It must've been 74 or 75, when one Saturday morning we had this giant hole in the gravelroad behind our house. Between 3rd and 2nd Avenue. A pipe had burst and washed all the sand out. It was quite dangerous. If any kid had fallen into it, it would have drowned.
Of course we didn't listen to what our parents said: To stay back. Took days befor someday realy took care
I remember when they were laying water pipes on the east side of town, those trenches were cool places to play in when the workers went home....
allgood
Those trenches were there of months, over a meter deep, with the pipe lying alongside waiting to be installed and fitted together. This must have been when the taps often produced no water all day, then when the water was switched on there would be great bellows and coughing as the water ran, brown and horrid looking, we bathed in it anyway. No harm done.
A specific way of getting a tan...
iknow but we were so tanned and dirty anyway it didn't make a differance.
Now in later life, we ponder what those pipes were made from? Asbestos?
idontknow
I heard asbestos keeps your lunge from burning...
I think all houses in om had asbestos roofs.
All Houses in Oranjemund still have Asbestos roofs....in the 1st world, this is illegal....
shooter
When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
Barb.
Sometimes your "secret language" realy makes my life hard.
Mike your right. Asbestos is absolutly forbidden. I've seen pics with workers dressed as in a neclear war ripping asbestos out of old buildings to replace the stuff with something more healthy. vampire
The whole cancer debate around Oranjemund is another webpage to itself, but I know of 15 people that all worked in that post office block over the last 30 years, and they all died of cancer, my mum included.....
:emot77:
I found a pipe made from asbestos lying in the dumps.... the pipes I was talking about.... were like this one, just a larger size...
asbestos pipes .. we were even ingesting the fibres .. but then we did nnot know better .. asbestos has now been replaces by fibre cement products ,, just as good .. mostly silica ( glass based ) vis Everite ... think about it in the 1800's radium was a miracle product and people even drank elixirs with radium in them ??
I can vouch for the presence of asbestos in Oranjemund, my brother - who spent ll years on Omund - died of pthisis brought on by asbestos in the lungs. Recently I had a slight lung function problem which required a scan. The specialist reported back that I had "nothing to worry about, but you must have been exposed to asbestos at some stage, you have a few specks. We need to keep any eye on that.....".
In my view there'd be little risk from the roof asbestos under normal conditions but in my case as part of my job I spent a lot of time in crawl spaces under asbestos roofs which is the most likely place for asbestos dust.
Regards,
Bob.
The same consideration of exposure for any sparkie that spent any length of time roof ratting for Town Electrical.
Interesting topic George especial the mention of asbestos.
I was under the impression that Tigers Eye (Mike mentioned this in a recent post) was fossilised asbestos!! apparently not according to this report.
There has been a lot of trouble here in Australia with a company JAMES HARDIE and asbestos related diseases
there is a link below if anyone is interested.
www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/20/2575920.htm
The report below is boring so have highlighted the Tiger Eye..... Asbestos bit
New interpretation of the origin of tiger's-eye
Peter J. Heaney and Donald M. Fisher, Department of Geosciences, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA. Pages 323-326.
The rich brown shimmer of tiger's-eye combines with a durable polish to make this lively gemstone a perennial favorite among jewelers and mineral collectors. Though tiger's-eye once was a highly valued rarity in western Europe, the discovery of abundant sources in South Africa in the 1870s sent its value careening downward; it now is one of the most affordable gems. For over a century, mineralogists believed that tiger's-eye was a kind of fossilized asbestos. Specifically, they assumed that tiger's-eye forms when a fibrous mineral called crocidolite is infiltrated with hot solutions rich in dissolved silica. Somewhat similar to the way petrified wood is formed, the solutions were presumed to dissolve the asbestos and replace it with quartz. Mineralogists call this process pseudomorphism-the exchange of one mineral with another while the shape of the first mineral is retained. Pseudomorphism serves as a record of a rock's "previous lives," and it is frequently exploited by geologists who are trying to unravel changes in Earth's ancient environment. Tiger's-eye has long been acclaimed in textbooks and museum displays as the archetype of pseudomorphic mineral replacement.
Now those textbooks will have to be revised. Professors Peter Heaney and Donald Fisher at the Pennsylvania State University have examined tiger's-eye using a number of sophisticated techniques. Their analysis has revealed that pseudomorphism is not what underlies its elegant shimmer. Instead, they found that the chatoyancy, or cat's-eye reflection, seen in the gem is the result of tiny fibers of crocidolite asbestos that are completely encapsulated in quartz. The crocidolite and the quartz grew simultaneously inside microscopic cracks that opened as rocks experienced tectonic stresses during mountain-building events. The minerals were deposited in the cracks by solutions percolating through the fractured rocks.
Interestingly, the quartz and the asbestos crystals nucleated on opposite sides of a single fissure and grew into each other as the cracks were sealed to make a quartz-crocidolite vein. Crocidolite is blue in color, and Heaney and Fisher found that the brown color of tiger's-eye is the result of tiny crystallites of iron oxide that formed more recently and decorate the surfaces of the crocidolite fibers. As the rocks were slowly rotated during repeated tectonic episodes, cracks were reopened but the direction of the asbestos growth changed. Since reflection of light from the crocidolite fibers is the cause of the cat's-eye effect, the zigzag chatoyancy that is a hallmark of tiger's-eye actually provides a history of the rock's displacement path during the collision of tectonic plates.
Thanks Frank, sitting here reading that piece, looking at my Tigers eye...... must get down to the beach sometime and find some more...
Hi3
Mike. I still have some Tigers Eye that was made into jewelry by the Ovombo administrator a guy named "Steve Ettwin" I think that's the way his name is spelt.
Have mentioned his name in a few posts no response, maybe no Oldies still around that can remember that far back 1968---71.
He got his goldsmiths licence around that time and I think his gold mark was S. ETT. does it ring a bell with anyone.