Diamonds And Dust: 4 - Beginnings
...I wondered what I was getting myself into as I waited to collect my bag in the dusty pseudo terminal. Rumour had it (supposedly true), that sometime around 1971-72, a new employee arrived from Cape Town, stepped off the plane, looked around at the rather depressing sight and said, “F--- this,” and got back on the plane again.
It was that sort of place....
Malcolm Bertoni is less than impressed when he arrives at the desert outpost where he will be employed in a diamond mine.
For earlier chapters of Malcolm's vivid autobiography please click on Diamonds And Dust in the menu on this page.
They say that first impressions are often everything. My first impression on arriving at the desolate and windswept airstrip was not too good. CDM had its own company airstrip on the South West African side, but commercial flights used the small and bumpy airstrip at Alexander Bay on the South African side, and passengers were then bussed over the bridge into Oranjemund in South West Africa.
In those days there was no real terminal like today – just a small building sticking up out of the flat landscape, far away from anywhere, but basically at the end of the world. It was dusty, hot and seemed so barren. There was a small fire truck and a refuelling truck and that was all. So it was not a great place to land and disembark, especially if starting a new job.
I wondered what I was getting myself into as I waited to collect my bag in the dusty pseudo terminal. Rumour had it (supposedly true), that sometime around 1971-72, a new employee arrived from Cape Town, stepped off the plane, looked around at the rather depressing sight and said, “F--- this,” and got back on the plane again.
It was that sort of place.
The bus trip into town was a bit better. The road was bitumen and well maintained. We crossed over the long Oppenheimer Bridge over the Orange River that connected the town with South Africa and drove the three or four kms into town.
The town itself was a major surprise. Here was this neat, clean and green oasis in the middle of the desert. I didn’t know at that time that the entire town, all its infrastructure and facilities, was company built and owned. Pretty amazing actually. It shows what we will do just to dig up some pretty shiny stones out of the ground.
We arrived at the single quarters in the centre of town and were soon shown our rooms, dining facilities and all the important details, including a talk by the company security, who said, in their words, “Don’t even mention the word diamond here.”
I would learn later that this was relatively true. I would also learn later that many of the DDs or Diamond Detectives as they liked to call themselves were absolute idiots. We used to call them DDDs or Dom Dig Donders (Thick Stupid W------). The DDs were there to prevent people from stealing diamonds from the diggings.
But I must admit that there some really good DDs as well. You will hear a lot more about the DDs throughout this discourse.
Soon we were settled in. I had arrived.
