Walking the Dumps..... Memories!

[Michael Alexander]

Thanks pOps...... German buildings and British tanks..... were else in the world.....

[henniek]

Thanks Alf for the additional pic's  , yes Michael it is the same place. my one just a decade or two earlier then Alf's   

[Alfred Boehme]

The wooden house Mike mentioned,
Mike V closer to RotKop gate than Chamais +/- 25Km

Enjoy

[Alfred Boehme]

Thanks Alf for the additional pic's  , yes Michael it is the same place. my one just a decade or two earlier then Alf's

I saw that well for the first time at the age of about 10 yrs old that would be 1976, always remembered it but did not know where it was. I recal my dad pulling me away from the hole. Always wondred where it was I had a idea it was on the way to Luderitz along the Rotop road.
I found it last week on a tour, my gut feeling was right

[henniek]

1 . Gemsbok dump & Machines.
2 . a old sign from a time when OM tel numbers were 3 digits only . So a joker wrote , adding a fourth digit   "If you are lost phone 3869"  . Incedently 3869 that was my telephone number in town . I had a good laugh wondering where one would phone from .
3 is af a house somewhere in the desert .. can not remember
4 . Abandonned ox waggon in desert
5. Mule cart between Conception and Meob bay.

[Alfred Boehme]

Look at the photo that Henniek posted and the one below of the ox wagons, could it be the same wagon?

[henniek]

Alfred - Yes It looks like the same oxwagon

And on page 1 Bob mention about a huge machine , look at my pic re Gemsbok dump . Was it perhaps this bucketwheel excavator he was referuing to ?

BOB's COMMENT : an immense piece of machinery known as the Sauerman Scraper.
The scraper was a huge steel tower about 40 metres high which moved on caterpillar tracks like a tank. It also had a smaller "slave" tower which stood at some distance and acted as the other end of a gigantic dragline system which used a massive steel bucket to remove the sand overburden from the workings. So huge was that bucket that it was possible to park an entire landrover in it, so it was a substantial piece of equipment.

[henniek]

Mining tanks & bucketwheel .sorry about the poor quality of pic

[Alfred Boehme]

Alfred - Yes It looks like the same oxwagon

And on page 1 Bob mention about a huge machine , look at my pic re Gemsbok dump . Was it perhaps this bucketwheel excavator he was referuing to ?

BOB's COMMENT : an immense piece of machinery known as the Sauerman Scraper.
The scraper was a huge steel tower about 40 metres high which moved on caterpillar tracks like a tank. It also had a smaller "slave" tower which stood at some distance and acted as the other end of a gigantic dragline system which used a massive steel bucket to remove the sand overburden from the workings. So huge was that bucket that it was possible to park an entire landrover in it, so it was a substantial piece of equipment.

I think you spot on there Henniek, that stuff was a long before my time but reading Bob's story and my understanding of what Bob is talking about looks like your pic is under those dumps

[henniek]

Alfred's pics of the water well [ 1.Outside
2. In side  3 . and all the way down  where he dropped a stone down and counted to 5 before it seemed to hit bottom ] . Thanks for these pic's Alfred . The last time I was there , the half rotten wooden platform at the top was still there , and one could not look down , and besides that,  the camera I had was marginally better than a Kodak box model .

[henniek]

Story of the map. The first day I started with CDM , I was instructed to go some place . Not knowing where to go , Ivan Morrow took me outside , showed me the road out of town to the mining area . And while giving me this map , he said that if I'm lost , I can use the map to find my way around.  Later I found out  that this map was of no use .
But what I want to point out . look at the centre of the map . [2 x yellow knobs ] there are 2 macines . I believe the further one is Bobs scraper . I include a 16 m3 scraper because Bob said one could park a land rover in the one used at CDM

[Bob Molloy]

Yes, a bit cartoonish but the second map certainly has a good representation of what the Sauerman Scraper looked like.  As for the bucket, it could well have come from the Scraper but my recall is that the Sauerman and all its component parts were buried under the screening plant dump just north of the old Gemsbok workshops.

[Andrew Darné]

Alf's pic Central Fields 3, the tank that he refers to if I remember correctly is a mooring buoy (standing on end) of sorts, probably from the early tank farm days and the off shore submarine pipeline. I recall a similar buoy with chains through uncovered by the current dredge around G75 area a few years ago. It was a huge wood and steel barrel about 2+ meters in diameter and about the same in length. There was a lot of wood on the corners probably to prevent metal to metal damage of the ship bumping up against it during mooring.

[Leon Sumter]

The picture of the bucket wheel seems to be of the same type as depicted in Pine Pienaar's pics of old Oranjemund except that the driver's compartment has been removed. Check the two photo's out carefully for similarities.
Leon

[John Haycox]

Nice snaps of the tanks....

If one never knew better, you could be forgiven for thinking Rommel and Monty were battling it out in this desert of ours.....

Way back in the late 1940's and ealy 1950's my father used to service the electrical starter motors on those tanks.

They carried two thick planks or rubber mats, to cross the roads used by other vehicles.

The top gear position was locked with a pad lock, so that the driver could not engage top gear.  Apparently these things could go through a sand dune instead of over, when its 40 tons was moving at 40 mph.