Ernest James Whittingstall was born in the UK in 1884. At the age of 20 (1904), he sailed to South Africa, arriving in Cape Town. During the Gold Rush, he travelled up to Pilgrims Rest, where he joined the British Mounted Police.

Ernest joined the British Forces to fight in the Great War (WWI) and was sent to fight in German South West Africa (Namibia). Here he met the Willis brothers and on their return to South Africa after the war, they entered into business together. They started running a number of trading stores (general merchants) and bought farmland and game farms in the Lowveld/Eastern Transvaal/Mpumalanga and Limpopo Provinces. They formed the companies, PW Willis Private Nature Reserve and PW Willis & Co. Ernest set up a base for the businesses on a farm in Acornhoek (close to the Orpen Gate of the Kruger National Park).

Once the Kruger National Park provided camps with accommodation to tourists, Ernest was appointed to service the camps. He provided bedding, linen, fuel etc. as well as provisioning the camp stores. Ernest was a great shot and horseman, hunting on horseback now and again. On occasions, the locals asked him to intervene when lions attacked their cattle. These were often injured lions looking for easy prey. One such incident led him to track down a lioness, which he shot. Unfortunately, it was not a fatal shot, and she ran off into a thicket. He followed the lioness into the dense bush, to finish the job as he had wounded her. Out of the blue, she launched herself over a termite mound and mauled him. The lion had him by the shoulder and behaved as though she was trying to asphyxiate him as they do with their prey.

Ernest realised that his only chance of survival was to feign death. Doing his best to reduce his breathing rate, he hoped the lioness would release her grip and afford him a chance to reach for his rifle. His tracker had run away into the bush when Ernest was attacked, but he plucked up the courage to return and help. The lioness released her grip at the perfect time, allowing Ernest to roll away as the tracker came up behind and stabbed her with his assegai/spear. The tracker helped him back onto his horse, and he started making his way to the nearest Kruger National Park ranger’s post, Kingfisherspruit.

Upon his approach from the distance, the ranger’s wife is quoted saying, “here comes Whitty, I wonder why he is riding a chestnut instead of his white horse”. He was bleeding all over the horse from his wounded shoulder. After being patched up, arrangements were made to get him to Bushbuckridge where one of his friends had a car. He was taken to Graskop over a very rugged Kowyns Pass, where he received further treatment. A lions mouth is full of bacteria, and the wound soon became septic.

He was transported by train to Pretoria and admitted to the Pretoria General Hospital. Gangrene set in and on a few occasions, the doctor’s considered amputation. Determined not to lose his arm, Ernest insisted on persevering with the available treatment. This landed up taking a long time but resulted in saving his limb. He was in his forties at this time and had never married. During his long stay in the hospital, he fell in love with one of the nursing sisters that nursed him back to health.

At the age of 45, he married Constance (Connie) Lemy and they had one daughter, Anne Elizabeth Whittingstall. They continued to live in Acornhoek. Connie suffered a cerebral aneurysm rupture and died very suddenly after only being married for 15 years, leaving behind a 14-year-old daughter.

In time, Ernest and new his second wife (Ivy) went on to own large areas of agricultural farmland, game farms and trading stores. Some of the stores were situated in the Kruger National Park camps – Letaba, Satara and Pretoriuskop. Others were on the farms of Orinoco, Andover, Rolle, Newington, Dumphries, Klaserie and Mariepskop, to mention a few.

As he lived very close to the Timbavati and Klaserie Nature Reserves and many of the owners were not permanent residents (many of whom became his great friends), he provided a service whereby he would deliver goods, fuel and wages for their staff and almost anything that may be required. He was the “go-to guy” in the area.

During the 1960’s the Nationalist Party (the ruling party at the time) which practiced the segregated policy known as ‘Apartheid’ started expropriating land to form the ‘Homelands”. The farm Acornhoek and all the farms that the trading stores were situated on were expropriated. One by one the trading stores were closed or handed over to black storekeepers.

The family moved off the farm in Acornhoek in 1970 and settled on a neighboring farm that he still owned. By this time he had had a heart attack and retired at the age of 84. He lived out the rest of his days on the farm Fleur De Lys and died at the age of 92.

Ann, the only child of Ernest and Connie Whittingstall, left the Lowveld/Kruger area briefly to obtain her nursing qualification in Johannesburg. There she met her husband Desmond Alexander Craig. The newly married couple returned to the Lowveld to assist her father in the running of his trading store operations and overseeing the management of the farms.

The Craig family accompanied the Whittingstalls in their move from Acornhoek to Fleur de Lys in 1970. Here they raised their four children, Margaret, Ernest, Kathleen and Corinne. Anne and Desmond continued to enjoy their outdoor lifestyle. They sparked their children’s love for the wild and the ‘bush’ through their everyday experiences of living on the farm, camping with the kids, enjoying braais (barbecues), drives and walks in the bush and accompanying their grandfather on many of his visits to the Kruger, Timbavati and Klaserie reserves.

Corinne and her siblings were sent away to boarding school, as there were no schools nearby (too remote and area) but hastily returned home for every long weekend and holiday. She then attended the University of the Witwatersrand where she met and married her husband Collin Steyn. Together they have enjoyed ventures in their 4×4 to remote locations in the Caprivi, Chobe, Botswana, Victoria Falls. Namibia and Mozambique.

Collin’s love for sailing grew during his years in the South African Navy as a Naval Officer and his love, appreciation and knowledge of the bush developed once meeting Corinne more than 30 years ago. He is a Commercially-endorsed RYA Yachtmaster and has enjoyed many hours sailing the waters off Cape Town, Turkey, as well as in the Caribbean.

Corinne and Collin have a son Keagan and daughter Pipsy who were raised, until 7 and 4 respectively, in Johannesburg with every available vacation, and many weekends, being spent at their rustic tented camp on the farm. Here they would enjoy cooking on an open fire, using kerosene lanterns for lighting and just enjoying the unconfined exposure to the wild.

Once the Steyn’s relocated to Leesburg Virginia, USA  in 2001 to allow Collin to follow a career opportunity, they never lost their love for Africa and made sure they returned to the farm at every possible opportunity.

Feeling privileged to have had this amazing upbringing and their love of the bushveld and Southern Africa, they felt a strong desire to share it with others and so their travel business, Jehty Quest Travel was launched, in 2015 shortly after they relocated to Denver Colorado.