Terry, Mikey, and I were settled at Valentine Farm, but we knew our future lay in Dullstroom. It was time to start renovating the house on the property we’d bought from Daubney. Theo van Niekerk, a highly recommended local builder, came on board and helped us craft a beautiful design. It involved knocking down two interior walls and adding a whole new wing.
The vision was grand. You’d walk through the front door into an entrance hall that opened into a massive, gallery-like space anchored by two fireplaces and furnished with two full lounge areas. In the centre, a small hallway led to Mikey’s bedroom on the left and the dining room on the right, which flowed into a spacious kitchen centred around a gorgeous Aga stove. I commissioned a local carpenter to craft a bespoke fitted kitchen from one of the cedar trees on the property—one an arborist had declared diseased and in need of felling. Massive beams were cut from another cedar to support the missing interior walls. We would lay cedar flooring throughout the new wing, while the original house would retain its Oregon pine floors.
From Mikey’s room, the new wing extended to another bedroom, then on to a massive master suite with a dormer window, a huge bathroom with a jacuzzi-sized bath overlooking the escarpment, and a walk-in closet. The bedroom also had a central fireplace and windows into the courtyard. We also added a guest bedroom with en-suite bathroom to the left of the main entrance. All told, the house boasted five fireplaces, plus the Aga in the kitchen. Dullstroom gets cold in winter, and we planned to be cosy.
But that was still just a dream on paper. And while the dream was growing, so too were the costs—especially with my shaky budgeting around the new business. I was beginning to get the uneasy sense that my flying career might be coming to an abrupt end.
That brings me to the final flight of Kilo Alpha Juliet.
In South Africa at the time—and likely still today—any private aircraft had to undergo a Mandatory Periodic Inspection (MPI) either annually or every 100 flight hours, whichever came first. In mid-1995, KAJ hit the one-year mark before the 100 hours for the first time in the six years I had owned her. I remember the day so clearly. I flew solo from Lydenburg to Nelspruit, heading to Lowveld Air, run by a great guy named Mike Jackson. It was a perfect, still morning. I cruised along the escarpment, then descended gently through the cloud layer into Nelspruit. What I didn’t know then was that this would be the last flight I’d ever make as a pilot.
A few days later, Mike called.
“Your aircraft needs a wing bolt inspection,” he said. This wasn’t something he decided—it was mandated by the manufacturer, and you had to comply or lose your airworthiness certificate.
“What the fuck does that mean?” I asked nervously.
“It means we have to take the wings off and send the bolts to Pretoria to be analysed by the CSIR. They’ll check for microfractures to see if the bolts are safe to refit.”
“And how much does that cost?”
“Best case, around sixty grand. Worst case, double that.”
There was a pause, then he added gently, “Mark, you’d best put the plane on the market.”
And that’s exactly what we did. Part of me was relieved; the other part, heartbroken. I knew I needed serious cash if we were going to turn the Dullstroom house into a proper family home. My focus was shifting to the business, and it needed capital for that too. KAJ sold for R600,000, and a good chunk of that went straight into the renovations. To this day, I’d say it remains one of the most beautiful private homes in Dullstroom—not the fanciest, but easily the most special.
We had landscapers come in and plant trees and shrubs suited to the high-altitude alpine climate. By 1995’s end, we still hadn’t moved in, but the transformation was well underway.
Terry didn’t waste much time after ditching her brief study ambitions. She decided having another child was a much better idea—and hallelujah, I could definitely get on board with that. I threw myself into the job of getting her pregnant with great enthusiasm, and before long she was.
Meanwhile, our tickets were booked for the Denver show, and this time we brought Pete Immelman along. On the way, we stopped off to visit his brother, Aubrey, who was a lecturer at a Christian ecumenical college in Minneapolis. We stayed in the guest quarters of the college and went fishing for walleye on the Mississippi. It was September—technically still summer—but bloody hell, it was cold. I couldn’t believe anyone would call that fun.
One afternoon stands out. Terry—pregnant by now—and I walked around the lake near the campus. It was a late-summer day, still warm in the sun, and I was completely in love. If you’re reading this, Angie, you went to America long before your first passport stamp. Mikey had stayed behind with my mom, who was now living in Merrow Down Country Club—a retirement village where you had to be over sixty to buy in, but far from a “home.” She was looking after him in her little house there.
That walk around the lake was magical. I was in love with my wife, with my child, with our child-to-be. The business was gaining momentum. Life was sweet.
The rest of that trip is a blur, save for a moment in the Mall of America when Pete Immelman, in his thick Afrikaans accent, muttered, “Your Terry’s going to spend us rich.” He wasn’t wrong. We were living too large for a business that hadn’t yet proved itself.
But there were already cracks. One of them was mine. Terry came from a devout Catholic family, where Mass wasn’t optional. When we lived in Lydenburg, we used to attend the local Catholic church every Sunday, but my heart was never really in it. When she began wavering, I didn’t press her. Soon enough, we were spending Sunday mornings in bed instead of at Mass. Maybe that was the beginning of the rupture, or maybe I’m just being too philosophical about it now.
November brought a ten-day holiday. We flew to Cape Town, picked up a hire car, and drove to a charming basement apartment in Llandudno, a short walk from the beach. Terry was six months pregnant, Mikey was three, and we were a perfectly united little family. The only sour note came when I phoned the Dullstroom shop and Gerard, who was running it, asked what I thought of the Harley-Davidson Pete had just bought.
WTF indeed. Pete claimed it was on hire purchase and would only cost the company a couple of thousand a month. He argued that I had family life, and he needed something beyond work. I told him fine—just don’t let it distract from the business. “You’re Fishy Pete, not Harley Pete.”
That Christmas, her parents joined us at Valentine Farm. Her father was undergoing radiation for the cancer—weak, but still his quiet, humorous self. On New Year’s Eve, I set off fireworks and had one of those flashes of clarity—Buddhists call it satori: pregnant wife, beautiful son, our Dullstroom house rising from plans, a business in Lydenburg. It struck me—this might be the happiest I would ever be. I shrugged it off. We were still on the up. Always pay attention to satoris, is my advice as I write this thirty years later.
So 1995 closed with highs and lows—Terry’s father’s illness shadowing an otherwise golden year. We looked forward to February, when our second child would arrive, and to moving into the Dullstroom home we had imagined from the start.
I didn’t know it then, but 1995 would be the last year of innocence—a final golden stretch before betrayal, and before the return of the mental darkness I thought I’d left behind forever.