Tony Park – African Adventure

Tony Park’s 17 African thrillers are international best-sellers wrapping high octane action set against a background of safari park politics and wild life protection. Hi there I’m your host Jenny Wheeler . Tony gives the true story of the undiscovered  Australian who’s a key protagonist in his latest book, Ghosts of the Past, and talks about living his dream life, split time between Australia and South Africa.  Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: The importance of ‘living your dream’ Splitting time betrween Australia and South Africa The unknown hero he’d like to see recognised Tony’s work with Veterans For Wildlife The looming crisis in animal and plant protection Tips for safari seekers Where to find Tony Park: Website: www.tonypark.net Facebook:  @TonyParkAuthor  Twitter: @TonyParkAuthor Instagram: @TonyParkAuthor What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. Jenny: But now, here’s Tony. Hello there, Tony, and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us. Tony: It’s great to be here. And thank you for having me. Jenny: You’ve had a  long career as a journalist, a very full career. But was there a Once Upon a Time moment when you thought you really did want to write fiction rather than just the non-fiction that you were doing? Tony Park – International thriller author Tony: Yes, Jenny, I think it goes way back, even before I started working, before I went to school. I think I knew from the time I was a very small boy, when my Mom got me reading at a very early age.  I fully believe it’s the best gift a parent or grandparent, too, can give to a little kid.It’s a love of books and a love of reading. I knew from probably the time I started reading that what I wanted to do in life was  write a book. I mean, my Mom would ‘park’ me in the Municipal Library, probably sit there for after- school-care unattended, and I’d walk around looking at all these books in the little town where I grew up.  I thought ‘someone must be writing all these books and I would like to be one of those people.’ So I knew from the time I was a very small boy, if ever anyone asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up, I would say I wanted to write a book. And particularly, I wanted to write fiction. Love of reading nurtured Jenny: And was that in rural Australia somewhere? Tony: I was in the western suburbs of Australia, in Campbelltown. Interestingly, I was actually born in New Zealand. I’m from an Aussie mum and  a Welsh dad but  I came to Australia – back to my mum’s country – when I was about three or four years old. And so I grew up in the western suburbs of Sydney. It was a pretty basic existence. We weren’t particularly well off. The town was on the outskirts of Sydney, and it had a very small library. It’s one of those things where when you’re a little kid, it seems big. I went back out there and they’ve got a very big new library now. But I went to the building where it originally was, and it’s probably not much bigger than the average lounge room. Yes, that was where I remember spending a lot of time. We were always getting books out of the library. Always. And I was reading –  reading Biggles books when I was a little boy. Biggles and the fighter pilot dream I’m not sure if any of your listeners are old enough to remember Biggles, terribly politically incorrect books about a fighter pilot in the First World War written for young boys. I thought when I was growing up, I’d like to write books, and I also wanted to be a fighter pilot. But when I went to school, I couldn’t do mathematics. I couldn’t do science.  So a job in the Air Force was out of reach because you needed those subjects to qualify. So I pinned my hopes on being a writer. Tony Park – African adventure – The Delta Jenny:  You’ve made your name with African adventures and you now split your life between Australia and Africa. When did you first go to Africa, and fall in love with Africa? Tony: Yes, it’s interesting, because Africa was never really on my radar. I never had any desire to travel there when I was younger. My wife, Nicola and I, were both quite young when we got married and we don’t have kids. So we travel a fair bit, when we were younger. Like a lot of Aussies and Kiwis. We travelled around Europe and Asia. And in 1995, Nicola said to me, “we’re going to Africa.” And I was like, “Okay, sure, we’re going to Africa.” You know, I wasn’t  disinterested, but I would never say it was a burning ambition of mine to go there. So we went on a little safari holiday to South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana. Blown away by the African bush And I think because possibly because I was so completely unprepared, I never read anything or did any research. Nicola did all the planning for the trip. And when I got there, it blew me away, because she’d hired a little car to drive around. And I thought we were going to be on some escorted safari or something. So very quickly, I had to work out how to navigate my way around this amazing continent, through these incredible game parks full of all these amazing wild animals that I’d only seen as a little boy in a zoo once in my life. And now all of a sudden I was in the midst of it, and I think it bowled me over. What happened to us happens to a lot of foreigners who visit that continent. Something hooks you. I’m not exactly sure whether it’s the wildlife, or the scenery, or the people you meet who are incredibly warm and welcoming. They all have a story that’s just amazing, plus the cultures or the history. Probably all of those things just sucked me in. And I think also, if anyone’s ever been on a safari holiday, it’s not a normal sort of vacation spot. Not the ‘Today we go into the museum and tomorrow we go into the cathedral’ sort of holiday. A surprise around every corner And I like all those sorts of things. But in Africa, it’s like you literally do not know what is around the next corner, from minute to minute, day after day. It changes. And it’s so unpredictable that it is addictive in a way. The more you see, the more I saw, the more I wanted to see. And the more I learned, the more I wanted to learn.  