Kingsley Holgate with the Land Rover Defender 130
The Kingsley Holgate Foundation share how the Land Rover Defender 130 contributed to its humanitarian expeditions over the years.
The tough long-wheelbase Land Rover Defender 130s have, over many years and countless journeys, proved to have been some of our favourite expedition Land Rovers.
Fitted with Old Man Emu suspensions from 4×4 Megaworld, long-range fuel tanks, rugged Cooper Tyres and great kit from Front Runner and Alucab, they’ve been able to do the job, carry huge loads and aided by their length, iron out the endless corrugations and challenges of the road.
Over the years a number of these brave old 130 work-horses have lugged our humanitarian items and expedition supplies to the far corners of Africa. One of them, alongside two 110s (the standard-size Landies), succeeded in being the first to track the outline of Africa through 33 countries in 449 days.
‘Stanley’ was the nickname given to a much-travelled green 130 that undertook countless geographic and humanitarian journeys in the footsteps of the early explorers, and was also one of the backup Landies for the African Rainbow Swahili Dhow seafaring expedition to the Somali border on the East African coast.
Another 130 Defender was aptly nicknamed ‘the Stomach’ because it carried all the grub and took part in a Goodbye Malaria journey to follow the Great African Rift Valley and then went on to lug our expedition inflatable boats all the way north to the Nile on a journey to Juba, to attend the independence celebrations of South Sudan – the world’s newest country at that time.
Yet another 130, nicknamed ‘Ndhlovukazi’ (‘the great She Elephant’) carried the kit for the gruelling Heart of Africa expedition to locate the geographic centre of the continent deep in the rainforests of the Congo.
Our favourite 130 named ‘Mashozi’ is still part of the expedition team. She joined us in 2013 as the ‘Rhino Landy’; covered in hundreds of signatures and hand-written messages, she became a billboard against rhino poaching and with the Project Rhino team, played an integral part in bringing the Rhino Art educational program to thousands of school children.
Still going, this 130’s adventures seem endless. She was the backup truck when, to celebrate the last of the old Defenders coming off the production line in 2016, escorted a colourful clutch of Series 1 Landies across the high-altitude passes of the mountain kingdom of Lesotho.
She hauled a big double-axle trailer loaded with the jigsaw puzzle of pieces that made up a massive pontoon boat called the ‘Ma Robert’ (named after Dr Livingstone’s first mechanised boat on the Zambezi) and went on to be the ‘mother ship’ in a fast-moving expedition from Cape Town to Kathmandu.
Not to mention the heavily-armed dash to Ras Xaafun on the Horn of Africa, the most easterly point of the continent in war-torn Somalia. We doff our caps to these wonderful old Defender 130s that achieved so much.
Who would have thought that 7 years after the last old-shaped 130 came off the Solihull production line, our expedition team would be celebrating the arrival of two new Land Rover Defender 130s.
With more load room, over 13 inches longer than the 110, rugged air suspension and powered by a D300 diesel they will, I’m sure, keep up our expedition tradition of using adventure to improve and save lives. For us, more space means more lives saved and improved.
There’s no doubt that these new Defenders are in for the ‘long haul’ with many more geographic and humanitarian expeditions still to come!
