August 15, 2018
We left Swaziland to drive to the town of Cullinan near Pretoria. The largest gem-quality diamond ever found (3,106.24 carats) was unearthed here in 1905.
We took a tour of the diamond mine site. The diamonds were created deep in the earth millions of years ago and came to the surface long ago as a result of volcanic eruptions. Mining started in the early 1900s by simply digging a big hole. The company later switched to tunnel mining when the hole became unstable.
The diamonds were extracted from land originally owned by a cattle rancher (1). During his lifetime, the rancher refused to consider any offers for the land. After the rancher's death, Thomas Cullinan pretended that one of his cattle had died of disease on the land. He was told to immediately bury the deceased animal to avoid infecting the local herd. In reality, Cullinan just wanted an excuse to dig on the land to satisfy himself that the land contained diamonds before making his purchase offer.
After running the mine for many decades, DeBeers sold the mine gto a South Africa company (Petra Mining) (1) in 2008. Using modern technology, Petra has found many 1,000s of gem-quailty diamonds that had been disposed of with the leftover kimberlite (3) by the previous owners.
(1) The same man had earlier had a cattle ranch further West in the Orange Free State. Gold was discovered on this earlier plot, which he sold for a smsll fortune. Ironically, he bought the land on which the Cullinan mine would eventually sit to get far away from any mining and focus on his cattle.
(2) "Petra" is from the greek meaning "hard rock."
(3) Kimberlite is the name given to the type of rock in which diamonds are usually found in Southern Africa. The name is derived from the town of Kimberly, South Africa, where one if the early African diamond mines was located.
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