The Orange River diamonds from the Alexander Bay fields – on the Namibian border - have been adding sparkle to lovers’ eyes since the late 1920s. The area north and south of the Mother River’s mouth is one of the world’s treasure houses of fabulous, naturally-polished high-grade diamonds. The Namas, Bushmen and Strandlopers who walked its shores centuries ago used to pick the diamonds up as they lay glinting in the sands and give them to their children as toys.
Mine Tour
The tour of the mining area (organised in advance) begins at the Alexander Bay Mine Museum. To get to the sediment, one has to go through as much as 40 metres of sand and calcrete. Then one gets to the gravel on the bedrock, which bears the diamonds.
Namaqualand is a vast, barren country of not many more than 120 000 souls, a place that gets a total of 50 mm of rain each year. That’s about equal to 2 moderate Johannesburg thunderstorms every 12 months. “God didn’t give us rain – He gave us diamonds”, is the old Namaqualand philosophy.
Port Nolloth Divers’ Row
In the spring the road to Port Nolloth is paved with the desert blooms of Namaqualand. Across the Anenous Pass and a dry coastal desert belt is Port Nolloth, the frontier town that lies in an almost-eternal shroud of mist.
The most remarkable sound you will hear in Port Nolloth happens dramatically in the early hours of the morning, when this rowdy village has gone to sleep. From out in the treacherous channel, comes the tolling of the bell buoy. That bell has been ringing off the Port Nolloth coast for more than a century.
Alfie Wewege grew up in the Eastern Cape, but his heart has lain with Port Nolloth for most of his adult life. Once a strapping young diver, then a ship’s cook, Alf lived the heady life of a popular bachelor on Divers’ Row in Port Nolloth, which used to be a crooked, motley collection of small homes full of sea gear like wetsuits, fishing rods, heavy tools, ropes and nets.
“There’s a separate reality here,” says Geoff Lorentz, one of the legendary local divers who still heads out in his boat, the Blues Breaker, and takes on the marine terraces when weather conditions permit.
When the Blues Breaker brings its gravel in to the TransHex sorting plant, Geoff’s attractive wife Lara works as a sorter. For the rest, she raises their children, cooks hearty meals for the crew, waits for Geoff to return and worries when their boat is caught out in foul weather – just like the other Port Nolloth divers’ women.
De Beers in Kleinsee
Like Alexander Bay, Kleinsee – which belongs to De Beers - used to be closed to the public, but nowadays you can take a mine tour.
A video running in the Welcome Centre tells you that De Beers is working at keeping the mine going until 2028. Its ‘exit strategy’ is to hand over a tidy village with a number of medium to small enterprises in place. Mariculture pilot projects to cultivate abalone, oysters and white mussels are being set up, and it is rehabilitating the mining areas.
“In 50 years’ time people won’t even know there was a mine here,” we are assured.
Shipwreck Coast
Only 12% of the 400 000 hectares owned by De Beers in these parts is being mined. The rest of it is dune lands, shipwreck coast, succulent gardens, mystery stories, secret little smuggling bays, old legends, seaside hideaw
ays and, at this time of the year, hundreds of mating tortoises who have suddenly discovered a dash of speed.
This area has dozens of wild bays, where drifts of plovers run up and down at the edge of the breaking waves. Scouring winds drive the warmer water near the surface off so that the icy waters deeper down are forced up, carrying plankton and nutrients with it.
Hondeklip Bay
During the Victorian era, Hondeklip Bay was the gathering place for copper miners and transport men of the region. The drovers would battle across the sands from Springbokfontein (now Springbok) and, after a hard push, would have a brandy party on the beach.
Today, the little port has a far less hectic existence. It is mainly a holiday spot for farmers of the Northern Cape, who come here after a hard season in the veld to relax with their families. Diamond divers still go out to sea from Hondeklip Bay to work a nearby concession and the village is quite tourist-friendly, with a number of self-catering options available.
© Images courtesy and copyright Chris Marais
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