Open Writing

Where can one visit a city where there are diamonds, stone-age etchings, a world-class art gallery, excellent museums, beautiful architecture, a ghost trail, a drive-in pub and battle-fields?

Kimberley, at the heart of the Republic of South Africa, offers it all, with comfortable accommodation and excellent restaurants as part of the package.

Seven of us drove to Kimberley. Leon and I were the only South Africans. Our guests were Gloria, Leon’s English sister who now lives in the Florida, USA; her friends, Glenna and Ron, who also live in Florida; and Ron’s sister and brother-in-law, Brenda and Vaughn from Ohio.

Kimberley was conceived by the discovery of the “Hope” diamond in 1869, and was finally born in July 1871 with the start of the diamond rush. It is a city which boasts many “firsts”– the first flying school in Africa, established in 1912, and the first electric street lights in the Southern hemisphere among them. We found that the two days we had allocated were not enough in which to see everything on offer – we missed the MacGregor Museum, the Art Gallery, the Ghost Trail, another walking tour designed to show off the city’s architecture, and the drive-in pub among many attractions.

The Mine Museum was built on the edge of the original hand-dug open-cast mine.

To our disappointment, this museum was in the midst of reconstruction, much of it behind scaffolding. Once the reconstruction work is completed later this year, the Open Mine Museum will be magnificent. There was enough remaining to give our visitors an idea of life on Kimberley’s cobbled streets during its hey-days. The dance-hall and Barney Barnato’s Boxing Academy stood facing each other, opposites in the social calendar of those far-off days.

We stood behind wire fencing, gazing down into the Big Hole where swallows swooped hundreds of metres below us, rippling the surface of the green waters at the bottom. What began life as small hill is now the biggest “hand-dug excavation in the world.” By 14 August 1914 this mine had closed after yielding 2,722 carats of diamonds. It is now two hundred and fifteen metres deep, and its circumference is 1.6 kilometres. A Big Hole indeed!

Our guests each purchased a bucket of gravel with the purpose of prospecting for diamonds by sieving through endless piles of tiny stones. No diamond was found; but they learned through personal experience the patience, dedication and frustrations experienced by early prospectors hoping to find their fortunes.

Our visitors wanted to see some of the gleaming stones that are the end-product of Kimberley’s mines. A jewellery shop opposite the Mine Museum was the ideal place to go. The owner showed us a range of diamonds: uncut; cut and polished; and some magnificent yellow and brown diamonds. In the shop, a large number of dollars was spent with great delight. When we finally sat down at the coffee shop next door, a huge, pear-shaped diamond sparkled in a bed of tiny, cut stones in a ring on Glenna’s finger; Brenda wore a dainty elephant-head pendant with diamond eyes; and Vaughn carried in his pocket a lovely, Africa-shaped pendant, etched with wild animals and Bushmen figures, and a row of diamonds set along the south coast.

Brenda quipped that there were five “C’s” to be considered when purchasing diamonds, not the four of which we had been told: Colour, Clarity, Carat, Cut – and Compliments!

We drove to a point overlooking the Vaal River, to see engraved glacial pavings. The rock surface was polished to a glassy smoothness millions of years ago by a glacier, on which Bushmen etched spiritual symbols and images of the wildlife that surrounded them. We marvelled at spirals, star-bursts, mathematical grids, spiders, zebra, baboon, rhino, giraffe and countless other inhabitants of the veld carved into the glossy surface of the hillside.

After admiring the wide-open vista we explored further in our small bus. We stopped to photograph a peacock in full display, his feathers rustling loudly as he turned and preened in front of three peahens; we passed a herd of springbok, in turn leaping and delicately picking their way over the rough ground; we saw a magnificent kudu bull, his horns winding majestically above his head, his ears round, translucent and pink with the sun behind them.

Our next stop was Magersfontein, where the Scottish Black Watch Regiment was decimated by Boer commandos in a battle which began on 10th December, 1899. The battle-field was marked by winding trenches dug to conceal the Boers. Dressed in kilts, the advancing Scottish force found no shelter from Boer snipers on the flat, barren plain. They were in turn soaked by rain at night and burned by fierce sun during the day as they lay dying of their wounds.

It is a haunted place…

The look-out point at the top of Magersfontein Hill was blasted by a wind so strong that my camera wavered in my hands. Midnight-blue clouds finally broke in a fierce storm, blowing cold, heavy rain on the scene, thundering and flashing lightning across the mountain-tops. After viewing the displays and the video-recreation of the battle in the museum below the Scottish memorial, we sheltered in yet another coffee shop, chatting to the friendly staff over steaming mugs.

We drove back to Kimberley in the light of a huge double rainbow; and paused to gaze in delight at an avenue of purple jacaranda trees.

Early next morning we stopped at Kamfers Dam, near the main road to Johannesburg, just outside Kimberley. This was a chance to photograph flamingoes. From a distance, the large flock painted the dark surface of the water with swathes of pink. As we drew closer, we could hear the rustle of their wings, the ripple of water as they waded on stilt-like legs and foraged with their massive beaks. From our vantage point on the railway line, they were an impressive sight.

As we drove along the main road towards Johannesburg, the picture of Kimberley in the rear-view mirror was split by lightning and washed by rain.

This city is well worth a visit by anyone interested in diamonds, war stories, history and wild-life – don’t miss it when you visit South Africa!

Until next week, “here comes Treble!”

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For further information on Kimberley, visit www.kimberley.co.za/

Details of the Big Hole taken from “Kimberley – The City That Sparkles!” (second edition).

Thanks to Mrs. Lundt of The Jewel Box for her “diamond demonstration”.

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