So that was in 1995. We got hooked and I think by the end of that first trip we’d already planned a return visit. We’ve been back every year since then. And now as you say, now we live there half our lives.  Seven years ago we bought a house in South Africa. So we live six months of the year in Africa and six months of the year in Australia. And that’s where I found the inspiration for writing, which is very important for a writer. The bumpy road to publication Jenny: Yes, because all of your books have been set in Africa, is that right? Tony: Yes, that’s right. I mean, it’s interesting, the first trip in 1995 slightly pre- dated, but almost coincided – with my first attempt  to write. I’d left journalism for work in PR. And I left a very good job in public relations in 1996 to try and write a book. I had a go,  I failed, and I ended up back at work for a couple of years. I think it was on my a third trip to Africa that we went for a long trip. Previously we’d been taking short vacations of two or three week holidays. On our third trip we had the opportunity to go for about four months. We bought an old Landrover, some secondhand camping gear, and we set off without a plan. Writing as he toured Africa We didn’t know where we were going to go. And I thought, well, I’ll set a book on a tour around Africa, because that’s where we were going, and I started writing again. It was my second attempt to write a novel, and fortunately, that one got published by Pan Macmillan as Far Horizon, and became my first African novel. My publisher said, ‘you can write the African books for us.’ And I said, ‘Thanks. That’ll do me.’ I’ve done at least a book a year since then, and two last year. So Yes, I’m up to 17 now. Tony Park – Far Horizon – first publishing success Jenny: And that 17th book is Ghosts in the Past. And we’ll get onto talking about that in more detail, but it’s interesting that it feeds very nicely into another thing that I noticed in Ghosts in the Past. And that is you have one of your characters, Suzanne, talking about Australia and Africa. And she said something very interesting that I thought quite possibly reflects your own view. Aussie-African – differing views So just let me a read a little bit from it. She says “Africa is how Australia likes to think it is. She says about Africa, “We’re more in touch with the bush, closer to the land, freer and more adventurous, more reckless.” And I wondered if that’s how you see Africa yourself, in comparison with Australia. Tony: Oh, dear, sorry, Australia. Did I really write that?. I think in Australia – we are very lucky –  and in New Zealand. But certainly speaking for Australia. We live in an increasingly urbanized environment. That’s the fact. The majority of us live on the coastal fringes and our policies, our politics, our economies, are very much focused on that fringe of our country, wrongly.  That is the fact of life. However, I think a lot of Aussies, if you ask them, they would feel some affinity with the bush and the land and the reality of it is that most of us don’t really get a chance to explore our wonderful big country. In Africa and South Africa, southern Africa, It’s different. One of the things I noticed that I think I was quite envious of and that surprised me is that in South Africa there’s not just a rite of passage. Affinity for nature accepted It’s like you take for granted an affinity with, a connection with, not only the bush. not just with the wildlife. I mean, the average kid that grows up in a suburban sort of existence, like I did in Australia, doesn’t get out in the bush. In Africa it’s all just a few short hours of drive away, so on the family holiday you can go to these incredible places like the Kruger National Park in South Africa and just across the border in Zimbabwe and elsewhere, the Kalahari Desert. You know, there’s Namibia for your family holiday. You hitch up the caravan, and instead of just going to the beach, you can be out there in the amongst the lions and the elephants and the leopards and the buffaloes and the rhinos. Because of the geography of the country and the accessibility of the Big Game Parks.  Southern Africa and South Africa in particular, has the most wonderful and most wonderfully accessible national parks. So today, a kid growing up, no matter what their background, pretty well, whatever their socio-economic background, has the chance to immerse themselves in this amazing natural environment. Immersed in natural beauty And for those of us growing up in  more urbanised countries, particularly Australia, it stretches out to the outback and it’s a major logistical challenge to get out there. So I think that the connection between the people and the land is stronger in Africa. I think it’s an ideal, I think in many ways in Australia and perhaps other more urbanized parts of the world. And that’s something we miss and that’s something we’re probably the poorer for  not having easy access to it. Jenny: Yes. I think that your books give us a wonderful way to live that by proxy. They do really take you into the African bush. I thought that reading a couple of the early ones, that they would be a great introduction for somebody who is planning to do a safari, because you give such an insight into what’s happening in that part of the world today. And for people who think of safaris, maybe as they were a decade or so ago there are surprises. There seems to be some remarkably modern stuff that’s happening in terms of tracking and wildlife protection,  which your books go into in quite a bit of detail. Do you find that people respond to you in that way? The challenge of poaching Tony: I think that’s a really good question, a really good observation. I mean,  I write the books, all of them the same way I wrote the first book, on location. So as I’m travelling around on safari and learning