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  We left London on 25 March 1975, with six months’ supply of dried food, a boat ticket from Cape Town to Perth, and an array of jerry cans and spare tyres on the roof-rack. Win would do the driving, as I lacked a manual driver’s licence. He would also prepare meals – cooking was one of his passions – and look after the vehicle. I would be the chronicler, keeping a journal and taking photographs, and would navigate, translate and interpret, as most of North Africa was French-speaking. We would share the hard physical tasks of lifting gear and digging out.

  Two months later, we had survived the Saharan crossing – just – but war had broken out in Angola, and its ripple effect had brought us to a standstill in Libreville. This is the story of what happened next, halfway through Africa, and how we were thrown into the path of that leopard.

  chapter one

  STRANDED IN LIBREVILLE

  Libreville, Gabon, 2 June 1975

  The curve of beach lay deserted in the morning light, unlike the day before, when dozens of French families had picnicked on the sand with their dogs. The grey-green Atlantic lapped gently at the shore. Seated in folding camp chairs, we stared at the horizon; the soft, white sand was warm under our bare feet, and a cool breeze from the ocean rustled the coconut palm fronds overhead. The Kombivan stood nearby, coated in jungle mud and crammed with jerry cans, freeze-dried foods and survival gear. Sign-writing on both its sides proclaimed our origins – Brisbane, Australia – just in case someone, somewhere on our marathon journey assumed we came from a country that had fallen out of favour.

  We were on the old ‘slave coast’, over 7000 kilometres and two months by car from London, halfway across the African continent. We should have been jubilant: we had crossed the Sahara, battling 44-degree heat and a vehicle breakdown, and survived arrest at submachine-gunpoint in Algeria, where the army was convinced we were spies. Now we were almost on the equator, in Gabon, part of francophone West Africa. We should have felt at least some satisfaction in making it thus far. Instead, we were miserable, as miserable as we had ever been.

  A three-day torture drive through the jungle had left us demoralised and exhausted. National Highway 1, proudly signposted at the Gabon–Cameroon border, had turned out to be a quagmire of red clay that sucked at the tyres like a living thing. With deserted quarries the only resting places, we had passed sleepless nights in them, powerless to escape the onslaught of the biting insects. By day, we had dug the Kombi out of bogs, or cut saplings with a machete to make a surface firm enough to drive on. The humid air had lain over us like a blanket, saturating our filthy jeans with sweat and making every movement an effort. As if that weren’t enough, our arms and legs, florid from countless insect bites, itched and stung incessantly, and we hadn’t been able to shower for weeks.

  Worse, war had broken out in Angola far to the south, and Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) had closed its borders. At a stroke, this had consigned to the scrapheap our planned trip up the Congo to East Africa. But our problems didn’t end there. Our already strained budget had been dealt a deathblow twelve hours earlier, when a thief had crept into our camp and stolen our last wad of ready cash.

  Our options for getting out of Gabon were now limited. We could retrace our route north back to Nigeria or board a coastal freighter to Namibia in south-west Africa, and thus bypass Angola. Or we could sell the Kombi and all our gear and fly out.

  We had arrived in Libreville the day before, a Sunday. The outskirts of town were a jumble of decaying iron-roofed shanties sprawled over hillsides, where purple bougainvillea and giant Ficus decora threatened to engulf every structure. Clumps of palms beside the road shaded rickety wooden stalls where local traders sold French bread, fruit, peanuts, maize and chillies, and small groups of Gabonese strolled barefoot along the verges, dressed in bright, patterned cotton cloth. The city centre, by contrast, could have been anywhere in the West. Chic boutiques, French supermarkets, gift shops and luxury appliance retailers indicated an affluent urban elite. Libreville lay on a wide bay, skirted by a sickle of pure white sand. An esplanade led past graceful colonial-style buildings with pillared porticoes, surrounded by brilliant stands of purple and red bougainvillea. Luxurious embassy residences, shops and nightclubs adjoined an up-market residential sector with high-rise hotels and French restaurants.

