by Dominic Chadbon | Jun 30, 2021 | Fire & Fynbos |
People say that it’s a bit of good luck to live in Cape Town but in April this year it was the city itself that got lucky. A fire had broken out on Devil’s Peak on an unusually hot day and worked its way south to the university before suddenly reversing direction as...
by Dominic Chadbon | Apr 19, 2021 | Fire & Fynbos |
Late summer in Cape Town and smoke hangs over Rondebosch Common. It’s the usual scene: flashing red lights, grim-faced firefighters, crowds of anxious onlookers. And me: jumping up and down like an over-excited kangaroo shouting “Let it burn! Let it burn!” Of course...
by Dominic Chadbon | Oct 20, 2020 | Fire & Fynbos |
Having collected 50 000 floral specimens over a lifetime of discovery, it’s fair to say that English naturalist William Burchell (1781 – 1863) knew a thing or two about plants. But even he was staggered by the flowers on Lion’s Head during a visit to Cape Town,...
by Dominic Chadbon | Jan 23, 2019 | Fire & Fynbos |
With all this fuss made about the wonders of fynbos vegetation, it does seem a bit drastic that it all gets burnt to cinders from time to time. But stand in a patch of flower-spangled fynbos anywhere in the mountains in the Western Cape and you are looking at a...
by Dominic Chadbon | Jun 15, 2017 | Fire & Fynbos |
Lying quietly between Simons Town on the Indian Ocean and Scarborough on the Atlantic, the Red Hill mountains are largely unknown even to locals. But it is an easy hiking environment of mostly flat paths meandering around a pair of reservoirs, and Red Hill currently...
by Dominic Chadbon | Nov 6, 2015 | Fire & Fynbos |
Eight months ago I stood in mountains that looked like they had just been napalmed. The fynbos vegetation had completely disappeared, devoured by a 30 metre wall of storm-driven fire that raged mercilessly across the Cape Peninsula’s Silvermine mountains, ending only...
