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I have some old plates from the Kruger Park and on the reverse is a map which shows a camp just north west of Letaba called Malopene. This map does not show camps such as Lower Sabie, Malelane, Crocodile Bridge and Olifants yet Malopene is shown. On todays map I cannot see Malopene anywhere. Can anyone explain if there was such a camp as Malopene and if there was what is it now. I look forward to receiving some interesting replies.

This was a rest camp/entrance gate slightly north of todays Phalaborwa entrance gate.
Why it was demolished would be interesting to know.

Thanks very much Glen79. Anyone know the reasons as to wht it was demolished.

I think it was an entry gate as well as a camp and that Phalaborwa replaced it .
I think the Mahlangeni section ranger station is now in the same location n.

Malopeni / Malopene (at the Honey badger) is a tributary of the Letaba river. It gave its name to Malopeni, an old entrance gate giving access from Tzaneen, which was replaced during 1960 by Phalaborwa gate. It was also a small camp, which later became an outpost. But it burnt down during a veld fire and was closed down.

I remember my parents often referred to Malopene Gate and it is nice to hear the name again. Apparently the access road to Malopene Gate was something terrible and you were lucky if your car was still in one piece when you get there. I believe that I too went through Malopene gate giving my age away but I cannot remember that far back.

While we are digging up history, I would also like to know about the demise of of the old Rabelais camp, near todays Orpen (a single old hut still stands as testimony to the old camp)

Rabelais, wasn't a camp, but the origional entrance gate to the central area of KNP. It functioned from 1932 - 1954 as the entrance gate. When the Mrs. Eileen Orpen donated the eight farms adjoining that area to KNP, the gate was moved to the current Orpen gate.

Rabelais is a French name, and was the name of the farm on which the gate was situated. The farm was probably named after the writer Francois Rabelais.

Thanks Imberbe, quite interesting

Regarding Imberbe's last post on Rabelais gate, I assure you that Rabelais was a gate camp in the good old days. My aunt & uncle always stayed there and always boasted about seeing cheetah on the road to Satara. I have other friends who stayed there and had lions visiting one cold night, lying around the communal fires. I have a very old map that I will try to post sometime, in pieces, as it is very interesting. I had to laminate it as it was falling apart. I showed the map to my friend William Mabasa in Skukuza,who made a photo copy of it. He was most impressed and took my sister, brother-in-law and I in to meet the then Chief Director of Kruger, Dr. Mkize. My family must have purchased it in the 1940's in the park and it has roads & camps that no longer exist and of course many that are new. The map cost 2 schillings and six pence (or 25cents). Rabelais is on the map as a camp and on the reverse of the map, Rabelais camp boasts with a total of 20 beds.

That's interesting ... thanks!

I remember leaving Kruger through Malopene when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. It was small and very primitive, and sticks in my mind 55 years later because it had long-drop loos disinfected with (I think) calcium chloride -- and STANK! I for one was not sorry to see it go.

But on the other side of the coin, what became of Gorge camp (later Gorge picnic site, then vanished)?

Hi hfGlen, according to 'A Dictionary of the Kruger National Park - Place Names', by J J Kloppers and Hans Bornman, the Gorge camp is mentioned as having been 9kms east of Olifants and on the southern banks of the Olifants river and is "in disuse". I remember going there on a terrible road, seeing nothing but an elephant all on his own in an area that was very dry.

Hi Chip

Thanks! I remember the dry, but also spectacular scenery when you got there.

Have done a bit of searching and this is all that I could found so far (don't know if its the one that Imberbe is thinking about)
It was a picnic site called Gorge. (That may just have been our family name for it, but I seem to remember that being the name) I have heard that that it changed into the trails camp. It was closed down when our paranoid government started worrying about the "Rooi Gevaar" (red danger) as it was too close to the border.

Basically opposite bank of Olifants to the lookout on the s44 and further east.[/quote]
Taken from here...