An eye for the birdies

I lived in the Kruger Park for the best part of a decade, satiating my hunger for wilderness and peace. Now, however, I am back in Johannesburg - the city of my birth, childhood and formative years.

Slaking a thirst for the wild ain't so easy in these parts. Let's face it, Joburg doesn't contain the natural wonders of Cape Town or even Witbank (okay, that's an exaggeration).

Apparently, this is made up for by the fact that the people inhabiting the City of Gold are friendlier than the folks in Cape Town. But I don't feel this to be much of an achievement, given that I've come across rabid mambas more genial than the average middle-class Capetonian and I challenge you to find a pedestrian in Joburg who thinks the streets are filled with friendly motorists.

But if you look, there are pockets of wilderness in the melee - in the summer thunderstorms, in the birds living in the world's largest urban forest, and even in the way grass grows through the tiniest cracks in the paving.

It's in the pockets of wilderness dotting the city that I seek refuge. Islands where it's possible to escape all the begging, building, driving, demolishing, e-mailing, hawking, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses-ing, schooling, selling, stealing, spending, painting, phoning and going about commerce at a life-reducing pace.

For me, one of these places is the golf course at the Country Club Johannesburg in Woodmead. My talent for hitting small white balls is about as appalling as my aptitude for understanding the fairer sex so I often play alone. I tee off late in the afternoon during the week when the usual punters are in their open-plan offices, boardrooms or German automobiles. Playing midweek also means I can escape the boets having faans meetings at the naanteenth.

Here be a pocket of silence where nature has a voice in the chaos. Playing late allows me to experience the changing of the guard at dusk - the time of the day when the diurnal creatures quieten and are replaced by their nocturnal fellows.

The other evening, as the sun had just disappeared in a magnificent blaze of crimson and gold, and the rush hour was in full swing around me, I found myself scratching about in the deep rough for the umpteenth time. As I extracted myself from the thicket in which the irksome ball was lost, I spotted a scrubhare emerging on to the fairway, sniffing the air.

A warm breeze heralding the end of the winter blew across the grass and the first of the spring crickets began chirrupping. Bats took to the darkening skies while a Swainson's francolin clucked from its roost nearby. I inhaled deeply and smiled, cocooned briefly in the wild.

This is the fifth in a series by writers on their favourite place. Country Club Johannesburg is open to members only. Hendry's latest book Back to the Bush: Another Year in the Wild, is now out