Five Assegais Country Estate

Five Assegais Country Estate in Machadodorp, Mpumalanga is a spectacular estate is over 1500 hectares and boasts trout fishing, game and hiking trails. The Fishing Lodge is a luxurious 4 star private retreat.


There are 3 scenic hiking camps and extensive hiking trails that take from a few hours to five days.

For many years this property was neglected, infested with Black Wattle and Eucalyptus plantations, both highly destructive alien invaders that devastated native grassland and gorge habitats. Now, after eight years of ferocious battling by a dedicated team of Wattle Warriors, the area is virtually free once more from these nasty interlopers.

Now, once again, the Skull Rock is visible and smiles down over the lodge and the whole of the Skurwerand, a natural Stonehenge of ancient weathered rocks that give the mountaintop its name of Scaly Back, is again pristine. And with this clearance, so nature has returned, many more bird and animal species are recolonising their original home. Also the water table has risen dramatically where the purest water gushes again from erstwhile dry springs.

These waters feed a series of lakes, the largest of which sweeps out around the hillside and leads to a set of dammed cascades that will be filled with large feisty trout.

OOM PAUL KRUGER AND THE FISHING LODGE ACCOMMODATION


The original house, that has been expanded to become the Lodge, was discovered hidden within a Eucalyptus forest, and is rumoured to have belonged the great Oom Paul Kruger, last president of the Boer Republics, though this has yet to be verified.

It certainly was the watering place, an 'uitspan plek', for trek wagons that serviced the Barberton Gold Rush of the 1880s as they finished the long haul up the old Hells Kloof Pass road- now replaced by the highway to Badplaas in the valley below.

Close by is the battlefield of Dalmanutha, where Kruger’s army fought its last pitched battle against the overwhelming odds of the advancing British before the start of the guerrilla campaign.

The complex rock formations provided a home for 200 Boer refugees during the Boer War and hidden on one of the pastures overlooking the road is a carefully concealed sniper post- so well hidden that in seven years of looking it has only been found twice, only to vanish again.

The views from this part of the estate are truly spectacular; from atop the Bobijaanskrans- home to the local hooligan troop of baboon, across the Bankspruit and Komati headwaters, one can just see the mountains of Swaziland in the distance.

Of all the properties along the edge of the plateau Five Assegais is, without doubt, the finest in terms of views and location. It contains several ecobiomes, with high veldt and middle veldt grassland clothing sweeping hillsides, yellow wood gorges with tree ferns and patches of undisturbed natural vegetation.

Phase three of the Estate Development Plan now in place has seen it being fenced and restocked with the sort of game that would have roamed these heights before the arrival of the San People- the original human inhabitants of the place.