There runs a strong thread of invention, eccentricities and adventure in Tarka’s ancestry.

Tarka’s Great great Grandfather Donald Mackenzie was Mackenzie Macinley Shipping.
He Married Cecilia Wikinson, a talented artist, who sailed in her well known yacht Imatra and took up skiing at 70. One of their children married Sir Charles Giffard le Quesne Martel and Tarka’s Great grandmother Ina married Col W A de Courcy King DSO.

Great Uncle Colonel W A de Courcy King Royal engineers DSO was engaged on developing the balloon as a means of communication at Farnborough where Cody was experimenting with his flying machine in the early years of the 20th century. Cody invited Tarka’s great Grandmother Ina to go on a flight with him. Her husband forbade this adventure because Cody was famous for his crashes. Had it been allowed she would have gone willingly and been the 1st woman to have gone up in an airplane. Meanwhile her husband was inventing a revolutionary method of map reading from the air and was also the first balloonist to make an air to land radio communication.

They had two children:
Great Uncle Billy William Donald Aelian (Bill) King
And Tarka’s Granny Patricia Diana King

William Donald Aelian (Bill) King DSO & Bar DSC (born 1910), is a retired British naval officer, yachtsman and author. He was the oldest participant in the first solo non-stop around the world yacht race, the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, and is the oldest surviving World War II submarine commander. Bill not only survived World War II, but succeeded in a singlehanded circumnavigation in 1973 on his third attempt. During the latter journey, he managed to reach port despite a collision with a large sea creature 400 miles (640 km) southwest of Australia. He accomplished this in his 42ft junk rigged schooner Galway Blazer designed by Angus Primrose. These adventures are recorded in his autobiographical books ‘The stick and the stars’, ‘Capsize’ and ‘Adventure in Depth’. In his eighty’s he went hang gliding in Tignes, and regularly skied there although he refused to use “modern equipment”.
Bill married Anita Leslie (Sir Winston Churchill’s Cousin)
And had Tarka (names sake) and Leonie

His sister Diana, Tarka’s Grandmother, was educated at Elmhurst and went on to be a ballerina in the corps de ballet of the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo in the late 1930’s.

While her brother was sailing solo, she trekked in the Himalayas to Base camp (54).
Diana attended Open University late on in life studying French and Russian, overcame breast cancer and moved to the French Alps at 89.

She Married Dr John Evans, Dr J W Evans BSC MD DCH engineer and general practitioner. They had four children, Andrew and Peter engineers and inventors, Ione an accomplished artist and linguist and Tarka’s mother Thea.

Thea directs the Courchevel branch of the British Alpine Ski School. She was the 8th woman to become fully qualified as an international ski instructor through the British system and helped pioneer the first British ski instructors to legally work in France. She married Philippe, a French petroleum engineer from Hanoi and had three children Tarka, Mia and Chiara. Tarka’s mother was the youngest and the most “unconventional” of her family which may explain some of Tarka’s character.

Tarka’s Father was born in Hanoi, a story amazingly captivated in his father’s bittersweet biography Hanoi, Adieu an enchanting story of passion, war and peace, life and death and the seeming mix of orient and occident.

Amongst many of Tarka’s father’s sayings, “L’Herpiniere’s are never ill and never give up” seems to have stuck with Tarka and contributed to his drive.