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James (Jimmy) & Ursula Morrison lived at Makakatana for 50 years before moving to Ballito, on the KwaZulu Natal north coast, where they are currently living. Ursula Morrison has written some wonderfully rich memoirs of the history behind Makakatana.
We, Hugh and Leigh-Ann Morrison are very proud and privileged to be able to continue living at Makakatana and to run our beautiful Lodge here. To us, the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park is a paradise that we cherish and are honored to be able to share it. We are so grateful to my Mom & Dad (James (Jimmy) & Ursula Morrison) in helping us build our business and for all your support.
To all our future guests, we pride ourselves in being able to allow you to experience this wonderful paradise, and to all our past guests & friends, we thank you for your support and look forward to seeing you all again.
Hugh and Leigh-Ann Morrison
"The story of the Morrison family at Makakatana began in 1918, when David Brodie, one of the partners in a business called G.A. Challis & Co. needed a young partner to take the place of Mr. Challis who had been so badly shell shocked during the great War of 1914-18, that he was incapable of running the shop, known as ‘Lake Store’ at Makakatana. As David Brodie made regular trips to Scotland he needed a young and reliable partner. David Brodie and Mr. Challis were ex-Natal Government Policeman.
John Kemp (Jock) Morrison was eighteen years old, working in Mtubatuba for a shop-keeper called Fayle, when he was offered the opportunity to become a partner in the business of Challis & Co. and in order to do so he borrowed money from Mr. Percival, a friend of his parents. Mr. Percival’s grandson, Brian, married the sister of the writer (Ursula Morrison – nee Rogers), Mary Percival (nee Rogers), many years later.
Can you imagine what it meant to live here eighty years ago! There was no reliable transport, the railway line ended at Somkele which is kilometers from Mtubatuba and all the goods for the shop had to be transported by ox wagon over rough tracks from that point. When there was much rain the track was often water logged and another way had to be found wandering around the pans which formed during the rainy season. Malaria was simply a nuisance to be endured if one wished to live on the Zululand coast – just a fact of life. Everyone kept a supply of quinine and although there were sprays which were usually diluted with paraffin and sprayed from a pump action can this had a very limited effect. This was long before the advent of D.D.T. and aerosols which did much to eradicate malaria.
The customers came from round about the shop, where their grass huts were widely scattered at the edge of the forest. Some of the men may have worked at the sugar mill or on the sugar farms but many simply stayed at home with cattle in a kraal and their wives planting crops such as mealies, sweet potatoes, sugar beans, peanuts etc. The soil is poor so I do not imagine the crops would have been good. Apart from the normal cash transactions, trade was also done by barter and store goods would be exchanged for hides and mealies. Bread was baked in a clay Dutch oven, the door of which was still lying around in 1949. There could not have been many loaves baked a day. For eggs and meat they had plenty of fowls, probably of a mixed breed because they are less prone to disease and are good to eat. Genet Cats would have been a problem as they are even today, so the hens would have been cooped up at night.
Some of the customers came from the Eastern Shores, across the lake, and to get here they had to cross at Broadies Crossing, at the start of the Narrows. Crocodiles abounded so the people crossed in a body, shouting and singing and beating the water. At Broadies there is a hard "path" from one side to the other, reputedly made by elephants as they waded back and forth. When the lake was high it would have been dangerous to cross on foot, so use was made of the shop’s ferry boat which was rowed across. The charge in 1949 was 3 pence or a tickey. This crossing was also used at night to illegally transport dagga that had been grown on the eastern shores.
Because the land was occupied and the local inhabitants continually burnt the grass for grazing, there was far less bush that there is at present. Aerial pictures taken in the 1940’s show this very clearly and also that the population was widespread but not large.
At that time paraffin lamps were used as there was no electricity, there were also no telephones. The stoves were wood or coal burning Bonnie Bridge Dovers or, for the more affluent, Aga’s which also heated bath water if one was lucky enough to have piped water. However, here as in many homes, water was heated on an outside fire in a paraffin tin or "kokok". Cottage boilers, where a wood or coal burner, installed as a rule in a lean to attached to the house and chip burning copper geysers were a later luxury, but not here!
Jock Morrison married in 1924 and by that time he had left Makakatana to a manager as, through hard work, he was able to buy another shop at Mposa which is where he was living at the time of his marriage. James Robert Hamilton (Jimmy) Morrison was born on 24th July 1925 while his parents were there. His mother was Agnes Bouverie Hamilton Leys, Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, the daughter of James and Agnes Leys. Her father, an engineer, having emigrated to South Africa in about 1904 to work first for De Beers in Kimberly and then on Durban Harbour. Unfortunately James Leys died a few months before his daughter married as a result of contracting malaria at Makakatana. Some Mango trees he planted still stand near the ‘spring well’ which supplies our household water. Unfortunately the monkeys eat all the mangoes long before they are ripe!
