a short history

The protagonist was born in the Florence Nightingale nursing home where his nursing-sister mother also happened to be matron when she wasn't popping out sons (he was the last of three). 

 

By all accounts it was a real sunshiny April evening, around 5 pm on a Friday. A Friday 13th to be specific, so you might expect him to be triskaidekaphobic. Whichever way the stars aligned they seemed to bestow on him three super-powers: a disconcertingly good memory, night vision and an early morning up-and-at-'em attitude. But as the stars bestow, so they deny: he also  emerged both dyslexic and calculexic. 

 

What can he tell say, is growing up on the veld at the outer edge of Johannesburg was one long jol, as we say here. In short, Grades 1 and 2 were spent at Bramley Primary School, Standards 1 to 5 at Bryanston Primary School and Standards 6 to 10 at Bryanston High School. It was a tight community and it's now a joke in his circle that just about anywhere he goes in the world he meets someone he knew at school. 
 

the salad days (no veg please!)

David grew up on the bank of a river, on the outskirts of Johannesburg, running barefoot in the veld. This would have been the seed that led to a series of books "Stories from the Veld" – along with two madcap trips to the Okavango Delta when he was a teenager and was otherwise busy "taking drugs and stealing cars" as he like to quip. 

 

It was a peri-urban area that, like so many others, became engulfed in the spreading city. At that time the horses district outnumbered the people and the press dubbed it the "mink and manure belt".

The Braamfonteinspruit does not strike one as a river of consequence, but it was here, within a cattie shot of the family home, that the first gold of the area was discovered by a Boer prospector way back in 1855 or ’58. (More precisely it was next to the concrete causeway across the river at the Riverclub golf course.)

Back in the day a small rural cross-roads known as Fourways was the centre of the known universe. It consisgted of a petrol station and realtor (xxxxx and Decker). When a drive opened down the road the centre of gravity shifted with it. It had an auditorium. One local noted that more kids of the area lost their innocence there than any other place.

 

"Meet you at Fourways" was our "meet me in St Louis" – We will dance the hoochie koochie, I will be your tootsie wootsie. Growing up with a mother who cooked them the “boer” way (over boiled), he grew up with a deep distrust of vegetables.

Fourways, the very small centre of the known universe for the kids of what later became Sandton. And what the place looks like now, but by the time this happened DB had relocated to Cape Town.

It also turns out he was born green and was always drawn to nature. It was by no act of planning that his two great passions – writing and the natural environment – came to dominate his adult life.

There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more.

George Gordon Lord Byron

2. EducAting david

Portrait of the artist as a young man: 4G (for the gentle-man Mr Genade), Bryanston Primary School 1967.

When he grew he fully expected to attend Wits University and become an architect. But, as his good friend John Lennon once said, "life happens when you are making other plans". Before long (and after an unexpectedly long stint in the military) he found himself aboard a steam train headed for what he likes to think of as his personal Hogwarts. 

 

"It was the best of times, even though I don't remember much of it," he recalls. It was, after all, the 1970s. In spite of the distractions, he departed Grahamstown (Makanda) and Rhodes University with Honours Degrees in Journalism and Speech & Drama.

For many generations of Rhodes University students the steam train from Alicedale junction was their ‘transportation’ into the world of academia and liberation.

While there he started going around with a rough crowd, and they spent their weekends hanging out in dubious places. When he left university, one thing led to another and before he knew it he was invited to be the words and photos man on a Himalayan expedition. "I did not plan any of this," he admits "it's all down to serendipity."

It was a long way from the rock faces of the Eastern Cape to the snows of the Himalayas. But, insists our subject, he was just standing there when the adventure bus pulled up.

For the past three decades he has criss-crossed Africa and much of the world beyond ("from Hillbrow to the Himalayas" he jokes). While these travels have been largely in the pursuit of bacon, bread, boodle, brass, gelt, gravy, jack, wonga, shinplasters, pasela and the lovely green stuff, it becomes hard trying to separate the work from the play.

The Getaway, or 'gotaway' years started with an out-the-blue phone call: "Do you want a job?”

 No, not really …. But turned out it was much preferable to your regular grind.

David sits on various environmental organisations dedicated to preserving the natural health of Zandvlei, an estuarine lagoon where he lives, close to Muizenberg’s famed Surfer’s Corner beach. In early 2024, with old Journalism School friend Monty Roodt, he launched Southern Right Publishers, as a go-to for writers who cannot get a foot in the door of any mainstream publishing house.

Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean. 
John Muir, American writer, environmental pioneer and founder of The Sierra Club

3. the family tree

Arthur Bristow / Sarah Bristow, around 1870. 

According to Bristow family mythology, we are descended from these two brave pioneers, great-great-grandfather Charles Arthur (my father was Arthur Charles) and Sarah Bristow  who arrived aboard the HMS Hebrides, at Port Natal in 1843. Charles is believed to have started a small brickworks to help the British settlers make firm foundations, who had originally been shacked up in tents and makeshift shacks on the beach. Those bricks built much of early Durban.

Research suggests the seed of the Bristow came from Bristol, which was originally spelled Bristow. In South Africa they trace their roots back to Charles Arthur and Sarah Bristow, who disembarked from the HMS Hebrides to make a new home on the sunny shore of Port Natal (Durban) in 1843. The grand patriarch started the Durban Brick Works which helped to build early Durban. The bricks all, apparently, were stamped with 'DB'. 

 

A fun fact is that there are Arthurs on just about all branches of the family tree: the subject's father was Barry Arthur Charles; his father was Arthur Bristow; his wife's father was Arthur McHattie; his maternal grandfather was Arthur Cullen; my brother is Vincent Arthur. But the Arthurs stop there.

Grandma and Pa - Granny Durban , aka Getruide Wilhelmina McHattie Bristow, with her younger sister Mona. Arthur Charles Bristow the third. He Died in 1956 or '7, so he was the unknown grandfather.

Barry, soldier, architect and father: some called him “saint”.

Colleen (second from left, with the young Oscar), nurse, entrepreneur and mother: some called her "meshuga".

The Bryanston Beatles, as some called them: Vincent (12,  rhythm guitar and vocals), Glenn (11, bass guitar) and David (10, drums). “Our mother dressed us funny”.

The progeny: Bella, Ben and Daniel, 21 years apart – same couch.