and watching and observing, I’m writing that into my  novels. And that could be descriptions of the natural landscape and the animals or as you pointed out, what’s happening in terms of issues. Unfortunately, the problem of poaching is still big across Africa. Rhinos are hunted for their horns, elephants for their ivory, penguins are killed for their skulls. Vultures are killed. It goes on a lot. But the interesting thing that I find as I travel, I learn. And I get an insight into the good work that is being done in conservation and in out-and-out protection. The lodge where Silent Predator, Tony Park’s fifth book, begins. The anti-poaching ‘war’ You know, there is a bit of a war going on to protect some of these endangered animals. And in technology, high technology in terms of drones and cameras and radar and all sorts of electronic monitoring systems are coming into play. And as I wrote about in the last book, in Scent Of Fear, old fashioned but just as effective methods such as using sniffer dogs and tracker dogs to detect ivory and rhino horn and to catch poachers are increasingly being used in that theater of war there in Africa. So there’s so much to learn. And I think your observation probably is right. People could almost see these books as a guide book, I think in many ways, because wherever I happen to be, I put in the places where I’ve stayed, the places I’ve visited, restaurants I’ve eaten in and experiences that I’ve  had. A dual time-line story But I also tried to ground them, in fact, as well to look at some of the contemporary issues, because you don’t have to spend too much time travelling in Africa, even if you’re on a safari in a game park. Pretty quickly, you learn about some of the serious issues the people and wildlife are facing in those continents Jenny: Ghosts in the Past is a dual timeline story – probably one of the most complex plots you’ve done  – because it stretches from Australia, contemporary Australia. back to Africa at the time of the Boer War. And traces the story of the Australian and his great-great-grandfather, in terms of that lineage. How did you come? And it’s based partly on a true story. So how did you come across the story initially? The true story behind the book Tony: Yes, you’re right. It is the the most complex book I’ve written. I like to keep myself challenged as a writer, to try things a little bit differently from time to time. It’s a job that I love doing and it’s my passion. But I think it’s always good to keep yourself challenged and interested in what you’re doing. This story I came across, I was writing an earlier book called An Empty Coast, which is set in Namibia. I don’t generally do a lot of research before I start writing. I tend to research after the fact and I make it up and then I’ll fill in the blanks if I need things to be true. But this was a little bit different because when I was researching An Empty Coast, I read for fun, a history of Namibia, just to bring myself up to speed on the country. It’s an amazing country. It was formerly a German colony and known as German South West Africa, back in the late 19th and early 20th century. Tony Park – An Empty Coast – never disappoints as a story teller Namibia – a hidden treasure And Namibia is a beautiful country tucked away in the southwest corner of the continent of Africa, largely arid, amazing scenery, very culturally rich as well. And in this history of Namibia, there was a mention of a conflict that was fought from 1904 to 1907, more than a mention in fact, quite a bit, because this was a pivotal moment in Namibia’s as history. It’s when two of the indigenous groups of people rose up against the German colonizers. So the Nama people who live in the far south of Namibia, and the Herero people in the centre, they’d been disenfranchised by the German colonial authorities, they’d lost their land during a protracted drought. They had been given loans which they were unable to pay off, and they ended up defaulting by losing their cattle. And they were really given a rough deal and they rose up militarily against the Germans. An unusual alliance When I was reading the history of this conflict, which is quite well now, and in that part of Africa, there was literally a one line mention that a young Australian guy by the name of Edward Lionel Presgrave had served with the Nama rebels. He had allied himself to this very charismatic, very successful guerrilla leader, Jakob Morengo. And I thought, what was this young Australian doing fighting alongside these rebels in this very remote corner of Africa in the desert? And how did he end up there? And I filed it away in the back of my mind. Jakob Morengo – (center) Namibian national hero And thought that’s probably worth a book. And then few years went by and I found myself ready to write another story. And I thought, I’ll just find out about this chap. And I did a little, search on him and found that in the meantime, since I’d read that book, another Aussie, an academic from Macquarie University in Sydney called Dr Peter Curson, had also read the same book that I’d read. An ultimately doomed rebellion It also piqued his interest, and he’d gone off and researched this guy’s life in detail and written a little book about the self published history of the life of this Edward Lionel Presgrave, which I found incredibly fascinating. And I thought I could base a book on that.  