Well-known Dundee battlefields expert Evan Jones (78) celebrated 20 years of tour-guiding on January 26 and also looked back over many years of successfully promoting the Battlefields Route as one of KwaZulu-Natal’s major tourist attractions.
Always interested in history, Evan decided when he was working full-time to take a tourist guide’s course at Talana Museum in April of 1991 and in August that year he was registered by Satour as a local battlefields guide for three sites – Isandlwana, Rorke’s Drift and Talana.
To further his education he joined the Ladysmith Historical Society and haunted the Dundee Book Exchange, where he picked up some rare historical treasures for a song. Guiding part-time, he took tourists out on weekends and holidays until, in December of 1995, circumstances forced him to move to Pietermaritzburg from Dundee, where he had lived for 36 years.
After purchasing a VW Kombi, a mobile phone and opening a bank account, Evan launched P.M.B. Heritage Tours cc. on 26 January 1996. He joined the Pietermaritzburg Publicity Association and was able to display his brochures at the tourist information office.
Evan proudly recalls that he was able to do all this without loans from any family members or bank. Business started coming in slowly after a few months from private individuals and, through networking, from business members of the Pietermaritzburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI).
Ten months later, Evan realised he needed a computer for a website and e-mails and was thrilled to get both registered with the names “Battleguide.”
Although the Internet was unfamiliar to many South Africans in 1997, he attracted plenty of interest internationally and business boomed when overseas tourists began to book tours.
During his time in Pietermaritzburg, and to further educate himself, Evan attended lectures by Dr Ruth Gordon on Pietermaritzburg’s history and buildings. He also frequented the Shuter & Shooter bookshop in Church Street where he bought many books on early Natal History, its pioneers and personalities. Another source of books was the Natal University Press.
Anglo Boer War Centenary involvement
It was at this time that Evan met Dr Alec Coutts and the late Inge Meischke, who were running tourist guide training courses in Durban. He took a Level 4 Natal Guiding Course with them and passed successfully.
Evan was later approached to establish a Pietermaritzburg Guides Association whose members met at the Natal Carbineer’s Museum once a month, and he was duly elected the first president of the association. Meanwhile, he took many visitors on walking tours of the city and the Midlands Meander.
In early 1998, Evan met two other guides, Stef Steyn of Howick, a specialist mountain guide, and Andrew Anderson, formerly of the Natal Parks Board, who is a specialist nature guide. All three had been operating for two years and they decided to co-operate under the name of “KZN Tours – Berg, Battlefields & Bush.” With this unique combination, and with all three having Kombis and contacts in the tourist industry, work began picking up even more. As KZN Tours went from strength to strength, they attended tourism shows and the Tourism Indaba in Durban for several years.
Brigadier Jim Parker, who was the British Military Attaché in Pretoria, contacted Evan after he retired and had established a wholesale tour business in Mooi River.
With Jim Parker’s British Army contacts, they arranged regular battlefield tours together with Evan as tour leader/guide.
As Evan was heavily involved with Anglo-Boer War Centenary Tours in 1999, the three members of KZN Tours decided to call it a day and went their own way.
Evan was awarded the first of five consecutive 5-Star Customer Service Awards by the PCCI in 2000 and, two years later, with more business coming in from the KZN Battlefields, he moved from Pietermaritzburg back to Dundee.
At the KwaZulu-Natal Tourism Awards in 2005, Evan received the trophy for the Best Tourist Guide in KZN.
Two years later he became the first badged South African to be accepted as a member of the prestigious (UK) International Guild of Battlefield Guides and he became a Certified Tourist Guide Assessor.
In 2011 he was elected chairman of the KZN Battlefields Route, a position he held for three years and, for more times than he can remember, he has been on the committee of Dundee Tourism as well as its chairman.
When some tourists became confused by the name “P.M.B. Heritage Tours,” Evan changed the name of his business to “Heritage Tours & Transfers” as he frequently carries out Northern KZN inter-lodge transfers.
Today, 20 years since he started his business, Evan Jones is one of South Africa’s most experienced and knowledgeable battlefields guides and, although in his late seventies, he says he enjoys guiding so much that retirement has not crossed his mind.
