He looks set to be SA’s newest "space tourist", and has bought up most of the Cradle of Humankind, west of Joburg, as part of a bold plan to create a world-class palaeotourism hub. But you’d be forgiven if you’ve never heard of him.
You might know about his brother, Paul Nash, who equalled the world 100m record in 1968, in Krugersdorp. Or his father, John, who in the 1960s built his family fortune on an aviation business.
Yet it is the reclusive 62-year-old billionaire Tim Nash who may end up leaving a longer-lasting footprint in this country.
He has spent the past eight years buying farms in a bid to stitch together the Greater Cradle Nature Reserve — a 9,186ha expanse stretching 15km across the heart of the 47,000ha world heritage site, from Pretoria in the east, through the Sterkfontein Caves, to Krugersdorp in the west.
"I want it to become unthinkable that this can be anything other than the nature reserve that protects the fossil sites and the story of our origins as human beings," says Nash, in an interview with the FM at his newly refurbished Cradle Boutique Hotel.
Nash is softly spoken, with a head for numbers that has seen him manage the family’s considerable private equity investments for years from his base in London (he left SA in 1984). But it is the Cradle project that is now hoovering up a disproportionate amount of his time.
It is here, he says, that he can make the biggest difference.
"Right here, on this property, we have 2.5-billion-year-old fossils, going all the way back to the stromatolites — the single-cell algae that were the first forms of life. This is the oldest piece of land on the planet. The world’s history begins here," he says.
It has also become the richest early hominid fossil site in the world.
While the discovery in 1947 of "Mrs Ples" — a 2.5-million-year-old Australopithecus africanus — fuelled the early legend, a number of sensational discoveries on Nash’s reserve and nearby in the past decade have reasserted SA’s place in the palaeontological pecking order.
If this were the US, of course, the area would be a humming must-visit stop. But in SA, apathy and a lack of vision mean palaeotourism just hasn’t taken off as it should have done.
Nash plans to change that. "It irritates me no end that when I land at OR Tambo airport, I see a whole bunch of adverts for the Kruger Park and Cape Town, and then one piddly little sign for the Cradle of Humankind," he says.
His idea may have sprouted eight years ago, but it dates back to the 1970s, when his father bought a 3,300ha property in the Cradle, near the fledgling Lanseria Airport.
"I grew up there. We tried to farm cattle, but it was a terrible idea — the sourveld and dolomite meant it wasn’t really going to work," he says.
After school, disillusioned by the apartheid state, Nash ping-ponged from the US to the UK and Europe. Armed with an investments degree, he began managing the family’s fortune.
Given the philanthropic element to the Cradle project, it almost seems incongruous that Nash is also set to become SA’s newest space tourist, after Mark Shuttleworth.
He was one of the first 100 people, 15 years ago, to buy $250,000 tickets to space with Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. Quite when that will happen is still uncertain, though indications are that commercial flights may begin next year.
So why did he do this?
"Why not?" he answers. "I’ve always loved flying. My dad was in the aircraft business, so I’ve been flying up and down Africa forever. So when I heard that [Branson] planned to do this, I said, ‘Hell, yes.’ Three days later, I bought my ticket."
It is a striking contrast: a desire to rocket off into space and the future, and then, back on Earth, preserving the area where life began so scientists can dig deep into the past.
But, says Nash: "I wanted to stop this becoming a housing development, or simply part of Lanseria. And if it takes a wealthy person to pay the bills, so be it."
Nash’s vision has been fuelled by his friendship with Lee Berger, the Wits professor whose sensational fossil finds made global headlines.
In 2008, Berger and his son Matthew (then nine years old) famously discovered a new human relative, the 2-million-year-old Australopithecus sediba, on Nash’s property. In 2013, Berger’s team uncovered a more recent hominid relative, Homo naledi, in the nearby Rising Star cave system.
Berger tells the FM that in the past six years, more hominid fossils have been discovered in the Cradle than in the entire previous century of the science.