  The morning after the robbery, I felt like a victim, as if a malevolent African fate had deliberately targeted us. I looked across at Win and saw exhaustion and despair etched on his face. Normally he was the resilient one – a fit forty-eight-year-old, tanned and muscular from a life of outdoor activity – and also the optimistic one, whereas I had enough pessimism for both of us. But this situation had got to him badly. I had never seen him so down. We’d always known there would be many factors along the way beyond our control, but we hadn’t expected to have to abandon the trip halfway through.

  Still, I didn’t hate Africa for thwarting us: in fact, I loved it, even though it had pushed us close to desperation at times. Perhaps it was that very unpredictability that excited me – that, and the untamed rawness. My greatest disappointment was that we would miss the game parks of Eastern and Southern Africa; they were what had drawn us to Africa from the beginning. With our savings so depleted, too, it seemed unlikely that we would return in the future.

  But it was useless wallowing – we had to do something about our immediate situation. I reached for a notebook and pen and made a list of the things in our favour. When all else fails, I always resort to writing things down. It gives me a sense of security, as if I can anchor a capricious fate by making marks on a page. Now, I discovered there were more positives than I had expected. We loved each other. We weren’t physically ill – in fact, after all our exertions digging the van out of sand bogs in the Sahara, I was probably fitter than I had ever been. The Kombi was in working order. We had boat tickets from Cape Town to Perth for ourselves and the Kombi, which we could cash in if necessary. We had instructed our London bank several weeks earlier to send £100 to its correspondent bank in Libreville. And I spoke good French – a legacy of my year studying French at university. As a bonus, the air was cool as we sat staring at the ocean, even though Libreville lay just four degrees north of the equator. It could be worse, I told myself.

  ‘Are you going to have any breakfast?’ I asked Win.

  He shook his head. ‘I couldn’t face it. But another mug of tea would help.’

  I put the kettle on and continued to mull over the situation. We had just one US$20 traveller’s cheque left, and we needed to buy fresh food. Libreville was reputedly the most expensive city in Africa. Our tourist visas would expire in ten days.

  I reviewed what I knew of Gabon. Its people hadn’t experienced the horrors that their neighbours in the Congo had endured under colonialism. The French had been essentially benevolent, although they’d left little infrastructure behind: eighty-five per cent of the country was still equatorial rainforest. Tracts of swamp covered much of the lowlands, and a huge river system – the Ogooué-Ivindo – drained the country from east to west. Politically, one feature distinguished it from much of Africa: since independence in 1960, its history had been essentially peaceful. The pro-western head of state, El Hadj Omar Bongo, had been in power eight years. (He is still in power at the time of writing.) Per capita it was one of the wealthiest countries in Africa, riding a mineral and oil boom, although little of this prosperity filtered down to the village level.

  What I knew of pre-colonial Gabon had come entirely from the writings of a famous nineteenth-century British explorer, Mary Kingsley, who had travelled alone to West Africa, hungry to learn about the customs and beliefs of the people and to collect specimens of plants and fish to take home. In her voluminous skirts, high-necked Victorian blouses, leather boots and hat, she had ventured far up the mighty Ogooué River in a pirogue – a dugout canoe – accompanied by Gabonese interpreters and guides, relying on the hospitality of traders and missionaries where there were any and local villagers wh
ere there weren’t. In the Kombi was the abridged edition of her famous book Travels in West Africa, a gift from my boss back in London. Now I was here, on the old slave coast, where she had been a century before.

  Win and I drank two mugs of hot tea each, then drove into town to report the burglary to the police – an official report could be useful if we wanted to claim on insurance. We had slept poorly after the robbery; my eyes felt gritty, salt from our swim in the ocean the day before caked my skin, and my grimy jeans stuck to my legs. As we drove, my mind fizzed with anxieties. According to our guidebook, Libreville had no camping facilities, and we had no money for a hotel. We could see no way of exiting the country quickly. We were stranded. All we could hope was that our money had arrived from London.

