Meeting Greg Hemingway

by Oscar Tamsen

Yamba resident and former foreign correspondent Oscar Tamsen whose work around the world from the early 1950s saw him in Colonial Africa for nearly two decades as a working journalist. Oscar’s years in the ‘Dark Continent,’ as it was then known, had him travelling from Cairo to Cape Town, meeting some of the world’s top newsmakers of the time as well as participating in a number of wars and rebellions.

During my time as a foreign correspondent in the wilds of Africa I experienced one of the most amazing stories of sheer survival involving a prominent newsmaker, novelist and strong-willed man by the name of Ernest Hemingway.

I first met this tough American through his one son, Greg, who became a friend of mine in Tanganyika where he worked as a young wildlife warden for the Tanganyika Government.

I admired Greg for the fearlessness he had obviously captured in his genes from his famous hunting and fishing father by his single handedly fighting off elephant tusk poachers and terrorists. He also had a close affinity to the snow-capped Mount Kilimanjaro behind his Arusha house, and which was the subject of Ernest’s highly celebrated “Snows of Kilimanjaro” book.

As a consequence of my knowing Greg, I got to know Ernest as more than a journalistic acquaintance and, one day in 1953, I received a letter informing me that Ernest and his latest wife, Mary, would be flying to Nairobi in Kenya to undertake an aerial safari of the vast herds of elephants in neighbouring Uganda. I accordingly met the happy couple on their arrival at Nairobi Airport and was told that the intended trip was Ernest’s special present to Mary for her birthday.

After a pleasant meeting over lunch, Ernest and Mary bid me and Greg goodbye and eagerly took to their seats in a specially chartered Cessna aircraft to fly over Uganda’s mighty and cragged Mountains of the Moon and the splendours of the vast Murchison Falls.

A handful of hours had passed when I unexpectedly received urgent information that the Hemingway plane had not arrived at its destination. Along with Greg and civil aviation officials, I feared the worst and a rescue spotting aircraft was immediately sent off to investigate the rugged route which Ernest had plotted as part of his celebratory safari.

The rescue plane eventually returned to Nairobi with the pilot proclaiming he had found the crashed Cessna and he absolutely believed that no one could possibly have survived the ordeal in a forest of such dense bush and tall trees.

Imagine my relief and surprise, however, when I received yet another call that Ernest, Mary and their safari pilot had managed to sleep overnight in what was some of Africa’s most rugged and dangerous jungle after smashing their way out of the crashed Cessna and had walked many kilometres to safety.

The only possession that Ernest managed to rescue was, by then, the dregs of a bottle of gin, his favourite brew. He and his two companions were not, however, wearing as much as a scratch from the accident caused by a flight of Egyptian Ibis birds.

Within a couple of hours, the Hemingway’s chartered a second aircraft to continue their all-important aerial safari but, in taking off, this aircraft also crashed after running into a power line, finally ending in a field of sisal and immediately bursting into flame and exploding its fuel tanks.

For the second time in two days, the intrepid travellers and pilot had incredibly managed to escape the jaws of ill-luck and possible death. The Hemingway’s were not believed, however, to have been seriously injured — or so we thought at the time until some years later when Ernest became ill from internal injuries apparently suffered at the time of the second crash.

When Ernest’s first aerial accident was reported, a fellow journalist, Ken Dickinson, had telegraphed the New York Times of the supposed tragedy and the newspaper had proclaimed Ernest’s death with bold headlines on its front page and street bills.

After the Hemingway’s had eventually returned to the civilisation of Nairobi, the overhasty Ken happily boasted to Ernest during an interview that he was the one who had reported Ernest’s demise. The sometimes-demure novelist lost his temper and felled Dickinson with a well-aimed punch to the jaw, exclaiming “That’s YOUR last chapter.”

And what of my friend Greg Hemingway? I heard many years later that he had returned to New York, had become a brain surgeon, had married with a family but had sadly taken his own life in a Miami gaol one night after having been arrested in women’s clothing and causing an uproar in a local street. 

Suicide was unhappily also in the Hemingway genes in addition to the mysteries and enthralling aspects of Africa. Ernest also ended his life in the same way, just as his medical practitioner father had done when he discovered he had serious cancer.

For me, Greg’s change of character and passing was almost unbelievable from the tough and gallant environmentalist I knew in the foothills of Kilimanjaro; a man who had risked his life and limb on many an occasion in confronting rogue elephants and hunting down lions invading African villages. That’s life, I suppose!