These trees mark the site of a trading store that was run by the infamous lowveld hustler, ‘Sardelli the Greek’. The alien blue gums were supposedly planted by Sardelli and have been spared the axe because of their legacy.
Sardelli sold an intoxicating liquor that he brewed himself from the fruit of the marula tree. He also ran a gang of local cutthroats who specialised in robbing mineworkers returning to Mozambique from the Witwatersrand. Sardelli is suspected of having murdered and robbed another lowveld storekeeper, Charlie Woodlands, while the two of them were on a trip to Delagoa Bay.
Sardelli served in Steinacker’s Horse (a group of British sympathizers who fought the Boers) during the Anglo-Boer War, manning an outpost in northern Kruger. After the war, he set himself up selling the guns he’d confiscated from the Shangaans and the Sotho communities under his jurisdiction.
His mental and material circumstances deteriorated rapidly and he apparently took a job as a cattle herder at Mica “for three pounds a month and a sack of mealiemeal. He eventually died in a lunatic asylum”.