  That morning, the main route into town was a riot of colour. Festive banners announced that the 1975 OPEC conference would take place in Libreville that week. President Bongo was to become the new chair of OPEC. The flags of all the oil-producing nations lined the route, dancing in the steady onshore breeze. The central business district looked spotless. Somehow it seemed the ultimate irony: Libreville was celebrating, while we were in extremis. I gritted my teeth and peered hard at the names on buildings, looking for the police station.

  The grey, multistorey concrete building looked forbidding. I had never reported a robbery in a foreign language before. As we climbed the stairs, I hoped the Gabonese police would be friendlier than the Algerian variety, whom we had come to know better than we would have liked six weeks before. I got my wish: Sergeant Christian Girard was young, French, and immaculate in khaki and black, with abundant gold braid and rows of polished brass buttons, and he smiled and motioned us to two wooden chairs in his office. ‘How can I help?’

  I smiled back, introduced myself and Win, and began in my best French: ‘We’ve been robbed, and would like to report the incident.’ I fought fatigue as I related the events of the night before. When I mentioned where the theft had occurred, Sergeant Girard grimaced knowingly: we had innocently chosen to camp at a beach notorious for robberies, the haunt of unemployed immigrant labourers from Benin and Senegal.

  ‘Is there really nowhere we can camp near town?’ I asked.

  ‘Not legally. The safest place would be a hotel.’ The muscles in my abdomen tightened into a cramp – hotels were out of the question on our budget. While a clerk typed the report of the robbery, I explained our circumstances – that we needed to find a way out of Gabon, possibly to sell the van. Soon I realised that he felt genuinely sorry for us.

  ‘I’ll make some inquiries for you,’ he said. We sat and listened as he placed a series of phone calls – to the port, to car dealers, to friends and colleagues – and wrote out the details of shipping agents, second-hand car yards and departure schedules. For the hundredth time on this trip, I blessed my love of the French language. As we waited, I explained to Win, who spoke no French, what was happening.

  An hour later, Sergeant Girard handed me two copies of the report, and the list of useful contacts he had compiled. As we left, he called after us, ‘Come back and see me. Let me know how you get on.’ I thanked him and said we would. A spring crept into my step as we reached the street: we now had an ally we could call on if we needed to. It was a chink of light.

  ‘We’d better get a move on,’ Win said. As we strode to the Kombi and climbed in, his whole body was tense, his face drawn. His mind was already focused like a laser on the next task: ‘Everything closes at noon for three hours. We’ve got half an hour to find the bank where our money from London was sent, or at least to cash the traveller’s cheque. We can’t do anything without money.’

  Win’s stoicism never deserted him. I’d seen a lot of it during our desert crossing. He kept going under duress, regardless of how he felt. I knew he was still exhausted, hungry and bitterly disappointed, but he kept it to himself. I took his cue and turned my attention to finding the Banque Nationale de Paris.

  As we drove slowly through the business district, my eyes lighted on the name over a door – Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas – surely there couldn’t be two banks with such similar names. We parked outside. The red and white Kombi, with our expedition gear on the roof, its ‘Brisbane, Australia’ sign sprayed with mud, stood out among the urban traffic: unlike many African cities, Libreville was off the well-travelled overland routes.

  Suddenly a voice behind us was saying, ‘You’re from Brisbane?’ The speaker was a well-dressed European man, French, but speaking perfect English. ‘My name is Pierre Rochet. I’m an architect. I’ve worked in Brisbane with Ian Ferrier, the architect. Do you know him?’

  Win gasped. ‘Do I know him? I’ve worked with him – I’m a builder!’ They started swapping stories, and I looked at my watch. Precious time was elapsing. Pierre thrust one of his business cards into Win’s hand: ‘Come home and have dinner with us. Give me a ring. Don’t forget, will you?’

  We barely had time to react when a second voice said, ‘’Ello. My name is André St Just. You are Australian?’ We nodded, incredulous. ‘My wife is Australian. She would love to meet you!’ My head spun. Just hours ago, we had known no-one.

