

Geological maps and results from soil sampling and trenching had given positive indications, but there's only one way to prove or disprove exactly what treasure hides six hundred feet underground.

At nine feet intervals, the rig drills deep into underground rock formations bringing up cylindrical rock core samples about two inches in diameter. All core samples were geologically logged, together with a comprehensive report on the completed drill hole, compiled by the site geologist. Any interesting rock sections, better known as ore intersections, were sent to a geological laboratory in Salisbury for a full analysis. The core is split in half using a diamond saw to cut through the samples. Sometimes, prior to the lab tests, they are split a second time into quarters. Depending on the workload at the lab, it could be up to three weeks before results were made available to the mining house that had initiated the contract. To minimize expensive standing time for the drilling equipment, while waiting for the results, a new location for the next drill site was marked out and drilled.

The topography leading down to the Mazoe River and on up the Ruangwa Valley has some steep descents and ascents and is well known for being wild, remote, and teaming with game. Elephant, rhino and leopard are common, together with antelope varieties such as kudu, impala, duiker, and other smaller wild animals.

Our first area of interest was up on the plateau above an escarpment. The riverbeds were dry, stony, and hard-baked by the sun. The Mopani trees inhabiting the area were leafless. It would be about ten weeks before the rains came. In Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, the season of the rains is from late November to March. But it is not unusual for rain to fall in early September.

Historically, this was not a good sign. Usually, early rains foreshadowed a dry season.

Cool, refreshing rain was appealing, but not deSirable. We needed two months to complete our contract. Even in the dry season, the roads were almost impassable. If the rains set in while we were in the valley, the only way out would be by helicopter. But the company who employed us had no helicopter at their disposal.

Our contract involved the drilling of two holes on the plateau, then move down into the valley to complete the exploration project, and get out before being flooded in. Even in ideal conditions, completing five months of drilling in a maximum of twelve weeks was a daunting task.

In any drilling operation, before a contract budget can be calculated, the security of water supply must be known. The nature of the area in which we would be working required a pre-quotation site visit, mainly to ascertain the availability of water. Not only was water needed for washing, cooking and drinking, but also for the drilling operation which used thousands of gallons per day.

This time, our water source down in the valley was unknown. In the absence of any other source, we would pump water from the Mazoe River and cart it four miles to our sites. While drilling on the plateau above the valley it would have to be carted well over twenty miles each way, in 1,000 gallon water tanks.

In the work team were six people who would be working up to eighteen hours a day. Temperatures were in the high 30° to mid 40°, with little relief at night. Our accommodation would be canvas tents that by ten in the morning would heat to oven temperatures and only begin to cool late at night.

It was soon after my 20th birthday. I was proud to be on my first assignment operating a drilling rig on my own, in charge, and responsible for a team of workers in a wild, beautiful and remote part of Rhodesia called Ruangwa Valley. Although our purpose was to complete a drilling contract, we were also about to have unforgettable experiences with leopards, rhino, pythons, puff adders, crocodiles, hippo and a huge monitor lizard.

A few weeks earlier I had made a courtesy visit to the District Commissioner at Mount Darwin. I wanted to meet him, and let him know that we'd be operating in his area. I gave him the approximate duration of the project. I also needed a hunting permit, so that we could shoot for the pot. Obtaining a permit was a standard and necessary procedure. Being caught with game meat on site without a permit was a serious offence, leading to a charge of poaching.

When he handed me the permit, the Commissioner warned me about a herd of elephant that had been attacked by poachers, leaving one of the bulls wounded. This bull had since become rogue and was dangerous. I asked why he had not been put down, before he killed somebody. The Commissioner explained that there were no humans living in the area, and he wasn't suffering any longer. So he had decided to leave him to wander with the remainder of the herd.

He also mentioned that lately the rogue elephant had become a loner, and was mostly seen lagging behind the herd. He warned me to look out for him. What a pity I didn't remember that advice later. Little did I realise then what a deadly and terrifying reality that rogue elephant could be.

In my early childhood I discovered that I only felt truly alive when I was outdoors, in the bush, and part of the great wilderness.