What the heck was this young twenty- four-year-old Aussie doing in Africa at that time? And how did he end up joining this noble but ultimately doomed rebellion against the German colonialists? And that’s where I got the idea for goes to the past. Jenny: And you do dedicate the book to Edward Presgrave. Tony: Yes. And that’s something I’ve never done before. All my books have been dedicated to my wife, as is this one, but this guy Edward Presgrave, I think he deserves to be a little bit better known. And I can tell you a little bit about it, if you like. A new Australian hero Jenny: Yes I’d love you to. Tony: So I worked at his story and it just seemed to me that he was such an amazing character that I thought most people, particularly here in Australia, should get to know this guy. Our most famous identity from the Anglo Boer War, which predated that war, is a guy by the name of Harry Harboard –  Breaker Morant, You’ll have heard of him? Jenny: Yes. Dark Heart by Tony Park Tony: He’s been celebrated in literature and movies. And his claim to fame is that he shot unarmed Boer prisoners of war and his defence was that he was following orders. Now he got the rough end of the stick from the British authorities, without a doubt. I’m not trying to minimize that. But I thought, well, now this is a different character. Edward Presgrave also served in the Boer War. At the age of 20, he and his dad, his father were so gripped by patriotic fervor to defend the British Empire that they got on the first ship they could find and sailed from Sydney, where they were from, to Cape Town in South Africa to join the fight against the Boers in what was now subsequently known as the Anglo Boer War. Fervent to fight for Empire They didn’t even sign up with an Aussie unit. They just got on a ship and went to South Africa to get into the war as quickly as they possibly could. It’s hard to imagine that kind of sentiment these days. And they joined the first unit they could find, which was a Scottish unit, and they served throughout the war. Possibly not with distinction, but certainly honorably. There is no suggestion that it was anything other than honorable service. And at the end of that war, his father, like most of the other Aussies and Kiwis and Canadians that went to serve in that war, came home. But young Edward Presgrave, who was 20 when he signed up and went to South Africa, stayed in Africa. We don’t know why. Maybe he was like me. Maybe he got hooked on the place. So it might he liked the wild life. I don’t know. But maybe he saw a chance to make his fortune. But he ended up staying in South Africa and became a horse trader. There was a surplus of horses after the Boer War, when the Aussies and the Canadians and the Kiwis and the Brits all left their horses behind when they sailed home. A price on his head Across the border in southwest Africa, as I said before, the Nama and the Herero people had risen up against the Germans and they needed horses. So this guy starts selling horses across the border into neighboring South West Africa. But at some point, he ceases to just be a guy who is out to make a quick buck by selling horses. And he joins this rebel leader. Captain Jakob Morengo, in his fight against the Germans and fights in six battles against the Germans. He’s so well known that the Germans put a price on his head of 3000 deutschmarks, which must make a fortune at that time. An absolute fortune. Tricked into death It gives an indication about how concerned they were about this young Australian who was fighting with their enemies. A couple of Afrikaner guys who were working for the Germans lured him into a trap. They set up a dodgy deal. He was also trading cattle as well. They lured him across the border in the South West Africa, again, in between these battles, on the pretext of a cattle deal and they shot him. To give you an indication of the animosity and the way things were going on at the time, they shot him in the belly and they left him to die. They didn’t even kill it. They never finished him off. They left him in the desert bleeding. In the desert it’s incredibly cold at night, and incredibly hot during the day. They reported back to the German High Command to claim their 3000 deutschmarks. The Germans were having none of this, so they sent a patrol out the next day. And this is how the novel starts. They sent a patrol out the next day with a doctor, believe it or not, to check on this guy, because they’d heard he wasn’t dead. They got out there. After twenty seven hours, Edward Presgrave was still alive, against the odds. And they killed him, in the desert. A dirty deed hidden in history That was how dirty this war was and how much they wanted this bloke gone. What happened in real life is his parents were sent a telegram saying your son has died in German Southwest Africa. They probably had no idea where that was or what he was doing there. And they started a letter writing campaign to the governments of Germany, Britain, Australia to try and find out what happened to him. The whole thing was swept under the carpet of history. And that’s why no one in Australia knows about this bloke who fought in this little war, but fought alongside a rebel leader who was an amazing character in his own right. And so I thought, well, there’s got to be a story in this and that’s what Ghosts Of The Past is loosely based, on this guy’s life. Jenny: That opening, with the doctor shooting a mortally wounded man, it’s a very dramatic way to open the book. It really is. Other Namibia – Aussie connections Tony: I thought so. I should hasten to add that this is a work of fiction, so you never know, there could be a slightly happier ending. But no, it’s just seemed to me that this was a really fascinating story, and  I wanted to dedicate the book to this guy because this was a pivotal moment in the history of what is now Namibia. And there are other connections between Australia and Namibia. Interestingly enough, there were Australian military peacekeepers who were very much involved in the transition of Namibia’s freedom back in the mid 90s when it went from being South West Africa to what it is now,  the modern day country of Namibia. And here was a young Aussie fighting alongside this Jakob Morengo who, by the way, was incredibly well educated. African Dawn, by Tony Park He had worked on the mines in a supervisory capacity and his employers had sent him to Germany. It is the turn of the century, the beginning of the 20th century, and they’d sent him to Germany to study. He spoke six languages. Morengo – the Black Napoleon He was the first tribal leader in his