Some time in the early 1930’s man by the name of Mr. James, from Verulam, asked the provincial authorities to sell him land at Makakatana in order to build a hotel. Challis & Co. had 100 acres of land on a 99 year lease from the province and in order to sell land to Mr. James this lease would have to be cancelled and Challis & Co. were approached to exchange the lease for 5 acres of freehold land. This was agreed to and a start was made to the hotel, two rows of rooms being built. The James family occupied the rooms further from the lake and the others were the start of the guest-wing. Stone was blasted out of the lake to the left of the pathway to the lake to use in the building.
A concrete block store was built in about 1930 on the two acre plot on which this lodge stands. This was used to store fish and the large swimming crabs which abound in the lake. These were packed up and sent by train to Durban, but the journey was long and Summers hot, so fish did not travel though the crabs survived packed in layers of seaweed in grape baskets. Unfortunately the poor state of the roads and distance from large centres made the hotel scheme non-viable and the James’s had to give up their plans when they ran out of money. They owed Challis & Co. a lot of money so ceded ownership of their 5 acres of land, (two where the lodge stands and three next to Lake Store) together with the buildings to the company. Nothing was done about the land for 60 years until the building of the lodge in 1998.
Jock Morrison, as did everybody who lived in this part of the world, suffered regularly from Malaria and this had a bad effect on his kidneys and he died in 1938 at 39 years of age from blackwater fever leaving his wife Nan, son James (13) and daughter Nan (11).
This left Dave Brodie, the older partner, in the position to buy out the Morrisons but he did not. When he died in Scotland in the early 1940’s his heirs sold out this share to Nan Morrison and her brother James Leys who had a small share in the Company. Leys then ran the businesses from 1938 to 1948 until the partnership between brother and sister ended. James Leys then took over the shop at Mposa and Nan Morrison retained ownership of the other three businesses (Lake Store, Nyalazi Store and Hluhluwe Store) and handed the running of these three stores to her son James.
When Agnes (Nan) Morrison and her twin brother James Leys parted company it was one of the conditions that neither use the name ‘Challis & Co.’. Nan and her son James decided to name the business ‘JOCK MORRISON & SON’ in honor of their late husband and father, a man who had been much loved & honored throughout Zululand. And so the name of poor Challis, who had ended his days at Makakatana as a mental casualty of the Great War, faded from the scene until it was revived many years later as the name of one of the family companies.
The businesses were not in good shape, only one of the three shops showing as fair return, and the buildings, which were built of wood & iron, needing replacement. There were shortages of goods for a number of years after the end of World War 2 & customers would queue for their daily rations of brown sugar as this item was necessary for the brewing of home-made liquor. Black people were not permitted to buy ‘white liquor’ at that time so concocted & sold their own version of moonshine as well as tapping the ilala palm to make palm wine, a potent liquor.
In February 1949, James married Ursula Rogers & their first son John was born in December of that year to be followed by four more sons and a daughter – Barry, Pamela, Bruce, Keith and Hugh. Fortunately they were a reasonably healthy bunch because the nearest doctor was twenty three miles away over rough dirt roads. All the children grew up speaking English and Zulu and Hugh spoke only Zulu until he was three. Makakatana is a lovely place for children, especially the boys, who started fishing at a young age but the one big drawback, is the distance from schools. There was no boarding facility at Mtubatuba so all ended up at Eshowe School which is about a 2 hour journey away. Pamela still tells of crying into her porridge when she was sent away at the age of 5 ½ years!
The business prospered and after about 9 years in the small house behind the old shop and baby No. 5 on the way, the present home was built in 1958. Electricity was generated by a Lister Motor & it was many years before ESKOM electricity was installed.
The children grew up, served their years in the army, and came back to work for their father.
John and Bruce in the businesses, Barry and Keith to grow sugar on farms that James had bought from Uncles. All are now independent. Hugh started a clothing business in Durban but after a number of years of city life decided that ‘bundu is best’ and started the long, long process of getting permission to build the lodge.
Hugh would not wish to run a Lodge that could in any way spoil an area that has been cherished by his family for so many years.
Hugh and Leigh-Ann Ker-Fox married in November 1998 and have started their life together with a brand new project.
We as their family, wish them happiness and success."
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