Have you seen Tau the lion and Ilanga the elephant in Bryanston?
Discover the hidden treasures of Bryanston known only to parkrunners in the community.
The Bryanston East community will over the coming years no longer need to leave Bryanston to experience the Big 5 of the animal kingdom: lion, elephant, rhino, buffalo, and leopard.
The riverside green belt where the Bryanston community hosts weekly parkruns is already home to Tau the lion, and Ilanga the elephant who stand as sentinels marking the way for parkrunners.
Tau the lion, a bronze sculpture that’s easy to miss by motorists on Summit Road, stands out on the green belt to parkrunners.
Naturally, spotting a lion in Bryanston, albeit a bronze one, will stir up curiosity. Thankfully, Stuart Pithey was on site with information about the concealed-in-plain-sight sculptures in Bryanston on January 20.
“This one here is a statue of a lion, and at the four-kilometer mark there is an elephant,” Pithey said. “This one is a good couple of years now, you can see it’s quite rusted; we haven’t done the other three yet.”
The Bryanston East Community Forum (BECF) was contacted for more information on January 24.
BECF co-director Ian Tumiel said on January 26 that the forum was in the process of scouting for a rhino sculpture to add to the community’s growing collection of parkrun markers. He also gave some background to the riverside installations of parkrun markers.
“We initially installed the lion at the end of the parkrun, at roughly the 5km-mark. The elephant we put in on the 300th parkrun, in 2019 at, roughly about, the 4km-mark,” Tumiel said. “Our plan now is to put in a rhino around the 3km-mark, which is further down the green belt for the 20-year celebration 2024.”
The Big 5 in Bryanston aren’t being poached from game reserves but purchased by the community forum at negotiated prices. Tumiel said that the lion had been purchased from craftsmen who were approached on the corner of Winnie Mandela Drive and Main Road; and that the elephant was obtained in Fourways. Tumiel indicated that the rhino would be acquired similarly.
“These local craftsmen sell these metal structures of wild animals, all kinds of art, and things like that,” said Tumiel. “The price is one of the negotiable things. That’s one of the things that we’re looking for in terms of buying these”.
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