people to allow women to speak at their tribal council meetings. He was also a technical genius. The Germans called him the Black Napoleon, and he led them on a merry dance through the southern parts of the colony and had been been at large for a long time. So they had a fair amount of respect for this guy as well. So he takes on this 24- year-old Aussie, who’s acting as a bit of an adviser to him and a comrade in arms. And I say it’s a fascinating story that I really wanted to get out there. Not just in a novel, but I wanted more people to be aware of. Jenny: Definitely sounds like there’s a movie in there somewhere. Because you’ve also Kruger’s Gold, haven’t you? Which is another interesting side story. The legend of Kruger’s Gold Tony: There’s an enduring legacy, a bit of a rural slash  urban myth in South Africa that during the Boer War that Boers’ treasury, the gold repositories from the Treasury in Pretoria was shipped out of the country or maybe not, maybe hidden somewhere in South Africa. So every couple of years in South Africa, there’s a newspaper story about someone claiming to have found this missing hoard of gold. Legend has it it is buried somewhere between Pretoria and the border of modern day Mozambique, where they were trying to ship it out and hid it somewhere. So there’s a good  a bit of a myth in there as well, too. But it is, as you say, it’s set in the past and in the present when this guy’s descendant tries to find out what’s happened to him. There’s a bit of buried treasure in there as well. Master story teller at work Jenny: Fantastic. I think that the Canberra Times took the view that you know how to write a great action story and there’s plenty of action in this one. Tony: The interesting thing is quite often people see the covers or they read the blurbs on the book, and they think these are kind of ‘boys own adventure’ type of books. And I think probably when I started writing, I thought I was writing books for people like me  – for middle aged guys. The fact is most of my readers are women, so I’m very pleased with that too. So there’s a bit of romance in there. Not that women just want as a romance ,they like a good bit of action as well. Scent of Fear by Tony Park Jenny: Now, perhaps just moving on a little from the specific books to your wider career, you did have, as I mentioned at the beginning, a full career as a journalist. And you also had 34 years in the Australian Army Reserve, including six months in Afghanistan. And I’m just interested in how that life experience might to fed into your books. On ‘write what you know’ Tony: It is a great old adage for writers that says ‘write what you know’, particularly when you’re starting off. And I did serve in the Army for a number of years. I served with people from different countries, with Kiwis, with Americans, with Brits from all over the place. I served in Afghanistan for a while. So some of that experience has gone into my books. You know, some of the earlier books have got a little bit set in Afghanistan. I’m quite interested and involved with veterans from recent conflicts. I’m involved with a UK based charity called Veterans for Wildlife, which. pairs military veterans from some of the recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq with anti-poaching units in South Africa where they offer training and mentorship. In my service,  I was lucky. Nothing bad happened to me. Fact stranger than fiction I was serving very much behind a desk in Afghanistan, I hasten to point out. But I did serve with some men and women who did some amazing things. So I think you draw not only on your own experiences, but the experience of the people around you and the times that you live in. And certainly I’ve written a little bit of that into my novels in the past as well. Jenny: Yes. I mean, Scent of Fear has got IED’s detonating. And then there’s trilogy where a woman who’s got a military background is now a mercenary in Africa, Sonja. So it comes through strongly in those books, doesn’t it? Tony: It’s interesting. Like with the Veterans for Wildlife, it’s not just male veterans. We had a female veteran who served in the UK military police. And she came over and did some brilliant training for an all-female anti-poaching unit in South Africa called the Black Mambas. There’s a couple of these units, but the  Black Mambas were the first such unit, all female. anti-poaching unit. The Black Mambas at work Very groundbreaking, in what is a very patriarchal society. And ladies come from quite often quite disadvantaged backgrounds. And they’re doing an incredibly valuable job working in the field, patrolling the bush, but also spreading the word in their communities about the importance and the value of wildlife to people. And they had a female officer who had served. Interestingly enough, she one of her jobs in Afghanistan was to mentor female Afghan women who were in the police. And that was a very groundbreaking role for them. And they did have women serving in the police in Afghanistan. And she’d been training with them. She was able to take a lot of that experience that she had into this unit. So, yeah, one of the books with my female mercenary, Sonja Curtis, who is a recurring character, she starts off the book in The Cull leading an all female anti-poaching unit. Tony Park, The Cull – part of the Sonja Curtis series And as you say, Scent of Fear, is about IEDs and tracker dogs, I’ve also done a few non-fiction books. A few years ago I did a biography of an Australian dog handler who’d been working in Afghanistan, a book called War Dogs. And some of his experience I put into Scent of Fear, where, as I said earlier, dogs are increasingly proving to be a game changer in the fight against poaching in Africa. Success of anti-poaching dog patrols Dogs are currently involved in about 95 percent of all pursuits and successful arrests of poachers in South Africa. So they’re really turning the tables on poachers. So yes, IED’s were a big problem in Afghanistan which dogs