Information provided by Hans Bornman from his unpublished book, Lowveld Tour Guide:
Village, 44 km east of Sabie and 53 km west of the Kruger National Park. Hazyview serves as a most convenient gateway to many of the private game parks adjoining the Kruger National Park. Six roads, coming from all directions, converge on Hazyview.
The romantic name refers to the view of the district where banana plantations dominate the landscape. The first trees were established in the early 1950’s and since then Burgers Hall and Kiepersol, 12 and 15 km south-west of Hazyview, respectively, has become an important banana producing area.
PERRY
Harry Wolhuter, the famous Kruger National Park game ranger, had a friend named Perry, a French Canadian and member of Steinaecker’s Horse, a cavalry regiment in the Anglo-Boer War, who saved Harry’s life when he had Black water fever. Some time after the War, Perry was granted a farm on the Sabie River by the Government, which he named ‘Perry’s Farm’, on which he started a trading store. Having no family he willed his farm to Harry and after his death and burial there, Harry was obliged to sell the farm in order to liquidate the debts. This farm was later to become the site of the Sabi River Bungalows, now Hotel Sabie River and Country Club, and the bridge over the Sabie River as Perry’s Bridge.
FIRST HOTEL
Captain Max Tylden-Wright and Charles Hull opened the first hotel on the Sabie River in 1932 to service the visitors to the Kruger National Park, hunters travelling to the north and various entrepreneurs in mining, timber and farming. The Sabi River Bungalows consisted of 13 rondavels with private bathrooms, 6 single rondavels for the white chauffeurs, and a hot mineral spring swimming pool. This was a very prestigious hotel and Lady Louis Mountbatten, who visited in 1937, was but one of many famous people who stayed there.
Because of it’s distance from White River, Sabie, Kruger National Park and Phalaborwa, it is the perfect locality for a trading post and petrol filling station. The Village of Hazyview was officially promulgated in 1959 when the first post office was established and Hazyview station came into being when the old Selati Railway line was diverted outside the western border of the Kruger National Park to Kaapmuiden in the late 1960’s.
Over the years a large farming community developed and visitors today can view the lantings of citrus, litchis, mangoes, avocado pears, macadamia nuts, coffee, extensive banana plantations as well as seasonal plantings of spices and vegetables.