Signboard on the 'Rooted in Time' self-drive tour of the Knysna forests in the Garden Route National Park. https://www.sanparks.org/parks/garden_route/

1. A French explorer who spent about six months in the Knysna
district in 1782. He’s said to have been the first white person
to shoot an elephant in the area - at Die Poort, between
Plettenberg Bay and Knysna. In his five-volume work on his
travels, he recorded that he’d come across Dutch people in the
Plettenberg Bay who were exploiting the timber in the forest
and planting crops. He made suggestions for the establish-
ment of a formal forestry industry in the area.
FrancoisleVaillant
(1752-1824)
An Englishman who trained at the
Nancy School of Forestry in France,
and then went to work for the
Indian Forest Services. He came to
South Africa in 1882, and was
transferred to Knysna in 1888.
“Under his regime in South Africa
not only was
scientific management applied to
the remaining
indigenous forests, but extensive plantations were made of
eucalypts and other exotics, which are now yielding an
annual revenue of about £20,000.”
~ Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of
New Zealand 1868-1961
Hutchins went on to write reports on
forestry in Kenya, Cyprus, Australia
and New Zealand. He was knighted in
1920 for his services to the industry.
DavidErnestHutchins
(1850-1920)
A South African (born in Grahamstown) who received a
scholarship from the Cape Forestry Service to study for a
B.Sc. in Forestry at the University of Edinburgh. He became
the first Forest Research Officer in the indigenous forests
when he was transferred to Deep Walls in 1922 (this job also
carried the title of ‘Keeper of the Knysna Elephants’). He
spent the next four years working on field experiments and
research, and was later awarded a D.Sc. by the University of
Edinburgh.
His thesis - ‘Forest-Succession and Ecology in the Knysna
Region, etc.’ - was published as The Botanical Survey of South
Africa Memoir no. 14 (1931).
He went on to become (amongst others) Professor of Botany at
Witwatersrand University (1931-1948), Dean of the Faculty of
Agriculture at the University of Ghana (1951-1960), an
Honorary Visiting Professor in applied ecology to the
University of Pennsylvania (1966), and President of
the South African Association for the Advancement
of Science (1969). He was awarded an honorary DSc
from Rhodes University in 1969.
JohnFrederick
VicarsPhillips
(1922-1997)
The forester D.E. Hutchins
oversaw the construction of a
number of stone houses on sites
that were selected for their views.
These included houses at Gouna
Forest Station, Diepwalle,
Harkerville, and Fisanthoek.
&FAMOUSFORESTERS

2. OFJEANIEPHILLIPS
“We had many visitors from overseas while in the forest
(official cars were available then). It appeared to be one of the
show places in the district, and the ‘Big Tree’ below us had to
be shown to all. Our tales of happenings in life in the forest,
we knew, they didn't believe, but when entertaining guests
once, they did realise a little of the danger when a trumpeting
elephant - probably an old one for there were none of the
herd with him - charged the house and
got one tusk through the corrugated
iron roof of our only water supply,
an underground one.”
VISITORSANDELEPHANTS
“Next to Concordia was a privately
owned piece of indigenous forest,
belonging to a firm called Parkes - so
it was known as Parkes Station.
Strangely enough the Manager was
Perks whose wife, Mrs. Perks, was
known as the ‘Forest Fairy.’ Weighing
at least 300 lbs, she could only move
from her house to her enormous
rocking chair on the veranda - where
she dispensed medicines (mostly
revolting), gave advice to expectant
THEFORESTFAIRY
mothers, administered justice especially when her sjambok
could be reached and an unfortunate small or even not so
small boy was about, and although she was so immobile could
dispense all the local gossip as well.”
“Coffee and rusks were served on a tin tray by the first of the
woodcutters’ daughters I had met; and though astonished that
white people could look so wild and toothless I got used to
it - for men, women and children were all just as toothless and
Jeanie Phillips also tells of her fears when gathering berries for
jam and jelly from an enormous bramble bush near the “Big
Tree”. Every crackle in the bush made her feel that they were
breathing down her neck!
bedraggled looking. I think she must have known every
family in the whole district, including ours at Deepwalls
(Diepwalle), and very likely knew all about us very soon too.
I quite liked her though, and wheeled my two small daugh-
ters there where I was regaled each time with black coffee
and rusks. She roared with laughter to see that I didn’t know
the technique of eating the rusks for I couldn’t bite them and
found one had to dip each bite into the coffee and then eat
the sodden part. I never got used to this ritual and had the
greatest difficulty in having my children forego the treat
(black coffee) though they did struggle with the dry rusks
which kept them occupied. Her cure for chest trouble was a
newly killed dog skin, which I imagined served as a poultice,
and for a whitlow a live frog split and tied on to the finger.
When the dressings, filthy by then, came away of their own
accord, the whitlow was to have disappeared. Many of her
remedies were very good, though, mostly passed on to her
by old Hottentots, who knew a lot about medicines they
could make from leaves or bark of trees - and poison too.”
Jeanie Phillips was the wife of the
forester John Phillips. They were
stationed in Knysna from 1922 to
1927. She describes life at the
Diepwalle forest station in her
memoirs: