Rich Ground?

[Michael Alexander]

We covered this topic a good while back, we heard about the tales of how certain areas around 1 Plant and 2 Plant were covered up very quickly when it was discovered that these certain areas contained incredible rich deposits of diamonds..... now and again when the plant was in danger of not meeting target... the plant sup would send a lorry a dozer out and scoop up a few loads of gravel and viola! The plant made target.... now these tales go back to the super 70's..... when diamonds were everywhere.... These area;s were marked as mined already, but many an old timer would scoff... and many a tale about these hidden pockets of gems did the rounds in Casey's on a Friday night..... as the sands of time went by.... the old timers moved on to higher mansions...... people forgot........

Anyhow, back to the present....... there was a chap who mentioned to me today, that in an area around 4 Plant, an incredibly rich area has been discovered.... a very very rich deposit...... but is'nt this area supposed to be mined already?  Is there any truth to the old timers tales? Should'nt we get an old timer back for a visit? The name of Jock Carr springs to mind......

I cannot confirm all of this, as I am just a humble shopkeeper.....Ah! But the lure of the Diamond spans all generations....

[Michael Alexander]

This tale intigues me, So without mentioning any names, I was on the electric telephone to an old timer today... He recalled a certain cave just north of one plant , this was back in the early 70's..... remember that the area north of one plant becomes rocky..... anyhow ... he recalls that as the blasting and mining was going on this cave area became covered,  but the plany sup would send the bulldozer out there to where that cave was covered everytime they  needed to make carat call.......

Somewhere on this forum was the tale of a similar rich ground that was coverd up in the Northern areas...this was back in the 60';s ... Anglo boys flew in and covered the area up..... the bar was rife with tales that if CDM had mine that specific area ... the diamond market would be flooded.... Sigh! don't you just love a good mystery involving diamonds...

Remember in the Sammy Collins book at the end, how he commented that the wealth of diamonds that lies under this ocean along our coast is worth more than all the gold mined out of the Witwatersrand....

[john wilson]

When I started at CDM in 1967 ,working at the old North Construction Electrical Shop ,there was a huge tailings tip only half a mile away. Anyway CDM built a sorting plant there around 1968 and started redoing the tip. It is said that the cost of building that plant was paid for after the first day of operation. Im not certain what the plant was called ,possibly Plant 1 but it was only + - 30 miles out of town.

[toonfandangl]

I remember in the 1960-70 that the mine had a monthly quota and they could quite easily drop or increase that to reach their target, this being so they could move the earth that equated to the number of carats mined. This comes back to the story of the prospector that retired and then persuaded a pilot to fly him up and land on the beach to pick up his cache unfortunately for them they got stuck. The story reflects on the prospector and his noilage of where the diamonds are, there was more than one company prospector, or was I misinformed.

[Andrew Darné]

Frank... check this out, must be the story you're referring to. I came across it being mentioned in an article in the Windhoek Observer a couple a years back referring to reporters no longer rushing off to write articles on big cases like these even though transport & infrastructure has since vastly improved making it so much easier to get to the courts like Oranjemund.

http://www.oranjemundonline.com/Forum/index.php?topic=2400.msg52882#msg52882

[toonfandangl]

Andrew that's the story................in fact I remember it being brought into C/F workshop it was then worked on and used at the 1970-1 children's Xmas party, they slung it under a crane and the kids got to swing around in it. The plane itself must have ended its days out at C/F workshop 'do you know who the guy is in the photograph' ? I have a hunch.........................................................Frank