helped to sort out. So I wrote a book in which fictitious poachers start setting IEDs to catch rangers and security forces in South Africa. A month before that book came out, so it wasn’t my fault, an IED, a booby trap bomb, was found in the Kruger Park. It had been set up to catch some national parks rangers. So truth is scarier than fiction Jenny: And that’s what I enjoy about your books. That’s a strong sense that you learn new stuff as well as having an action adventure. Look, if people wanted advice about where to go in South Africa, what tips would you give them for going on safari? Travel tips on safari Not necessarily South Africa. Africa generally. I know that you’ve got a little corner of Africa yourself that you I’m inviting you to talk about as well. I think it’s even something you could blog about on your website where you’d recommend people go. Do you get that question often? Tony Park – travel tips for travellers to Africa Tony: I do, actually. I’ve just put a new section on the website on www.TonyPark.net – my website  – with travel tips. I’m a big fan of people coming to visit Africa. I think it’s an amazing continent. I think it’s a place you have to see for yourself. Southern Africa has everything in a nutshell, Southern Africa –  South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe are probably for the people who are wanting an easy introduction to safaris. They’re good because the infrastructure is very First World in those  countries. Best ways to go on safari Things are organised, things happen very easily. The roads are good. Public transport is good. The airlines are good. They’re very easy countries to navigate yourself. If you choose to just go over like my wife and I did on our first first time and hire a car and drive around and explore yourself, there are very good self-drive destinations. When you venture up further north, you go into east and central Africa, things get a little bit wilder, a little bit more rugged. You might think about going on a more organised safari there, with someone to drive you or fly you around because things are a bit more rough and ready in that part of the continent. But it’s amazing continent because it’s quite diverse. Nantwich Lodge – Tony Park’s Namibia retreat. The experiences you can have can vary from country to country. My wife and I have just recently invested in a little lodge called Nantwich, which which is in Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, only about an hour and a half drive from Victoria Falls. A little corner of heaven A trip to the magnificent Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe should be on everyone’s To Do list, if they’re planning a trip to Africa, and we’ve got a game lodge in the national park, only about hundred kilometres from Victoria Falls. So that’s my little plug for my commercial venture. But Zimbabwe is a beautiful country. It has troubles, you know, politically and economically. But it’s probably the friendliest, safest country for people to visit in terms of their personal safety and the incidence of crime and things. It’s a beautiful, lovely country. And its people are crying out for outside support in the form of tourism. It’s probably the best thing that people can do to help that country, is to just go and just visit and have a good time, because it’s widely recognised throughout the continent as probably the friendliest country to visit in the whole continent.. Secret of Tony’s success Jenny: Is there one thing you’ve done perhaps more than any other that you’ve created with your success in your writing career? Tony: The one thing I’ve done, I think, Jenny, is – and it sounds a bit clichéd –  but I’ve followed my dream. I think it’s perhaps if we have an aspiration in our lives, real life all too often will stop us from fulfilling that, like everybody else. I met someone , got married, got a job…  You know, you have your priorities and your focus is kind of on living. You know, on just existing and getting ahead. But if there’s something you want to do and if it’s something that you have such a burning passion for, sometimes it’s worth the risk. And I was very lucky that back in 96, even though I failed in my first attempt, my wife agreed with me that the way for me to do it was to leave work. Tony and Nicola Park in Africa I quit a very good job to try for at least six months to write a book. And while I failed, I later had another go and succeeded. But Nicola supported us through that time. It was a stretch. It was a sacrifice. But sometimes you’ve got to take a risk to follow your dream. And I think if you know it’s what you’ve got to do and if you’ve got support of loved ones, of people who can help you, sometimes it’s worth taking that first step, even if it’s off a cliff and you don’t know if your  parachute is going to open or not. But I think it was that I credit with my success. It’s taking a risk and having the support to be able to take that risk. What Tony’s binge reading Jenny: Yeah, it’s lovely. Turning to Tony as reader  because this is The Joys of Binge Reading and it’s partly predicated on the idea of people these days discovering an author and then serial reading the whole of their work. And I think with you that would be very much what would happen. People would discover your novels and  be happy to read the whole lot. Who do you like to binge read? Is there somebody that you’d recommend to listeners? Tony: Certainly.  