Two hours from the South African city of Durban is a 4500-hectare private reserve that's home to giraffes, buffalo, cheetahs and elephants.
Thula Thula - a former hunting game reserve - is now a sanctuary for local elephants.
Owner Francoise Malby-Anthony tells Kathryn Ryan that what began as a conservation project became a love story.
Francoise met her late husband Lawrence Anthony in 1987 as she stood waiting for a taxi in London.
Before the year was out, she moved to South Africa to live with him.
It was Lawrence’s dream to create a large conservation park where animals could roam and breed freely, and in 1998 the couple started a journey to make that a reality.
They first purchased a 1500-hectare game reserve known as Windy Ridge and welcomed a herd of seven elephants the following year, Francoise says.
“When we got them in August 1999, they escaped - that was their specialty, that’s why they were problem elephants in the game reserve.
“We were told if they escaped again, they would be shot on sight.”
It was Lawrence’s mission to ensure the elephant's safety and he spent the next 12 days living within their enclosure, building a relationship with the matriarch Nana.
“[Nana] knew that it was the right place for them and since then we never had a problem again.”
Not long after the herd were released from their temporary enclosure, Francoise and Lawrence went out to look for them. What happened next would stay with Francoise for the rest of her life.
“We’d literally just crossed the river and we weren’t expecting to see them, they were not expecting to see us and that’s when Frankie attacked us – it was a real charge.
“When I heard Lawrence say ‘We’ve got a problem.'... that’s when I think I closed my eyes, and I said bye-bye.”
As Frankie stood towering over the couple, Lawrence jumped to his feet and stood on top of the quad bike. He held his arms in the air as if to say, ‘It’s OK, it’s me!"
Frankie backed off.
“It was my first encounter so close to an elephant. That day we understood that Frankie was a little bit unpredictable.”
It was the beginning of a very special friendship, she says, and before long Lawrence became known as the elephant whisper.
Photo: supplied
As Nana got on in years, Frankie took over the role of matriarch of the herd.
In 2012, two days after Lawrence passed away, Frankie led the herd of elephants to the main house, where they stood in front of the garden.
“It was like the news of Lawrence’s passing dropped like a bomb in Thula Thula, it was totally unexpected.
“It was absolutely obvious that the elephants felt that something was wrong, something had happened...we interpreted that as they were coming to pay their respects.”
The herd returned the following two years, on the same day and at the same time. The visits gave Francoise a sense of direction.
“It was like communicating something with me, it was like leaving a message. I developed a huge love and passion for this herd.”
At the end of the year, the reserve will increase in size to 5,600 hectares.
“We keep growing, giving more space for our wildlife but above all for our herd of elephants,” Francoise says.
Francoise's first book was called An Elephant in My Kitchen, her latest is The Elephants of Thula Thula.