For a few years we lived in a town called Umtali in south east Rhodesia. It was often called the little Switzerland of Rhodesia. Our house was a double story with a magnificent view over a green valley leading through into Mozambique. There was no development in the valley and it was dense with trees. I used every opportunity that arose to escape into the bush with my best friend, Toby, a small brown, long-eared daschund or sausage dog.

Toby loved our excursions into the bush. We walked together for miles. He chased anything that moved, especially butterfly shadows. He never learned that they were illusive entities. He would tear after them, landing with both front paws triumphantly outstretched on the spot where he believed he had trapped a shadow. With long ears flopping forward he would carefully lift one foot at a time watching intently for what he had caught to come out. For the rest of his life, in spite his lack of success, he never let up on this obsession.

My Dad had bought me a pellet gun for my birthday and it accompanied me on our wanderings. One day I saw an advert posted in the gun shop window. It read "Anyone who brings in fifty varieties of bird wings pinned neatly on a board will be given a brand new Daisy pellet gun with 500 pellets." So I was on a mission to achieve this goal. While Toby chased everything that moved, I looked out for new and different birds to shoot.

Looking back, I am not proud of the destruction of birdlife which I caused. I was eight years old. I knew little about wild life and appreciated even less the wonders of nature. The sacredness of life meant little to me. All I could see was the Daisy pellet gun coming my way. I shudder at those needless killings, but I became a good shot and I learned about birds as I identified the ones I needed for my project. It was part of the learning curve of my life.

As carefully as possible, I cut off the wings of the hapless bird, salted the raw area, and pinned them neatly to my ever-growing board of bird wings. Not realising the cruelty, I was proud of the display board.

After removing the wings, I cleaned the bird by cutting it open and removing the insides. Over an open fire, I cooked the body of the bird, feathers and all. Between Toby and I, we ate the whole thing.

On one such excursion, following after a bird whose wings I needed for my collection, we ventured into a very dense area of the valley. Suddenly I heard a roar from somewhere in front of me. In fright, I thought: "Lion!"

The thick bush was impenetrable. The only escape route was to climb a tree - quickly. Scooping Toby up under one arm, with my gun slung over the other shoulder, I scaled the nearest tree as high as it would hold us without breaking. Under normal circumstances, without Toby under my arm, I could not have made that climb.

I wondered if the pellets shot from my gun would have any effect should the lion charge me. I decided that would annoy him all the more and increase the danger. Already he sounded angry.

I had never seen or heard of lion in the area. This was going to be quite a story to tell my Dad when I got home, assuming that I would survive.

There was another roar from behind me followed immediately by another one in front. There were two lions? This lowered my possibility for escape, and cut my chances of ever getting to tell my Dad about the encounter.

I was terrified, but didn't panic. I sat silently up the tree, clutching Toby, and willing him to be quiet. It was useless to shout for help. There was no one around to hear me and any sound from me would let the lions know exactly where we were. I sensed that they knew where I was anyway, so it was only be a matter of time. I was suspended in a surreal reality, a timeless space between life and death. Calmly, I waited. Gradually the growls died down to almost a purr, then a snigger, and then into hysterical laughter.

A flood of relief surged through me. I was not going to be eaten by a lion. Someone had played a foul trick on me.

I passed Toby down to a tall thin boy some years older than me and climbed down the tree to confront the two make-believe lions. They were brothers and introduced themselves as Reg and Jess. It was an auspicious beginning to an important friendship that would help mould me into a man. They regarded this bush as their territory and had been spying on me as I wandered around, unafraid, in their wilderness. Today they had decided it was time to put me through a test.

They slapped me on the back and laughed appreciatively as they shared their amazement at how quickly I had climbed the tree, carrying my dog and pellet gun. They were also impressed that I hadn't screamed for help or started crying. I had passed their test. They said we should all be friends and go around the bush together.

Their Dad worked on the railways. They took me down to their house beside the railway line. I had seen it before while I was exploring. It was a typical railway house, square and small with a corrugated tin roof. Twenty paces from their front door was the railway line.

