BN853 – Waterberg Wildlife Grandeur

PROPERTY INFORMATION:

PRICE:  R260 000 000-00

Overview of properties (in their current usage)

There are a number of buildings/houses on the reserve in various states of repair. The tourism side of the business utilises the Observatory private house and the Lodge together with stables, storerooms, workshops and compound for the staff. The general manager has a 2 bedroom house within 200m of the Lodge.

The remaining staff reside at a Lodge about 7km away inside the property. The Lodge was an old commercial lodge purchased a few years ago. It comprises several bungalows, a main area, conferencing are, kitchens, cold room, crazy golf course and a swimming pool plus accommodation for a gardener and housekeeper. As staff accommodation goes it is very high quality and helps us to attract a better quality of person.

There is an also a fairly large 3 bedroom house in the Lodge vicinity which can be also be used for staff accommodation.

The estate manager lives on the other side of the property on the dirt road and he has a large manager’s house, together with extensive workshops, cool room and staff compound.

There is a cluster of buildings on the Palala river -10-15km from the lodge called the river camp which is used for day trips for guests – it incorporates a lodge and a few bungalows for overnight accommodation. It is powered by generator and needs some basic repairs and maintenance. There is an opportunity to turn this into something quite interesting for guests and could be another potential revenue source.

There is a building recently renovated on top of the mountain together with a storage container for cushions and equipment which is a big attraction for guests due to the views and situation.

There are a few small old farmhouses/cottages scattered on the property that are no longer used and in bad repair that we decided not to modernise.

Overview of land

7,700 hectares is made up of 11 sectional titles or ‘farms’ that have been purchased over the last 18 years. There has been extensive removal of all internal fencing and partial re-stocking of game which together with the combination of continually adding new properties has ensured genetic diversity among the species.

One of the unique and unusual aspects of the property is that it has multiple terrain types from plains, open savannah, mountain areas, gorges, wetlands, lakes and river frontage of over 8km. There are a great number of small dams and a few very large ones which means that there is never a shortage of water even in the worst drought times as experienced recently.

There are over 240km of roads which are regularly maintained. A large refresh of the road system is actually underway currently which involves filling in holes, widening and grading together with putting drainage channels in to stop the roads from washing away in the rain.

There are some areas of archaeological significance primarily at the base of the mountain with bushman paintings and structures which can be clearly seen which are the remnants of an LSA (late stone age) village. This has been the subject of an excavation and thesis done in the ‘80s. The world’s leading specialist in South African Archaeology lives in the next door farm and she is very happy to come over and point all these things out.