Does your environmental project need an aerial perspective? The Bateleurs provides an aviation service to environmentalists throughout Southern Africa.

Newsletter

Now you can support our cause by swiping your MyVillage MyPlanet card at retailers across the country every time you shop. There is no cost to you! Click on the card to find out more

MySchool_Card

Find_us_on_facebook_badge
Home Board of Directors Joe Holmes
Joe Holmes

joe_holmes

Businessman, Artist, and Bateleurs pilot
Gauteng

Back in '58 when I was 7 years old I got a part time job, carrying a Mazoe bottle of cold tea wrapped in damp newspaper behind Dad, who was lugging a geiger counter around the Rimiti Kop bush in Rhodesia prospecting for uranium. When not carrying the tea I packmuled the Roberts birdbook and sundries for Mother.

We wandered in a wonderworld of wildlife that seemed limitless. Several trillion mopani flies and a number of years later I discovered that I had unwittingly developed a deep relationship with the bushworld that has endured until the present. The relationship may have remained strong but the enviroment has withered and shrunken to a shadow of what it was in those early halcyon years.

Flying a microlight today on missions for The Bateleurs is a way of contributing to the perpetuation of this fragile natural world that has given me so much pleasure and joy in the course of my life. In my spare time I paint wildlife in pastels, birdwatch and research the pre-caucasian settlements of Southern Africa.