We became good friends. They were a few years older than I was, and could teach me many things. Some of what they taught was useful and has helped me through the years, and in many ways. There were some lessons though, that were dangerous. One of these was free-riding the train. It was great fun and exciting.

As the train chugged its way towards Mozambique, at one place there was a steep climb and the train slowed down. If we waited close to the top of the rise it was easy to jump onto the steps leading up into one of the carriages. Using the hand railings, I mastered the art of train jumping, always with Toby under my arm, and my pellet gun on the other shoulder.

We travelled down into the valley and then the train began another climb. As we reached the top of that climb we jumped from the slow moving train. We spent hours exploring the new area. It was beautiful. To return, we repeated the train jumping in the opposite direction, ending up where we started. None of us ever mentioned our joy riding to our parents. We knew they would not be pleased or impressed. Our parents had no sense of adventure.

Reg and Jess had a younger cousin named Tony. He was a few months older than me. The two brothers decided that Tony and I needed to learn how to fight. They explained to us how, at school, or even at some stage in our lives, we would meet up with a bully. They regularly arranged for Tony and me to fight each other. We were evenly matched and had what we felt were tough, hard fights. After each fight our two trainers would sit us down and give us a run-down on what we had done wrong and how to correct it. Neither I nor Tony thought this was much fun, but it helped me later on, when I did come up against bullies.

My Dad often encouraged me to get into a fight and told me he would pay me for any black eye I brought home from school. This puzzled me, and I didn't ever manage to cash in on his black-eye offer because I knew how to hold a fist at bay, thanks to the valuable training from Reg and Jess, and about which my Dad knew nothing.

I quickly learned that when I stood up to a bully verbally, with a threat to beat him up, the jerk would back off and leave me alone. In school, I noticed that bullies got their kicks from scaring kids who were already scared of them. The bullies had something missing in life, and dominating some poor kid helped them deal with it.

My sisters and I all went to Umtali Junior School. It was probably a good school, because there were some clever kids around, including my three sisters. But I hated school with a passion. I had a best friend called Michael, and we took advantage of any opportunity to run away from school. We would leave the school and head off for the bush on foot. We were not very professional at this, and were often spotted before we even left town. There was one particular shop owner who took pleasure in reporting us to the school when he saw us passing by on the street. We were picked up and unceremoniously returned to school.

So we spent a lot of time in the headmaster's office - probably more time there than we spent in our classroom. The two of us helped relieve the tedium of his days spent running a school.

My early school life didn't set me up to be a top student in the future. I never did well in school, except on the sports field. Academically I was nothing to write home about. I didn't care about academics, and saw no sense in book work. What I did have was common sense. And I had a will to do well in everything I did - apart from school work. This attribute has helped me to get on in life more than being top of my class could ever have done.

My Dad had a passion for prospecting for gold. In a practical and direct way, his passion contributed to my experience of bush life.

He dreamed of making a gold strike. He would become rich and we would all live in luxury for the rest of our lives. To fulfil this dream he spent many weekends on prospecting trips in the wilderness. He would take me along with him. We packed only the bare essentials, because we had to carry everything. We roughed it out there in the bush.

Prospecting is tough physical work. Where ever my Dad saw potential for gold, we panned in all the little streams we found in that area. He had designed a clever system for panning, using a steel trough with a series of compartments. We shovelled soil into the first section and then ran water through the trough. Each compartment led into the next one. The heavier materials were trapped in the first compartment with the lighter material being washed away. Ultimately we were left with just the heavier particles which we collected in our hand-held pans.

Our panning would prove, or disprove, the presence of gold. Panning involved filling a tapered hand-held pan with the mineral material collected in it. The pan was a steel container with larger top than base. Using flowing water from the stream we swirled out the lighter soil, leaving the heavier materials to sink to the bottom. Gold was the heaviest metal of all. Spotting the first sign of the yellow-gold tail was exciting. Then we continued the operation, working upstream to locate the source. This was strenuous, intensive work.