Well, first of all, I like to read anything I haven’t written because I spend so much time editing and going over stuff all the time. But no, it’s a very good question. I’m a big fan of a few authors and I’m exactly like that. I would rather read everything by one person before I move on to someone else. I like Nelson de Mille, the American thriller writer. He’s got  a great sense of humor and great characterisation. On historical fiction. I’m a big fan of Bernard Cornwall in his Sharpe series. I still love Ken Follett. I read almost everything he’s written. Some talented South Africans Then there’s a South African crime writer who I absolutely love, a guy called Deon Meyer. So people should look out his books if they like crime in an exotic location,mostly set around Cape Town. Deon Meyer – one of Tony Park’s favorite authors Another very good South African writer by the name of Margie Orford. Her books are fantastic as well. So yes, I like a bit of crime,  a bit of thriller. Going back to Africa, people would have to hunt around in secondhand bookstores, but there was a guy by the name of John Gordon Davis who sadly passed away a couple of years ago, who wrote a series of cracking books. Not all set in Africa. Some set in Asia, he’s from Zimbabwe or formerly Rhodesia and he wrote a couple of books, a few books set in Africa. And then he ended up practicing law in Hong Kong. So he wrote. with Asian settings as well.  They’re my favourites. Reading and writing what you love Jenny: They sound very much in your genre,  aren’t they? Tony: Yes. I think, if people are interested in writing, it’s good to write stuff that you like, not stuff that you think other people are going to like. So I like crime, thrillers, mystery. I like books with a strong female character as well, too. And I think Ken Follett was very good at doing that, particularly in some of his earlier books. Jenny: Circling around looking back over your writing career, as we’re coming to the end of our time together. At this stage, if you were doing it all again, is there anything that you would change, when you look back over the  17 or so years? Tony: Jenny, I think I would have started earlier.  I would have taken that risk earlier, but. as I said, real life has a way of  not trapping you, but your priorities change. If I could have started ten years earlier, I would have. However, having said that, I got my publishing deal. I got the email telling me I was going to be published when I was in Afghanistan, in 2002. I couldn’t celebrate, because we weren’t allowed to have a beer, so it was very bittersweet. But that was a pivotal moment in my life. And it affected a lot of my writing. Wishing he’d started earlier Zambezi by Tony Park My second book, Zambezi, I started writing on night shift when I was in Afghanistan. And it starts off in Afghanistan. So that was a life experience that, as you alluded to earlier,  was quite a big thing in my life and it’s had a big influence on my writing over the years. So maybe those books wouldn’t have been as full or like they are if I hadn’t had that experience. So there’s no point regretting, you know, I reckon I’ve still got plenty of years left in me. so while I would have liked to start a bit earlier. I think I was at a point in life where I was able to do it so I’m pretty happy. Jenny: I mean, this latest book, as we’ve even talked about, it definitely has got, in a sense, more and more interesting components than Breaker Morant. Have you ever thought about scripting a movie? And now for the movie . . . Tony: Yes. I don’t know how to write scripts, but I would love to meet someone who does. And what I’m trying to do at the moment is try and get more people aware the story. Not my book so much, but I think this is a really important part of Australia’s history and the history of this country in Africa, Namibia. And I’m actually working behind the scenes to try and get some official recognition for this guy, Edward Presgrave. I would like more people to be able to be aware of this. I think one of the problems in Australia is we tend to commemorate or celebrate some pretty funny things, you know, like Breaker Morant was not exactly the most up and down, straight up and down sort of character. We idealize people like Ned Kelly who was a bushranger.  A penchant for celebrating rogues Tony Park, The Prey It’s probably the same in New Zealand, people are more aware of the Gallipoli campaign, which was momentous for both of our countries. Yet people know more about that, which ended in a withdrawal than they do our successes in the Middle East and the Western Front. I think that slightly changing over time. So I think instead of focusing on the fact that we are descended from rogues and criminals and shady characters, there are some genuine heroes out there that we’re not even aware of. And I’d like to change if. Jenny: Has Edward Presgrave got any living descendants? Tony: He has, in fact, and Peter Curson has been able to turn up a couple. I’ve been meeting recently with an Edward Presgrave great nephew, who’s a doctor in Sydney. And we’re working closely on, yes, some form of official recognition for this guy. And so there are some connections in the family there. And I want to explore this when I get back to Africa as well, with the government of Namibia. It’s only very recent years that Jakob Morengo, Presgrave’s ally, was credited for his part in the independence of that country and the independence struggle,There are also  better known figures there from other tribes in Namibia that are celebrated. But Morengo, I think – they were in probably what is the most remote part of a very remote country in the south. And I think a lot of what they were doing  went unnoticed at the time. So it’s time to right a couple of historic wrongs/. Jenny: There might be another non-fiction book coming up. Tony: You just never know, Jenny. Jenny: That leads us on to what is next for Tony, the writer? What projects do you have in the works, say, over the next twelve months? Jurassic plant under threat Tony: Thanks. Good question.  I’m just finishing off my book for next year for 2020. It’s also another African novel. It’s also about conservation, an endangered species. But you’d never guess what the most endangered living organism is in Africa at the moment. It’s a plant, a cycad,  an African cycad. You know, these funny little Jurassic plants. Cycads – under threat and the subject of the next Tony Park book. Jenny: I’ve got one in my garden. Tony: Well, you want to check out what it is Jenny, because some of these plants, I have learned, the rarest cycads, can fetch up to $100,000 US dollars each on the black market.  