The Other Brother: The search for Simon Holmes a Court

It was early morning when Bodo Muche jolted upright from a deeply unsettling dream. He was in a cold sweat and felt ill. An image of a rickety bridge was seared onto the back of his eyes. It was a picture he could not shake. Muche had long ago learnt not to dwell on things too much, you could go crazy otherwise. But his feeling that morning was that something awful had happened to someone, somewhere.

In May 1977, as South Africa teetered on the brink of civil war, Simon Holmes a Court, younger brother of billionaire Robert Holmes a Court, left the Botswanan town he called his home and simply disappeared. Three years later his skeletal remains were found a thousand miles away in the lush, dank Tsitsikamma forest. Simon’s mother was convinced he had been murdered.

This is the story of the shy, adventuring and sometimes reckless Holmes a Court brother and the young journalist who went in search of the truth about Simon’s death. It is peopled with everybody from a white Johannesburg witchdoctor, to a hard drinking and rumour-fuelled expat community living on the edge of the vast inland Okavango Delta, the South African secret service and a free-spirited married woman with whom Simon fell helplessly in love.

The Other Brother is a fascinating mystery compellingly told that takes you deep into Africa to expose the tragedy that lies at the heart of one of Australia’s most prominent families.