  ‘Please, come to our house!’ André insisted. ‘Come tonight – for dinner.’

  ‘We’d love to,’ I said, ‘but please forgive us – we must rush now.’ We agreed to meet him outside the bank at seven-thirty that evening, shook hands and strode towards the bank. It was six minutes to midday. We half ran through the gate and up the concrete path towards the door, but before we reached it, another voice called out, ‘So you’re from Brisbane?’

  We whirled around. Why was everyone in town with a Brisbane connection converging on this spot now? The speaker was a tall man, tanned, around forty, wearing an open-necked business shirt, tropical slacks and horn-rimmed spectacles. He could have passed for Cary Grant; his clipped speech even carried the hint of an American accent. He stepped forward and extended his hand. ‘I’m Doug Hunt. We lived in Brisbane for three years. Is there something I can do to help?’ By now we were beyond surprise. Anything could happen.

  Win’s face creased into a wry smile. ‘We’re desperate to get into this bank to see whether some money has arrived for us. We were robbed last night and we’ve got no cash.’

  ‘No problem,’ Doug said, ‘I know the manager personally. Follow me.’

  By the time we discovered this was the wrong bank, it had closed for the three-hour lunchbreak and we still had no money. We waited on tenterhooks as Doug exercised his persuasive powers on the French bank manager to get him to cash our one remaining traveller’s cheque. Eventually, I grasped a small pile of Central African francs, thanked the bank manager in French, and we walked with Doug back out into the street.

  ‘We’re very grateful,’ I said. ‘It’s been a rough twenty-four hours.’

  ‘No trouble. You might have difficulty finding the Banque Nationale de Paris though: it’s hidden away at the other end of town. How about I take you there now, then you’ll be right for when it reopens?’

  The bank was on the first floor of a nondescript building. He was right, we’d never have spotted it.

  We’d worked out that Doug was a Kiwi – the vowels gave it away. The chances of meeting a fellow Antipodean in this francophone slice of Equatorial Africa must have been millions to one.

  ‘What brings you to Gabon, Doug?’ I had him pegged as a professional of some kind.

  ‘I’m a geologist. I’m running a mineral project up in the mountains.’

  I glanced at Win. I knew what he was thinking, because I was thinking the same: a geologist in the mountains of Equatorial Africa? How romantic was that! Doug seemed reluctant to leave: ‘Look, when you’ve collected your money, why don’t you call around to my office for coffee late this afternoon, and we’ll talk about Brisbane. We loved our life there. I’d be interested to know what it’s like now. Here’s my card – the office address is on it.’

  ‘We’d love to.’ Win smiled and shook his hand.
‘And thanks again for your help.’

  ‘Okay. See you then.’

  The card showed Doug was the director of a company called SOMIFER. We stood on the footpath, our heads spinning. In only three hours, we had a network of contacts in the city – people of goodwill, people we could call on for help, people who spoke English. We even had money for food and a dinner date. We looked at each other and burst out laughing. The whole thing was bizarre. I half-danced back to the van with relief, light-headed from hunger and lack of sleep.

  We drove down to the esplanade and parked on a grass verge under the coconut palms. Thick cloud hung low over the bay, a murky grey with no breaks. We stretched out on the bed in the van and closed our eyes, hoping for sleep while we waited for the town to wake from its three-hour lunchbreak.

  I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew it was two o’clock. To while away the last hour, I pulled out our Travellers’ Guide to Africa and opened it at the chapter on Gabon. The country relied heavily on imported food and consumer goods. There was no commercial agriculture, and much of the population depended on subsistence agriculture, hunting and fishing. The only major manufacturing industry was a massive plywood mill at Port-Gentil on the coast. Gabon’s economy was critically linked to world demand for its minerals, offshore oil and timber. The Guide also highlighted the government’s flagship project – a plan to build a railway from the port of Owendo near Libreville to a vast iron-ore deposit at Belinga in the remote north-east. When completed, the railway would bring out the mined ore for export. Construction on the railway had not begun, and no ore had been mined.