(from left to right)
- Paul Rollason
- Garry Paper
- Qian He
- Leanne Paper
- Stephanie Rollason (Paul’s daughter)
- Jody Rollason (Paul’s wife)
- Johan van Biljon (tour guide from African Timeout)
We were pleased to host an Australian tourist group recently at Sandstone led by Paul Rollason together with their Tour Guide, Johan Botha.
The group was touring South Africa and had experienced Rovos Rail before visiting Sandstone and returning home to Australia. It is not often we put together such an action packed day for a smaller group but we organised a mixed train hauled by NGG16 Garratt locomotive number 153 for them together with a number of photo stops along the whole length of the line from Grootdraai to Vailima Siding. We also ran a special train for them through the Game Camp line on Seb’s Railway. This after a walking tour of the Heritage Collection in the morning. This was quite a busy day and grew from a simple walking tour to quite a major event after our initial contact and discussions with Mr Rollason!
The group thoroughly enjoyed themselves and we received the following message as the group travelled back to their hotel.
“Hi Dave and Team
Our visit today was absolutely amazing. We should have made it a 2 day visit as so much to see.
The trip was superb behind the NGG. Love to come back and travel over the new section of track.
We will be back in the future.
Thanks to everyone for a very memorable day. Everyone enjoyed it immensely including our guide.”
“The weather on the day was perfect. Blue sky and lots of great shots.”
“Mariette and Gert were absolutely marvellous on the day and certainly put the cream on the cake for the day.”