There’s a rather organized and sophisticated legal international market in cycads for collectors. These are wealthy individuals living in places like Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East, America and Asia who will pay top money for these plants that are just gouged out of the bush where they’re disappearing at a very fast rate. World’s most endangered species Some of these plants, there’s only one left in the world and they’re becoming increasingly rare. They’re the most endangered living organism on the continent in the world, in fact. So I’ve written a book about the underground trade in plants. So if you can imagine people in sensible shoes carrying AK 47s. That’s what we’re talking about in this next book. Jenny: My goodness. And they are quite slow growing too. Tony: Yes. They’re very old. They date to the Jurassic era. But there’s one, Encephalartos woodii, which is the rarest cycad in the world. It’s very rare because cycads need a male and a female to reproduce. I’ve learned a lot about plants. There’s only one of this amazing plant left. He is a male, and he is in Kew Gardens in London, in a greenhouse, and he is possibly eight, or nine, a hundred, or even a thousand or more years old. Smuggling cycads ‘simple’ And they are very, very hard. They’re very easy to smuggle. You just cut off all their spiky leaves and wrap them in plastic and they’ll last for months without water. So they’re a very tradeable, shipable  commodity. And, you know, it’s a classic story where, poor, underprivileged people in Africa are being paid a relative pittance to destroy them, to pull these things out of the wild where they should be. And then they’re traded internationally for people with too much money,. And so these plant species are going unnoticed and disappearing off the face of the earth. And the authorities responsible for their protection in South Africa are facing an uphill battle because there’s so many other pressures and so many other endangered wildlife species that the plants seem to go unnoticed. But I think it’s equally as fascinating, probably something that people should know about. Vultures under attack Jenny: Fascinating, actually. It just reminds me that earlier in our talk, you mentioned that vultures were also under attack. What on earth do people want vultures for? Red Earth, by Tony Park Tony: Yes, I wrote a book called Red Earth a few books ago. It’s about this issue. And I think if people are  interested in birds and vultures they should have a look at that one. Vultures are killed in South Africa for their use in traditional medicine. There is a belief that because vultures have such good eyesight – and they do – that’s how they spot the carcasses that they are supposed to clean up – but if you – and this sounds a bit gory, but if you sleep with the dried head of the vulture under your pillow, it’s eyesight is so good that in your dreams you will see next week’s Lotto numbers It gets worse. If you grind it up and you put it in your kiddies tea or a soft drink, they will see the answers to next week’s school exam. And vultures are also killed by poachers. Rhino and elephant poachers in southern Africa. They lace the carcass of an animal that they’ve just killed with poison so that when vultures descended on it, they get killed. The reason they do this is because vultures act as an early warning system. Nature’s vacuum cleaner For military and national parks people quite often the first indication that a rhino or an elephant has been killed is from vultures circling overhead and swooping down on that. They’ll find it before anybody else does. The poachers know that. So they figure if they kill the vultures, they won’t be spotted. The vultures are disappearing at a far faster rate than rhinos or elephants. They are well on track to disappear within the next 10 or 20 years or so. It’s a really serious issue that again, doesn’t get as much airplay because the vulture, you know, people don’t really care about it. I think it’s a bit of an ugly bird, but it plays an incredibly important role in the natural environment as nature’s vacuum cleaner. Cleaning up the bush and keeping things safe? Where to find Tony online Jenny: You are a mine of the most fascinating information, Tony. Where we can readers find you online? War Dogs – Shane Bryant with Tony Park Tony: Yes, I’m am. www.tonypark.net and I’m on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as @Tony ParkAuthor and I love hearing from readers. I’ve got a newsletter that I promise I only put out once or twice a year. So if you go to my website and sign up to my newsletter, you won’t be bombarded. You’ll only get it a couple of times a year. I love hearing from readers and I learn a lot from my readers as well. I love feedback. I am quite often asking questions online because I’m interested in what people want in books and what they’re interested in. Jenny: Look that’s wonderful. It’s been great talking today. It really has. And I must say that until I started reading your books, I didn’t have much interest in going to Africa, but now I do. So you obviously have achieved something. Tony: Well talk to me, Jenny, I’ll sort you out! Jenny: Thanks so much, Tony. It’s been wonderful talking. It really has. Thanks To Our Technical Support: The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. Dan is an experienced sound and video engineer who’s ready and available to help you with your next project… Seek him out at [email protected] or Phone + 64 – 21979539. He’s fast, takes pride in getting it right, and lovely to work with. Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20 years of experience on both sides of the camera/microphone as a cameraman/director and also voice artist and television presenter. Abe’s vocal delivery is both light hearted and warm and he is super easy to work with no matter the job. You’ll find him at [email protected]