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Honorary Rangers

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Stock-taking at Golden Gate

In 2001, as one of the initial focuses of the SANParks commercialization strategy, the Brandwag Hotel and Chalets in Golden Gate Highlands National Park were outsourced to the Protea Hotel group. On 1 August 2006 the hotel returned to SANParks’ direct management. The handover needed to be as smooth and fluid as possible as much of the accommodation was booked for this period. SANParks needed help fast and a call was put out to the Honorary Rangers members to see who could come and help with stock-taking and other tasks necessary for the reclamation of the facility.

Here is the story through the eyes of one of the Honorary Ranger volunteers:

I thought you would be interested to hear about our duty in Golden gate at the end of July with the take-over from the Protea Group. Seven of us started at Lunch time on Tuesday 25th July. Four from KZN region, one from West Rand and two from Free State of which one was a candidate waiting for appointment. The nest day Jan De Wet from KZN left after lunch but we were joined by one more from West Rand. On Sunday one more candidate from West Rand arrived, another from East Rand and one more from Free State. We did a full asset count and wrote up a register of everything in the Hotel and the Chalets. We did this without the guests knowing what was happening and only entered vacant accommodation. The last chalet was done on Saturday and the last hotel room on Sunday .We also did the "sticking" of data bar-code stickers on the furniture in Mountain Retreat and in the Qwa-Qwa huts. The asset count register was put on a CD and was in the hands of SANPark’s head office on Sunday evening. Mondays' work was a bit trickier as we did a stock count of the foodstuffs. So it was in the deepfreezes counting and a carton of chicken taken to put on the grill for the evening meal. So, count on the grill. Monday night we sat down and tried to cost everything but this was impossible as the Catering manager went off without supplying all the prices. On Tuesday I consolidated all our lists before handing over to Golden Gate’s Roelf van Wyk and then attended the Management meeting. Cillie Malan (SANParks auditor) did random checks on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday morning before he left and it seems he was satisfied. I kept record of our hours on duty and we can report that conservatively counted we did 612 hours of duty. On a more fun note we saw three Bearded Vultures on three different occasions during our stay. Two mature birds and a juvenile. With these there were also once five and then eight Cape Vultures. All of these were at the feeding site where the HR initiated vulture hide will be built shortly. About 25 Bald Ibises were seen a burn nearby.

de Witt Hanekom
KZN Honorary Ranger and NEC member