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| Rebecca Farquharson films as her father Jeremy starts a Hilux Legend 45 he won in an essay competition. |
The most recent winner was Jeremy Farquharson, who received a Hilux Legend 45 from Toyota after writing 300 “esoteric” words on a family road trip to explore most of Namibia south of Windhoek.
He said he had entered the competition, hosted by Leisure Wheels, Getaway and Popular Mechanics,
so long ago that he had almost forgotten about it. But on on January 16 he got the news media fundi Chris Moerdyk had judged his entry the best from 1 685 in total.
He said really great travel writing is that which is able to create an emotional bond
to the reader with a combination of words and pictures that describes feelings,
thoughts, emotions and nostalgia.
“Jeremy Farquharson achieved that goal
admirably. His understanding of descriptive prose is superb with the result
that one can almost feel the heat of Namibia and hear, in the theater of
one’s mind, the deafening sound of a zip on the tent flap in the still of
night.
“But, words cannot do the job on their own and the six photographs that
accompanied this travelogue very clearly brought words to life. The
pictures ticked all the boxes from setting the scene to candid human
elements.
“The
power of these few hundred words and half dozen pictures lies in their capacity
to stir the reader’s emotions to the point of wanting to pack and tent, hitch
up a trailer and head for the barren beauty that is Namibia.
“Trying
to adequately describe a holiday in a few hundred words and handful of pictures
is extremely diffcult, but Jeremy Farquharson achieved it quite brilliantly. Well
done," Moerdyk said.
Farquharson said his family had toured Namibia in 2010 in a 4x2 Mazda bakkie and that spacious desert country was “a game changer” for his entire family.
One of the changes he made on their return was to convert his 4x2 into a 4x4 and join the very active Midlands 4x4 Club. The club’s members were on hand when Toyota South Africa handed the keys to the new Hilux to Farquharson in KZN’s capital on Tuesday night.Deon Olivier, new vehicle sales manager at Toyota in Pietermaritzburg, said the daily pleasure of selling SA’s most popular bakkie became that much more enjoyable with the bakkie as a prize.
After the ceremonies, Farguharson told Wheels the Midlands adventure scribes were doing well, as his neighbour had also recently won a Hilux in a writing competition for an Afrikaans travel magazine. “But mine is so much nicer,” he said, adding he had been smiling so broadly and so often ever since he got the news of his big win, it felt as if the top of his head would come off.
His first long road trip in the new Hilux will be back to Namibia.
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| Hilux winner Jeremy Farquharson (left) receives the key to a Legend 45 model from Leon Naicker, Business and Sales manager at Toyota SA Motors |