"In Africa and Asia, it is unrivalled. There are two cave sites in Europe, where they discovered Neanderthals, that can compare to the Rising Star complex. But this past decade has truly been a remarkable moment of discovery," he says.
What makes it all the more amazing is that until 2008, there was this misplaced notion that "everything had been found".
Homo naledi and Australopithecus sediba have blown apart that notion, almost creating palaeontology on steroids.
Berger met Nash’s father 30 years ago when he made his first major discovery — two early hominid teeth — at Gladysvale, now part of the reserve. But he believes it was the discovery of sediba that connected Nash in a "whole new way" to the reserve.
"What Tim has done — the truly remarkable thing — is to consolidate almost a third of the declared world heritage site area, and protect it in a sustainable model that will bring in tourism," Berger says.
If Nash succeeds, it could provide a workable template for a new avenue of revenue for SA: palaeotourism.
His first step was to revive the Cradle Boutique Hotel, now an impressive four-star, 31-room establishment, each with its own viewing deck (and Jacuzzi) overlooking the veld.
It’s a hotel in accord with the era. With solar power and an aquaponics plant, the 220-seater restaurant already grows much of the food it serves. And the swimming pool is its own self-cleansing, chemical-free wetland.
More surprisingly, given Covid, the hotel has been doing pretty well.
"Actually, right now, we are very profitable," says Nash. "We’re back up to 70% occupancy most of the time, and we’re running at 100% occupancy most weekends."
(It did, however, require a restocking of the cellar. When the first lockdown hit, Nash and a bunch of friends holed up at the reserve and spent the next few weeks working steadily through the wine supply.)
But, he says, this hotel alone won’t be enough to finance his plan. He wants to build three or four new accommodation options on the reserve — perhaps one high-end hotel for overseas tourists focused on "wellness", as well as a self-catering or three-star option.
"By putting low-impact activities and tourism on the periphery, it’ll allow us to protect the property for 15km in either direction," he says.
A major drawcard is that guests can book a 3½-hour "human origins tour", in which they’re guided through two active fossil digs.
It’s a unique proposition on SA’s otherwise bush-and-beach template. Nash says: "We want to say to foreigners, start here: this will set the context for your trip to Africa — this will help you understand where you came from, and how humans came to be on this planet."
We want to say to foreigners, this will help you understand where you came from
— Tim Nash
Next to the hotel, Nash and National Geographic have built the Malapa Museum — a slick hour-long experience that takes you through the geology of the region, with films, interactive displays and dioramas. When the FM visited, one scientist was painstakingly working away with a brush to clean a fossil discovered months before.
Asked how much he has spent on the reserve, Nash looks thoughtfully towards the sky, as if contemplating a mental calculation, which he swiftly abandons.
"Too much to count," he says. "Look, obviously it’s not going to make a return on the capital we’ve spent in the end, but that was never the intention. As long as this part of it — the hotel — can generate a profit, we can plug that back to make it sustainable."
The way he’s structured it, the reserve is owned by a trust, whose trustees ensure it contributes "to the conservation, protection and development of the natural and cultural heritage of those properties".
The reserve, and its museum, complement the nearby Maropeng museum. Certainly, it is several notches above the decaying state-run natural history museums across SA, where the government hasn’t bothered to provide proper funding.
Which seems short-sighted. As Berger says, the discoveries of sediba and Homo naledi generated more than $1.2bn in coverage for SA.
"The fact that we had discoveries from this country, on the front pages of newspapers in every country — there aren’t many fields that can claim that," he says.
Palaeotourism, then, would seem to be an obvious missed opportunity.
Berger says it’s unclear why this has been slow to catch on. "Maybe tourism just needed to mature. You need to remember that global tourism in SA is relatively new — those lodges in the lowveld seem like they’ve been there forever, but they only date back to the 1990s."
He believes it’ll be a different story in 10 years, and adds: "I expect that what Tim has created here will be the first of many."
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.