Meet John Varty’s Children: Savannah Varty, Sean Varty and Tao Varty

John Varty is many things at once: a South African wildlife filmmaker, conservationist, musician, and one of the most recognizable voices in big cat preservation.

He was born on 27 November 1950 in Johannesburg, South Africa, which makes him 75 years old.

His birth date places him under the Sagittarius zodiac sign, a fitting sign for a man who has spent a lifetime chasing wild horizons. He is of White South African ethnicity and practices Christianity.

As a child, John learned about hunting on the family game farm near the Kruger National Park, a property owned by his father, Charles Boyd Varty. His mother is Maidie Hellier Varty.

Following his father’s death, John and his brother, Dave Varty, terminated the hunting activities on the farm and converted it into a game reserve in 1973, renaming it Londolozi, which is the Zulu word for “protector of living things.” That decision marked the pivot point of his life, steering him permanently away from the gun and toward the camera lens.

John attended Parktown Boys’ High School in Johannesburg. His education laid the foundation for a career that would eventually span more than three decades of documentary filmmaking.

He has made more than 30 documentaries and one feature film, with credits including Living with Tigers, Shingalana, Jamu, the Orphaned Leopard, and Leopard Queen. In 1992, he wrote, produced and starred in Running Wild, a feature film that starred Brooke Shields.

On the personal side, John is married to Gillian van Houten, a South African TV news anchor and author. The two wed in 1995. Together they have three children: a daughter, Savannah Varty, and twin sons, Sean Varty and Tao Varty. Savannah and the twin boys were born to John and Gillian as part of a family rooted in wildlife conservation and African storytelling.

Savannah Varty

Savannah Varty is the eldest child and only daughter of John Varty and Gillian van Houten. Her name was not chosen by accident.

It was given as homage to the great grasslands of Africa, landscapes on which her parents lived and filmed wildlife documentaries for many years. Growing up with a father like John Varty meant that the wild was not a destination; it was home.

Savannah developed a deep love for the natural world from an early age, travelling across Africa with her parents as they filmed wildlife documentaries and supported conservation projects. Her childhood was spent in tented camps in Kenya and Zambia, often alongside lion cubs and the occasional warthog. It is the kind of upbringing that either transforms a person into a conservationist or sends them running toward city life. Savannah chose the former, though she would take a scenic route.

Savannah attended Diocesan School for Girls (DSG), an experience her father later described as one he felt extremely privileged to have shared with her.

She subsequently earned a degree in Marketing and Advertising Communications, graduating in 2016, during which she spoke on equity, the economy, and the environment, and specifically about starting the conversation about conservation. Her academic background merged her creative instincts with her lifelong environmental conscience.

After earning her degree in Cape Town, she explored life abroad, working a ski season in Aspen and later joining a London design agency while nurturing her love of writing. Adventure took her backpacking across Europe and volunteering at a Tuscan wine farm, before returning to the United Kingdom to specialise in African and Indian Ocean travel.

By her father’s 70th birthday in November 2020, Savannah had completed her Field Guides Association of Southern Africa (FGASA) Level 1 qualification, earning it with flying colours. John publicly praised her for it, noting with evident pride that his daughter appeared to be following in his footsteps.

Savannah eventually returned home to qualify as a safari guide, blending her passions for conservation, storytelling, and travel. She went on to work as a Product Manager at Pelorus Travel, a luxury travel company, where she designs bespoke itineraries for discerning clients across African and Indian Ocean destinations. She has also appeared on screen, being credited in the documentary The Return of the Kings.

Sean Varty

Sean Varty is one of John Varty’s twin sons and the brother of Tao Varty and Savannah Varty. His name carries deliberate meaning within the family. Sean is Irish for John, and the name serves as a direct homage to their father’s name. In that sense, Sean carries the weight of legacy in a way that is both symbolic and personal.

Sean and his twin brother Tao were accepted into Saint Andrews Prep School and later Saint Andrews College, two of South Africa’s respected educational institutions. It was within those walls that the brothers began to carve out individual identities, each gravitating toward different sports.

Sean chose rugby. Given that rugby is as deeply embedded in South African identity as braai and biltong, the choice spoke to a young man with a grounded, physical sense of belonging in his country’s culture.

Beyond his schooling years, Sean has maintained a largely private profile. He does not appear to have pursued public-facing work as his father and siblings have, and detailed information about his adult career and personal life remains out of the public domain.

What is clear is that he was raised alongside his twin in an environment shaped entirely by wilderness, with a father who lived and breathed conservation and a mother who brought narrative craft to the family’s story. That combination tends to leave a mark, however quietly it shows up in a person’s adult life.

Tao Varty

Tao Varty is the second of John Varty’s twin sons and, of the three children, the one who has most publicly explored his own identity through the written word.

His name, pronounced “Tay-o,” was potentially inspired by Taoism, a Chinese philosophy that emphasises living in harmony with the Tao, or the way of the universe, reflecting his mother Gillian van Houten’s leaning toward eastern beliefs.

Tao and his twin brother Sean attended Saint Andrews Prep School and later Saint Andrews College. Where Sean chose rugby, Tao chose hockey, another window into two brothers who, though born together, moved through the world differently.

Tao is a writer, artist, and aspiring filmmaker who has expressed an ambition to write books, songs, and scripts. He runs a Substack newsletter called Dear Down South, where he writes about life, nature, memory, and the layered experience of being young and South African. His writing is reflective and literary, drawing on poets like Robert Frost and Mary Oliver, and shaped by a philosophical framework informed by Taoism’s principles of balance and duality.

In his own words, Tao has described himself as a writer moved by words from the heart, a lover of poetry, mountains, the ocean, and music, and someone who plays the guitar, a love he credits to his father, who introduced him to the music of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. His sensibility is that of an artist raised outdoors, someone who grew up between the wilderness and the world of ideas, and who is still finding the shape where those two things meet.

Tao has also written of his mother’s battle with dementia, noting that through family, friends, and music, the memories of those we love are never truly lost. It is a line that carries the particular weight of someone who understands, perhaps better than most, that the things worth preserving are not always found in the wild.