'This incident taught me to respect elephants. In the 1980s I became far too casual with elephants because in the areas I was operating in they were constantly in the background far or near. On this occasion at Ngwezumba in the Chobe National Park in Botswana I made a crude photographic hide in a steep bank at a waterhole nearby and left my mother in the cab. While I was in the hide three elephants approached the vehicle. According to my mother they suddenly became aggressive and attacked from behind pushing the vehicle for a hundred meters. In my hide at the nearby riverbank I heard the commotion and rushed back just in time to see the end of what was happening. The elephants eventually ran off but my vehicle was severely damaged and I was a 100 kilometers from any help. I was very thankful that I managed to get the vehicle started and then headed immediately back to Kasane.
One of the weird outcomes of this incident is how this story moved from Kasane (where I told Heather Carr-Hartley about what had happened) to Maun where I heard it retold to me in a bar several months later by someone who did not know that I was the one involved. At every point along the way each person had added their own bit of exaggeration in the retelling and so the story morphed away from reality. So much so that by the time the story reached Maun me and my mom had been killed and the vehicle burnt out!'

.