Malcolm Bertoni's Online Book.

[Michael Alexander]

Some of you might not know this, but ex Oranjemunder, Malcolm Bertoni has written a book on his days out on this side of the world. The book is aptly entitled Diamonds and Dust and is being hosted on an online publishers site. The book focus's mainly on Malcolms carefree days up at Affenrucken during the the late 60's and early 70's.

I will be posting the link on the main page with the next update, but in the meantime, head on over to this link ---> http://www.openwriting.com/archives/diamonds_and_dust/  and have a good read.

This topic will be posted as a sticky for the next 60 days.

Good Luck Malcolm!

[Donald Duck]

Another Plastic Oranjemunder

[bobbysmith]

as he does sumersaults

[Donald Duck]

Illogically, No 4 plant was the closest to town and No 1 plant the furthest.

From his book - anyone know why?

[Gordon Brown]

It was the last to be built. Prior to that it was just an HMS plant built to process the concentrates being trucked in from the field screening plants.

[Malcolm Bertoni]

Sorry to disagree with you Gordon, but No 4 plant was the first plant built and then No 1 plant in the late 60s.  Nos 2 and 3 came later  - in the late 70s I think.  When I moved to Affenrucken in 68, No 1 plant had only been going for a year or two.

I remember that when I started at No 4 plant in 67, it still had the old narrow guage railway line and the ore was delivered that way - most from the old screening plants.  I'm not sure when it was ripped up - probably in the early 70s?  I can remember driving past No 4 plant in 71 or 72 and was surprised to see that the line had gone.  I didnt even know.  Often things change and we dont really notice.

Also when I worked at No 4 plant there was only the one big brick building where the heavy media separation (HMS) plant was amd  the recovery - most of the other buildings came later (or seemed to anyway).  The HMS was pretty damn archaic then - there were two massive wheels called Medag Wheels - they were about 3 stories high and about 15 feet wide and the media and the gravel was fed in at one end and separated inside. They were a bastard to operate and how we managed it I dont know. The noise was also unbelievable.

[Gordon Brown]

Hi Malcolm, dug out my stats on the shut down dates of the 18 field screening plants and the commissioning dates of the four conglomerate crushing plants. What they show is No. 1 Plant being commissioned in the later part of 1968; No. 4 Plant at the end of 1970; No. 2 Plant in mid-year 1975 and No. 3 Plant at the beginning of 1977. Further modifications to No. 4 Plant took place after commissioning of 3 Plant. Could have been introduction of tailings dump retreatment section; 81TT Plant. Not sure. Best regards. Gordon. If you out this way next year , make a turn in Cape Town. Would like to see you again after all those years when we played touch rugby on Camps Bay beach with the Camps bay boys ( Barchards; Ashcroft, O'Conners et al) followed by breakfast at the Lincoln cafe with Alex Kushel ( he unfortunately passed on). Remember you stayed in green cottages at start of Camps Bay Drive at the Geneva Drive intersection.Cheers.Gordon

[Hooter]

no 2 plant was constucted 1975
interesting was that during commisioning , that is firs a dry run , and then a wet run , before putting the palnt into production
for the dry run mining supplied  a few thousand tons of sand or ground .
one paticular day a year or two later , it was raining and trucks could not deliver material via the haul road .
Selvyn ordered that the remains of the test ground  , that was still l next to the primary crusher , to be fed through the plant . Only to have the recovery sup rejoycing . because ther were many , many carats coming from 2 plant .
on enquiry it was discovered that mining did not keep record of where the ground was loaded , and the firtst ground for testing the plants was at the bottom of the tailings dump !

[Michael Alexander]

on enquiry it was discovered that mining did not keep record of where the ground was loaded , and the firtst ground for testing the plants was at the bottom of the tailings dump !

... And for this reason, one wonders how much gravel/ area's have been overlooked or even missed... there had to be plenty of stones still out there... one noticed in that GM's (acting ) brief that is posted in here somewhere, it was not mentioned that diamonds are finished, but rather technical difficulties and poor productivity....

[Malcolm Bertoni]

In my book I describe some of the samples that were treated at the 66M sampling plant during 1968. Many samples came from the G area and were insanely rich with huge diamonds.  Some were just sand overburden brought for testing 

As one of the mining foremen at the time (Rico van Rooyen) said: "Some of the sample came from areas that were not marked for mining and was the richest that they had ever mined".  Make one wonder.  There could still be millions of dollars worth of diamond around in the area.

[Michael Alexander]

Malcolm, I would even go into the Billions..... When you read that book, Sea Diamonds, the assumption is made that the wealth in diamonds in the ocean is greater than all the gold mined in the Transvaal.....

There's just something about those diamonds.... and there just had to be diamonds under this house that I am sitting in right now....

, Sorry Good morning

[Malcolm Bertoni]

Start digging Michael.

[Michael Alexander]

I don't think Michele will like me digging up her garden, besides Pete might turn up .... and it won't be for a rugby match and a braai...

[DUNJA WRBKA]

This might not be relevant to the topic but know my dad "Alfred Wrbka" was a maintenance fitter on No4 Plant.  Did any of you perhaps work with him?

[Gordon Brown]

Also found diamonds in the overburden sand as shown to me on a number of occasions by senior mine foreman Jackie Carr, mainly in the area of U2 screening plant. Prior to 1968/9 we would discard the storm beaches overlying the diamond-bearing beaches, until it was realised the tail ends of these storm beaches also contained diamonds in large quantities. Wonder how many were discarded before 1968! Must have been a lot in the preceding 40 year period. In earlier days, the screening plant discard dumps faced seaward with all the material being dumped on the beaches for the sea to take away. It was only much later when they realised that conglomerate contained diamonds, that the dumps were swung round to the north to allow for future retreatment. With regard to the jig plants these were only 37% efficient, and so a lot of diamonds were lost in this process.