Above. Stuck in the black cotton soil of the Mababe depression in the Chobe district at the start of the rainy season when I was on the way back to Maun to re-supply and try and sell the paintings that I had completed in several months of camping in the bush.

Botswana - A Brush with the Wild.

Out of print at present, but scheduled for a re-issue in a different and updated format soon.

25cm x 35cm, 1987, 240 pages, hard cover with jacket, Paul Augustinus, Acorn Books, 1987 (ISBN 1-874802-05-X Standard edition, ISBN 0 620 09677 2 Collectors edition).

Botswana, especially the wilderness areas in the North of the country, Ngamiland, Okavango and the Chobe district, has been an area of Africa where many changes have taken place over the last 100 years. This is especially true of the last 30 years, when big tourism has transformed the wilderness and freedom that once characterised these countries into something akin to a theme park where the spectacular explosion of eco-tourism combined with a land grab by big eco tourism companies has meant that individual travelers with the equipment to do so can no longer access the areas they once might have done in the 60s and 70s.

As a traveler and a wildlife artist, Paul Augustinus lived for many years in this wilderness in the 70s and 80s. In this, his first book about an era in Botswana (the late 70s) that he was lucky enough to experience, the reader is invited to share many of his adventures - the thrill of surprising the Okavango's elusive sitatunga antelope, the shock of an elephant attack or of finding oneself treed by an angry lioness. We also hear the echo's of past journeys, journeys of discovery by David Livingstone, the trader James Chapman, the artist Thomas Baines, the hunter F.C.Selous and the missionaries Helmore and Price. Their stories are one of hardship and endurance, and sometimes of tragedy and suspense.

This book is illustrated throughout with reproductions of the author's finest paintings and photographs. Engravings and early photographs lend historical perspective, while detailed maps of each region give the would-be explorer practical help in keeping to the right track.

For those who have already fallen under Botswana's spell, this book will be a richly rewarding experience, and essential reading for all those who still dream of the lost freedoms and wilderness of the time before the 1980s, whether wildlife enthusiast, sportsman, traveler or photographer. It is a book for both conservationists and connoisseurs of Africa to savour.

The revised edition of this classic work included a new selection of Augustinus' paintings, as well as an additional chapter of his latest adventures in the wild and a conservation update on Botswana in 1996.

However "Botswana A Brush With The Wild" is now unavailable and out of print after three reprints and two editions. It is has become a collectors' item and sometimes copies can be found on the second hand market and via E-Bay where copies of this book in good condition are now selling for upwards of $700. Only a handful of new copies remain of the second revised edition of this book, signed and with pencil sketch annotationed by the author. These last few copies can be purchased directly from Paul Augustinus, price on request and depend on availability.